Lecture Synopsis
In the Islamic Mediterranean, there has been a reciprocal relationship historically between the environment and humankind in which the spatial environment exerted force in the form of gravity, precipitation and sunlight which molded the very existence of the people living there. In turn, humans have exerted force on the environment as they sought to level the path for water in an irrigation system, terrace the earth’s surfaces to create arable plots of land, and domesticate exotic plant species. In al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), Algeria, and the Yemen (and other places around and near the Mediterranean), we can see that human society organizes itself in concert with the demands of the environment, developing adaptive social strategies such as the collection of botanical knowledge, time-keeping, ordinances, and courts of law.
Prof. D. Fairchild Ruggles
An historian of Islamic architecture and landscape, Dr. Ruggles’s research examines the built environment of the Islamic Mediterranean and South Asia, the complex interrelationship of Islamic culture with Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, and the ways that religion and culture are often conflated in the study of these. In addition to numerous edited volumes on the topics of cultural heritage, gender, and visual theory, she is the author of two award-winning books on garden history: Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (2000), and Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (2008). In 2020 her Tree of Pearls: The Extraordinary Architectural Patronage of the 13th-Century Slave-Queen Shajar al-Durr won ASOR’s Nancy Lapp book prize. Her most recent work is Islamicate Environments: Water, Land, Plants, and Society, forthcoming soon in the Cambridge University Press Elements series. This is a study of the early Islamicate environment, from agricultural practices and hydraulic technologies to systems of measurement and justice. It concludes with a critique of the concept of a hydraulic society.