Mongol Connections: Art, Aesthetics, and Technologies
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10 Nov
12 Nov
2025
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Islamic Aesthetics
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Sussan Babaie
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Image: The Courtauld Bag, Mosul, Iraq (Ilkhanid dynasty, 1256–1353) 1300–30, Brass, hammered, chased and inlaid with silver and gold. The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust) © The Courtauld
These lectures consider the extraordinary disruptions caused by the sudden arrival of the Mongol hordes which was especially devastating to the Muslim world for the Mongols put an end to the caliphate in Baghdad. The world-scale ambitions of the Mongols, set in motion by the chief of all Mongol tribes Temüjin, known as Chinggis Khaan (Genghis Khan) (r. 1206-27), led to the establishment of the largest contiguous land empire in history. Focusing on the Ilkhanate in today Iran and Iraq (1256-1335), we consider the artistic and cultural world that emerged from encounters between the nomadic steppe peoples and those of the settled populations with whom they formed independent polities and produced spectacular arts.
Session I: From the Steppe to the Palace: Introduction to the Mongols in Islamic West Asia
Session II: Mongol world view, statecraft and Perso-Islamic representations of kingship The World History of Rahid al-Din and The Shahnama (book of kings)
Session III: Conceptualising Bling! From cloth of gold to horse trappings in gold Court ceremonies and costumes
Session IV: Tented Luxury, Mobile Palaces, and Monumental Architecture
Session V: Object stories: The Courtauld Bag and the role of the Khatuns (Mongol royal women)
Session VI: Mongol Legacy: Blue and White and the first Global Brand
Duration -
November 10, 11, 12, 2025
Timing: Tea: 6:00 PM | Lecture: 6:30 - 8:30 PM IST
Fees
Rs. 3,000 (For student discounts registrations kindly email info@jp-india.org)
Registrations will open on 01-Oct-2025
Sussan Babaie
Sussan Babaie is Reader in Islamic and Persian arts at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. Before joining The Courtauld in 2013, she taught at Smith College, the University of Michigan, and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. She has curated the exhibition Strolling in Isfahan at the Sackler Museum of Harvard University, and installations of Islamic arts at Smith College and the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
She is the author of Isfahan and Its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran (2008 and paperback 2018), and co-author and editor of several books including Iran After the Mongols(2019), The Mercantile Effect: On Art and Exchange in the Islamicate World During the 17th and 18th Centuries (2017),Honar: The Afkhami Collection of Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art (2017), Persian Kingship and Architecture: Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis (2014), Shirin Neshat (2013), and Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran (2004, paperback 2018). Currently, she is working on a book about the intersections between visual and gustatory taste in early modern Iran.
Babaie studied Graphic Design (BA, Tehran University), History of Renaissance Arts (MA, American University, Washington, DC), and History of Islamic Arts (PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University). Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (United States), the Fulbright (for Egypt and Syria) and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.