Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture (The Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art)

For millennia the collection, distribution, and symbolism of water have played pivotal roles in the lands where Islam has flourished. This book is the first to address this important subject. A diverse spectrum of scholars covers a wide range of topics: from the revelation of Islam in the 7th century to today’s conservation and development issues, from watering oases in the Moroccan desert to the flooded plains of Bengal. Copiously illustrated with beautiful color photographs and newly drawn plans and maps, this book will provoke readers to appreciate and acknowledge the essential, if often invisible and transitory, roles that water played in the arts of the Islamic lands and beyond. Introduction 1. Gardens beneath which rivers flow : the significance of water in classical Islamic culture 2. Control and abandon : images of water in Arabic poetry and gardens 3. Fruited trees and ablution fountains in the Great Mosque of Cordoba : the flow of water from landscape to monument 4. Toward a typology of water vessels in Islamic art : sip, dip, and pour 5. Water, magic and magical inscriptions on "frozen water" 6. Sabil-Kuttabs and the conception of water in Mamluk Cairo (1260-1517) 7. Architecture as a message : the Sabil of Muhammad 'Ali Pasha in Cairo 8. Water and water imagery in architecture and the arts in Ottoman times 9. The archeology of urban water systems in Ottoman Greece : the cases of Nafpaktos and Nafplio 10. Out of the desert : water traditions in the South Asian landscape 11. Paradise flooded : water and architecture in Bangladesh 12. Water scarcity and landscaping in the Islamic world : contemporary solutions to historical problems. For millennia the collection, distribution and symbolism of water have played pivotal roles in the lands where Islam has flourished. This book is the first to address this important subject. A diverse spectrum of scholars covers a wide range of topics: from the revelation of Islam in the seventh century to today's conservation and development issues, from watering oases in the Moroccan desert to the flooded plains of Bengal. Copiously illustrated with beautiful colour photographs and newly drawn plans and maps, this book will provoke readers to appreciate and acknowledge the essential, if often invisible and transitory, roles that water played in the arts of the Islamic lands and beyond For millennia the collection, distribution, and symbolism of water have played pivotal roles in the lands where Islam has flourished. This book is the first to address this important subject. A diverse spectrum of scholars covers a wide range of topics: from the revelation of Islam in the 7th century to todayʹs conservation and development issues, from watering oases in the Moroccan desert to the flooded plains of Bengal. Copiously illustrated with beautiful color photographs and newly drawn plans and maps, this book will provoke readers to appreciate and acknowledge the essential, if often invisible and transitory, roles that water played in the arts of the Islamic lands and beyond.