Meet the Author
Nasser Rabbat
Nasser Rabbat is the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. His interests include Islamic art and architecture, urban history, heritage studies, Arab history, contemporary Islamic art, and post-colonial criticism. He teaches lecture courses on various aspects of Islamic architecture and seminars on Orientalism and colonialism; Issues in Islamic Urbanism; Historiography of Islamic Architecture; Late Antiquity and the foundation of Islamic architecture; Reading Ibn Khaldun; (Re)constructing Memory; Urbicide; and Balancing Globalism and Regionalism in the Arabian Gulf. Professor Rabbat has published more than a hundred scholarly articles and several books on topics ranging from Mamluk architecture to Antique Syria, 19th century Cairo, Orientalism, and urbicide. His most recent books are Taqiy al-Din al-Maqrizi: Wijdan al-Tarikh al-Masri (2024); Nasser Rabbat: Critical Encounters (2023); Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project (2023); ‘Imarat al-Mudun al-Mayyita (The Architecture of the Dead Cities) (2018), and an online book, The Destruction of Cultural Heritage: From Napoléon to ISIS, co-edited with Pamela Karimi (2016). His co-edited book, Construction as Destruction: The Case of Syria will be published in 2025 by AUC Press. He is currently editing a book on the cultural history of Syria to be published by Edinburgh University Press. His next book project is a history of Mamluk Cairo, which is under contract with AUC Press.
