“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 oversight 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 confessional divides. 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, University of Toronto, St George Campus. She received her doctorate from Cambridge University's Department of Architecture in 2012. Her research focuses on the formation of Islamic architecture as well as Islam's interface with late antiquity, Christianity and Judaism through commemorative architecture, pilgrimage and ritual practice, with a particular focus on Jerusalem and Cairo. She is the author of Architecture of Anxiety: Body Politics and the Formation of Islamic Architecture, published by Brill.

The talk will take place in room A266 Bay 10 on the second floor of Smith Warehouse. Free and open to the public.