Nur Sobers-Khan
University of Exeter, Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS), Senior Research Fellowship
Dr Nur Sobers-Khan is a researcher and curator of Islamic manuscripts, art and archival collections. She served as director of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, a research centre and archive for the study of visual culture, architecture and urbanism in Muslim societies (2021-22). From 2015-2021, she was the Lead Curator for South Asian Collections at the British Library, London, where she was Head of the South Asia section and responsible for curating the South Asian printed books and manuscript collections and also led a team of specialist curators. During this time, she was Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded research and digitisation project Two Centuries of Indian Print (2016-2021), and her research emerging from this project pivots around two questions: the dispersal and removal of cultural heritage artefacts from South Asia under British colonialism, and the transition from manuscript to print in the same period and the creation of new genres and forms of reading through the circulation of lithographed texts on cosmology, dream interpretation and other divinatory literatures. She previously served as the Iran Heritage Fellowship Persian Manuscript Curator at the British Library (2012-13) and was Curator for Turkey and the Ottoman Empire at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (2014-15). While at the Museum of Islamic Art, she curated two exhibitions: 'Building Our Collection: Mughal and Safavid Albums,' on the art of manuscript production in India and Iran, and co-curated 'Qajar Women: Images of Women in 19th-century Iran', on the depiction of gender in the Qajar period. Book-length publications include a monograph based on her PhD research, entitled Slaves Without Shackles: Forced Labour and Manumission in the Galata Court Registers, 1560–1572, published by Klaus Schwarz Verlag in 2014 (now by De Gruyter), and Qajar Women: Images of Women in 19th-century Iran (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2016), co-authored with Mounia Chekhab-Abudaya. Her reviews and articles have appeared in Oriens, Journal of Early Modern History, Critical Muslim, and Global Intellectual History and various edited volumes. She has lectured at the University of Cambridge and St Mary's University College on the history of the Middle East, South Asia, the early modern Mediterranean and Indian Ocean world. She has also had the opportunity to teach as an associate professor at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan, where she served as co-director of the new department of Comparative Liberal Studies in her first semester there and also had the opportunity to design and teach the undergraduate courses, “Dream Interpretation: A Decolonial History” and “Islamic Art and Visual Culture: From the Middle East to South Asia.”
She completed a PhD in Islamic History in 2012 at the Faculty of Oriental Studies Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD dissertation, entitled, ‘Slaves without Shackles: Forced Labour and Manumission in the Galata Court Registers: 1560-1572,’ was a microhistorical study of the social and cultural context of slavery in the early modern Ottoman Empire based on extensive archival and manuscript research. It was published as a monograph in 2014. Her undergraduate degree was in Oriental Studies at the University of Cambridge (2006 BA Hons MA), with a focus on Arabic and Persian philology and the literature and history of the Middle East.
She completed a PhD in Islamic History in 2012 at the Faculty of Oriental Studies Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD dissertation, entitled, ‘Slaves without Shackles: Forced Labour and Manumission in the Galata Court Registers: 1560-1572,’ was a microhistorical study of the social and cultural context of slavery in the early modern Ottoman Empire based on extensive archival and manuscript research. It was published as a monograph in 2014. Her undergraduate degree was in Oriental Studies at the University of Cambridge (2006 BA Hons MA), with a focus on Arabic and Persian philology and the literature and history of the Middle East.
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Books and edited volumes by Nur Sobers-Khan
Abstract: Scholarly discussions on Islam in print have focused predominantly on the role of Urdu in the development of North Indian Muslim publics (Dubrow, 2018; Robb, 2020), ʿulama and Islamic jurisprudence (Tareen, 2020) and relations between Islam and colonial modernity (Robinson, 2008; Osella & Osella, 2008) This special issue instead offers fine-grained investigations on technology and labour; print landscapes, networks and actors; subaltern languages; and popular Islam. We critique the idea of an “epistemic rupture” brought about by colonial modernity, providing a more systematic analysis of continuities and changes in Islamic knowledge economy. Examining two centuries of print authored by South Asian Muslims, the articles in the issue provide new ways of thinking about questions of knowledge production, distribution, circulation and reception. The issue broadens the scope of earlier scholarship, examining genres such as cosmology, divination, devotional poems, salacious songs, romances and tales of war in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, dobhāṣī Bangla, Arabic Malayalam, Sindhi, Balochi and Brahui. The articles show the different ways that pre-colonial practices and cultures of writing and reading persisted in the print landscape, in terms of copying, adaptation, translation and circulation of texts. They inquire into new technologies, labour and networks that evolved, and how it provided fertile ground for both new and traditional forms of religious activities and authorities. The articles present new Muslim publics, geographies, and imaginaries forged through the vernacularisation of Islam, and their relationship to the transnational or global community.
The original exhibition description is the following:
"This exhibition features the centrality of the female form to the artwork of the Qajar period in Iran (1785-1925). Through a variety of historical objects from MIA's collection, in juxtaposition with photographs and contemporary artworks inspired by the Qajar period, we explore the meaning of the image of women at the onset of modernity. From the texture and visual culture of women's daily lives to the refinement of the Qajar court, from symbolism and mythology to the shifting understanding of female beauty over time, this exhibition looks at the representation of women in the art of Qajar Iran from a variety of angles.
In addition to the traditional art objects and photographs, a number of reproductions of contemporary artworks are also on display in Qajar Women, demonstrating the continuity of Qajar visual language. The power of the Qajar female image is felt today, in the works of Hojat Amani, Shadi Ghadirian and Mahmood Sabzi, who adapt the iconic Qajar aesthetic to comment on modernity and femininity, as well as the role of the past in shaping the present."
ISBN 978-3-87997-436-8
Peer-reviewed articles and chapters by Nur Sobers-Khan
Abstract:
Scholarly discussions on Islam in print have focused predominantly on the role of Urdu in the development of North Indian Muslim publics (Dubrow, 2018; Robb, 2020), ʿulama and Islamic jurisprudence (Tareen, 2020) and relations between Islam and colonial modernity (Robinson, 2008; Osella & Osella, 2008) This special issue instead offers fine-grained investigations on technology and labour; print landscapes, networks and actors; subaltern languages; and popular Islam. We critique the idea of an “epistemic rupture” brought about by colonial modernity, providing a more systematic analysis of continuities and changes in Islamic knowledge economy. Examining two centuries of print authored by South Asian Muslims, the articles in the issue provide new ways of thinking about questions of knowledge production, distribution, circulation and reception. The issue broadens the scope of earlier scholarship, examining genres such as cosmology, divination, devotional poems, salacious songs, romances and tales of war in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, dobhāṣī Bangla, Arabic Malayalam, Sindhi, Balochi and Brahui. The articles show the different ways that pre-colonial practices and cultures of writing and reading persisted in the print landscape, in terms of copying, adaptation, translation and circulation of texts. They inquire into new technologies, labour and networks that evolved, and how it provided fertile ground for both new and traditional forms of religious activities and authorities. The articles present new Muslim publics, geographies, and imaginaries forged through the vernacularisation of Islam, and their relationship to the transnational or global community.
17 September 2014 - 21 February 2015
Museum of Islamic Art, Doha
http://www.mia.org.qa/en/boc/boc-catalogue
This exhibition displays a selection of MIA’s miniature paintings and calligraphic compositions that were once part of Safavid and Mughal-era albums. The term “album” is a translation of the Arabic and Persian word muraqqa’, which denotes an object that has been patched together.
Often used as a metaphor for the patchwork of the heavens or the constellations, or referring to the patched cloak of the wandering dervish, this term encapsulates the sophisticated juxtapositions of calligraphy and painting compiled and bound into volumes between the 15th and 19th century, also called muraqqa,’ the dispersed pages of which are on display here. The culture of connoisseurship and collecting at the royal courts of the early modern Islamic world can be reconstructed in part through an examination of the methods in which these albums were compiled.
The careful selection of calligraphy and illustration, and the connoisseur’s appreciation of the interplay between word and image, colour and composition, and the recognition of the hands of particular artists, sheds a great deal light on the artistic cultures of the Safavid and Mughal courts.
The commissioning and compilation of albums also demonstrates how art reinforced political and cultural legitimacy. The royal collecting practice of compiling albums travelled from the Timurid court in Herat, to Safavid Iran, and then to the Mughals in India, where the British also later adopted the practice of creating albums of paintings. As a result of their importance to the history of Islamic art and their distinguished origins, these dispersed album pages are a valuable part of MIA’s collection.
Essays and Translations by Nur Sobers-Khan
Anno XII, N°39, Maggio - Agosto 2022
I had the privilege of guest editing this edition of Roots§Routes: Research on Visual Cultures together with Domenico Sergi and the editorial team of R§R. The theme of our edition was 'Restitution, Healing, Redistribution,' featuring a range of articles on the many interpretations of restitution.
Abstract:
Restitution is a hotly debated topic in contemporary museum practice, often unmasking deeply rooted colonial epistemologies. In Europe, one of the most frequent objections to restitution is the weak scientific infrastructure of the communities where objects would be returned. As if museums, and museums only, knew how to preserve objects. But what if there is no museum at the receiving end, and would this justify not meeting those demands?
Questions of restitution are key to the attainment of social justice for marginalised communities. Crucial to this conversation are the debates around the restitution of human remains, and objects or artworks removed during colonial or nationalist projects. In this context, the history of slavery in particular is deeply entangled with the formation of archives and museum collections in both the US and North America. Of central concern to questions of restitution are also silenced narratives, whether exceptional or commonplace, and the multiplicity of archives where ritual, religious, cultural, political and anthropological matters are deeply entangled.
In the face of clear demands advanced by those who were formerly colonized and continue to be marginalized, deceived, and blackmailed, the amnesia of cultural institutions has never greater. Even when cultural institutions engage with the restitution of contested heritages, how can we ensure such practices don’t reinforce neo-colonial ideologies?
Table of Contents
Restitution and the Writing of Indian ‘Classical’ Dance: Rethinking Social Justice for Marginal Communities.
By Priyanka Basu
Curatorial Practices in Liminal Spaces: Reshaping Purposes and Pathways from the British Museum
By Alice Christophe
Epistemicide, Historicide and Ethnocide: Cases for the Restitution of the Artefacts of African Knowledge
By Harry Wilson Kapatika
Ripensare la restituzione. Oltre gli “oggetti”. Oltre le colonie
di Beatrice Falcucci
TWANA ARCHIVE. Documentare il Kurdistan iracheno
di Caterina Erica Shanta in collaborazione con Rawsht Twana
Facing the “long absence”. Power Structures, Ownership and Community Involvement at the Botswana National Museum. A Dialogue with Winani Thebele
by Anna Chiara Cimoli
Rimettersi in gioco in un museo italiano nel XXI secolo
Di Maria Camilla De Palma
Restituzione digitale come arena di negoziazione. Riflessioni sul progetto “Archivi aborigeni in Italia. Uno spazio per collaborazioni reciproche”
di Monica Galassi
Riparare i viventi: musei, arte e patrimonio culturale per una relazione di senso tra vissuti e memorie
di Silvia Mascheroni e Giovanna Brambilla
The Past is Another Country. A Case for Digital Restitution
By Arthur Dudney
Riconoscere una terra che non c’è. Un padiglione Sámi alla Biennale
di Martina Marini.
Discovering Colonization, Decolonizing the ‘Discoveries’
by Giulia Dickmans
“Puto Gallo Conquistador”: la rivoluzione dei corpi e il ritorno del knowing-body
di Lara Barzon
Correspondance on Fascist legacy, gender identity and sex
by Sveva Crisafulli e Alice Minervini
جا مِis wineglass: the National Trust’s Powis Castle and the Clive of India Collection
by Hassan Vawda
Ripensare la restituzione: dalla proprietà alla relazione
di Marzia Varutti
Escaping the Captive Mind: Rethinking Colonial Narratives, Preserving Heritage, and Curating the Malay World
By Siti Marina Mohd Maidin
It doesn’t belong in a library: a book belongs in the hands of a reader
by X
https://www.roots-routes.org/anno-12-n-39-maggio-luglio-2022-restituire-lenire-ridistribuire/