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Noha Abou-Khatwa

  • Position: Assistant Professor
  • Department: Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations
Brief Biography

Noha Abou-Khatwa is an assistant professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations, The American University in Cairo (AUC). Her main research interests are the manuscript culture, the architecture, and the intellectual life of the Medieval Muslim world with a focus on the Mamluks. She earned her PhD from University of Toronto in Islamic Art and Material Culture in 2017, and her MA from AUC in Islamic Art and Architecture in 2001. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, she worked at the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation, where she started and directed The Dar al-Kutub Manuscript Conservation Project. She also founded the Islamic Art Network, one of the earliest projects to consider the digital humanities to aid those studying Cairo’s Islamic art and architecture. She publishes on epigraphy, calligraphy, Qur’an manuscripts, architecture and the intellectual life of Medieval Islam. She is currently working on her first monograph on Mamluk calligraphy and illumination, and an art historical catalogue of the Mamluk Qur’an manuscripts in the National Library of Egypt.

Research Interest
  • Arabic calligraphy 
  • Manuscript Illumination 
  • Art and architecture of Egypt and the Persianate world
  • The Islamic Manuscript tradition and codicology
  • The intellectual life of the Medieval Muslim world
  • Artistic interchange between architectural decoration and manuscript art
  • The artistic interchange between Arabic Bibles and Qur’an manuscripts 
Education
  • PhD, University of Toronto
  • MA, The American University in Cairo
  • BA, The American University in Cairo

  • “The Word of the Beloved Prophet of Islam: Ḥadīths Inscribed on Cairo’s Islamic Architecture,” in Beyond Authenticity: Alternative Approaches to Hadith Narratives and Collections, ed. Mohammad Gharaibeh (Leiden, 2023): 358-398.

  • “The Shaykh and the Amir: Reflections on the non-Qurʾanic Epigraphic Program in the Buildings of Shaykhū al-ʿUmarī al-Nāṣirī,” in Inscriptions of the Medieval Islamic World, eds. Bernard O'Kane, A.C.S. Peacock and Mark Muehlhaeusler (Edinburgh, 2023): 211-237.

  • “The Muḥsinī Brothers: A Case Study in the Contribution of Mamluks’ Descendants to Cairo’s Material Culture in the Fourteenth Century,” in Mamluk Descendants: In Search for the Awlād al-Nās, eds. Stephan Conermann and Anna Kollatz (Gottingen, 2022): 141-172.“Shaping the Material Culture of Cairo in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century: A Case Study in the Patronage of Amir Ṣirghatmish al-Nāṣirī,” in Living with Nature and things: Contributions to a New Social History of the Middle Islamic Periods, eds. Bethany Walker and Abdelkader Al Ghouz (Gottingen, 2020): 309-346.

  • “An Ode to Remember: The Burda of al-Busiri in Cairene Ottoman Houses,” in Creswell Photographs Re-examined: New Perspectives on Islamic Architecture, ed. Bernard O’Kane (Cairo, 2009): 43-69.