Leslee Michelsen
Related Terms:
- Caravanserai (inn for caravans, merchants and their wares)
- Chatri (small, elevated dome-shaped pavilions)
- Iwan (three-sided, vaulted structure)
- Madrasa (establishment of learning, particularly of the Islamic sciences)
- Masjid (mosque)
- Muqarnas (ornamental molding)
- Qubba (dome)
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Related Khamseen Videos:
Yael Rice, “Jahangir’s Dream,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 16 October 2020.
Denise-Marie Teece, “Monsoon Winds and Ming Porcelains: Collecting and Displaying Chinese Ceramics at the Mughal Court,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 10 March 2022.
References:
Blair, Sheila S. “Pishtaq”, The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture, Jonathan M. Bloom and Sheila S. Blair (eds), Oxford Islamic Studies Online.
Hillenbrand, Robert. Islamic Architecture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. ![]()
Golombek, Lisa and Ebba Koch. “The Mughals, Uzbeks, and the Timurid Legacy”, A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Neçipoğlu (eds), Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2017, 811–845. ![]()
Knobloch, Edgar. Monuments of Central Asia. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001. ![]()
Michelsen, Leslee Katrina. “Iran and Central Asia, 651–1250”, Sir Banister Fletcher’s A Global History of Architecture, London: RIBA/Bloomsbury, 2020, 558–78. ![]()
Citation:
Leslee Michelsen, “Pishtaq,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 24 October 2023.

Leslee Katrina Michelsen is the Director of International Expositions (and previously the Director of the National Museum of American Diplomacy) at the US Department of State. She has served as the Senior Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art in Honolulu, as well as the Head of the Curatorial and Research Section at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. Dr. Michelsen has worked on numerous cultural heritage and archaeology projects throughout Central Asia, South Asia, and East Africa stretching from Azerbaijan to Zanzibar. She is a specialist of materiality and making, as well as contemporary museology and cultural heritage. She co-founded the first MA program in Museum Studies in Uzbekistan at the Silk Road University in Samarkand, sits on the Board of Directors of ICOM-US (where she is also Co-Chair of the Programs Committee), and serves as a peer reviewer for the American Alliance of Museums.

