"Global Approaches to Sacred Space" Workshop: Heba Mostafa, "Sanctity Elusive and Manifest: The Nilometer at al-Rawda Island and its Cosmological Entanglements"

Sanctity Elusive and Manifest: The Nilometer at al-Rawda Island and its Cosmological Entanglements

The mandate to govern Egypt has long been contingent upon the critical responsibility of gauging and controlling the seasonal inundation of the River Nile, upon which Egypt’s prosperity depends. This included the management of sophisticated infrastructure, such as gauges to measure flood waters known as Nilometers, canal and dike maintenance, and overall management of agricultural land. Coexisting alongside these pragmatic measures, intricate rituals and ceremonies were enacted throughout the year to offer supplications for an ample flood or celebrate its fulfillment. These ritualistic and ceremonial efforts focused mostly upon the ninth century Abbasid Nilometer at al-Rawda Island across from al-Fustat (medieval Cairo) with city wide ceremonies extending beyond the island throughout the year and across the confessional divide. In this sense the pragmatic, scientific, quantifiable, and observable formed one facet of the coin while the symbolic, spiritual, and esoteric, formed the other. This is why the Nilometer, while principally a measuring device, received decorative treatment similar to other early Islamic sacred sites, including an inscription band along the sides of its well that include Quranic verses extolling the beneficence of God through rainfall. This talk will consider these facets symbiotically by situating the Nilometer as a sacred precinct and de facto shrine to nature, unveiling its agility at the intersection of the cosmological, urban, ritualistic, and material.

Heba Mostafa is Associate Professor of Islamic art and architecture at the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto, St. George and Senior Fellow at Massey College. She received her doctorate from Cambridge University’s Department of Architecture in 2012 and holds degrees in architecture and the history of Islamic architecture from Cairo University and the American University in Cairo. Her research explores the formation of Islamic architecture through the lens of early Islamic sectarianism and governance, addressing the mediation of political conflict and confessional division through architecture at the intersection of politics and the sacred. She focuses on Islam’s interface with late antiquity, Christianity and Judaism through commemorative architecture, pilgrimage, and ritual practice, with a particular focus on Jerusalem and Cairo. Her current project explores nature veneration practices in Medieval Cairo, with a focus on the Nilometer at al-Rawda Island, bringing into conversation the mediatory role of nature in reconciling the religious, spiritual, and scientific contexts in Medieval Islam. She is the author of Architecture of Anxiety: Body Politics and the Formation of Islamic Architecture, published by Brill.

Click here to register

“Global Approaches to Sacred Space” is generously funded by the SGS Global Research Workshop series with further support from the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CESTA, CMEMS, CREEES, the Departments of Art & Art History, Classics, French and Italian, History, and Religious Studies.

Co-organized by Prof. Bissera V. Pentcheva and Andrei Dumitrescu.