Safa Mahmoudian

Position:

Barakat Postdoctoral researcher; Associate scholar of the Khalili Research Centre and Wolfson College

Postdoctoral Researcher

Faculty / college address:

Khalili Research Centre, 3 St John Street, Oxford OX1 2LG

Email:

safa.mahmoudian@wolfson.ox.ac.uk

Research interests:

Art and architectural history of West Asia during the Islamic periods, history of garden and palace architecture, cultural exchanges during the early Islamic period

 

Current projects:

  • Palace Gardens in Lower Mesopotamia: 8th to 11th Centuries

          This project received 2022 Grete Mostny Dissertation Prize of the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the University of Vienna

  • Garden Traditions and Cultural Exchanges between Khurasan and Lower Mesopotamia in the Eighth to Twelfth Centuries

 

Courses taught:

2018/10-2019/02

Department of Art History, University of Vienna

Lecturer of the course: Abbasid palaces and Persian architectural traditions

2017/03-2017/12

Department of Art History, University of Vienna

Lecturer of the courses: Palace, mosque, bazar: architecture during the Safavid period in ‎Iran, 16th-18th c.;‎

Palace architecture in Western Asia during the early Islamic ‎periods‎

2013/01 – 2014/01

Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering, ‎Azad University of Sharekord, Iran

Lecturer of the courses: Theoretical Principles of Architecture; Introduction to Modern architecture

2013/09 – 2014/01

Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Shahrekord, Iran ‎

Lecturer of the courses: Principles of Architectural Design; Principles of Urban Design

2013/09 – 2014/01

Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Payām Nūr University of Sharekord, Iran ‎

Lecturer of the courses: Introduction to Islamic Architecture; Introduction to Urban and Architectural Design

 

Publications:

Books

2023 (forthcoming). Palace Gardens in Lower Mesopotamia: 8th to 11th Centuries. Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art series. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

2017. Dāstān Mādī Fadan: Miʿmārī wa Zindigī wa Shahr dar Kinār Jūy dar Iṣfahān Ṣafawī (The Story of Fadan Mādī: Life, Architecture and Urban Spaces along a Canal in Safavid Isfahan). Tehran: Rawzana.

Articles

2023 (forthcoming). “The Fourfold Garden of Balkuwārā Palace, Revisited”. In Jardins, pouvoir et société entre Orient ancien et mondes musulmans, de la Méditerranée à l'Inde. Edited by Anna Caiozzo and Harit Joshi. Collection Jardins et Société. Valenciennes: Presses Universitaires de Valenciennes, 87-113.

2021. “Bahw in the Architectural Vocabulary of Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Century Mesopotamia”. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 111:153-194.

with Amirhusayn Karimi. 2018. “Miʿmārī Ruzgār Ṣafawīyān (Architecture during the Safavid period)”. In Majmūʿa-yi Hunar dar Tamaddun-i Islāmī. Miʿmārī, vol. 2. Edited by Mehrdad Qayyoomi Bidhendi. Tehran: Samt, 257-277.

with Mehrdad Qayyoomi Bidhendi. 2017. “The Norm of Mādī: Water Management System in Safavid Isfahan”. In Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie, vol. 5. Edited by Markus Ritter, Ilse Sturkenboom, and Fernando Valdéz Fernández, 5:57-69. Wiesbaden:  Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag.

with Mehrdad Qayyoomi Bidhendi. 2013. “Hanjār Mādī: Niżām Mudīrīyat Āb dar Iṣfahān Ṣafawī (The Norm of Mādī: Water Management System in Safavid Isfahan)”. Research & Scientific Journal of Architecture and Urban Planning/ Nāma-yi Mi‘mārī wa Shahrsāzī 5/10:141-153.

Encyclopaedia Articles

2023 (forthcoming). “Samarra”. Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif Buzurg Islāmī/ Encyclopaedia Islamica. Edited by Kazem Musavi Bojnurdi, Wilferd Madelung, Farhad Daftary. The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia/ Brill. 

Book Reviews

2023 (forthcoming). Rante, Rocco, Djamal Mirzaakhmedov: The Oasis of Bukhara. Population, Depopulation and Settlement Evolution. Volume 1. Edited by Marcus Milwright, Mariam Rosser-Owen, and Lorenz Korn. Art and Archaeology of ‎the Islamic Word. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2019. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 112.

 

Academic Positions:

Since 2022/10

 

2022/04 – 2022/10‎

 

 

2017/12 – 2021/02

University of Oxford, Khalili Research Centre, Wolfson College Postdoctoral Researcher

 

Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, ‎

Postdoctoral Researcher

 

 ‎University of Vienna, Department of Art History

Doctoral Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

2018/10 – 2019/03

2016/10 – 2017/12

University of Vienna, Department of Art History

University Teaching Assistant at the professorship for Islamic Art History

2015/05 – 2016/07

2014/10 – 2015/01

University of Vienna, Department of Art History

Project Assistant for architectural drawings at the FWF project “Centre and Periphery Islamic Architecture in Ottoman Macedonia, 1383-1520”
safa mahmoudian