Simon O'Meara: The Kaaba: Islamic architecture at year zero

This presentation examines the exclusion of the Kaaba from the canon of Islamic art and architecture. Assessing the building historically, functionally, and aesthetically, the paper returns it to the start of Islamic art and architecture, year zero.

Simon O'Meara

1990 BA (Hons); Department of Art History, University of Manchester; 1992 MA., Department of Art History, University of Chicago; 2004 PhD., Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Leeds (UK), Dissertation: "An Architectural Investigation of Marinid and Wattasid Fez Medina (674-961/1276-1554) in terms of Gender, Legend, and Law".

1989-90 Northwest Arts Council, U.K.: regional grant for "Eurocentrism and Art" programme; 1991-93 University of Chicago Unendowed Scholarship; 1998-2000 British Academy Postgraduate Studentship; 2004 "Honourable Mention" for PhD dissertation in the "Leigh Douglas Memorial Dissertation Prize"; 2006 American University of Kuwait "Completion Grant for monograph Space and Muslim Urban Life"; 2006 Invited participant on the Kompetenzzentrum Orient-Okzident Mainz (KOOM) Master's Seminar, "The Islamic Paradigm: On the Relationship between the Social Sciences and Islamic Studies"; January 2006 Assistant Professor of the History of Art, American University of Kuwait; 2007 American University of Kuwait "Initiation Grant" for research project "Spatial language in the Qur'an and medieval Sufism"; 2008 "Honourable Mention" for monograph "Space and Muslim Urban Life in The British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize in Middle Eastern Studies" (administered by BRISMES, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies); 2009 Visiting Fellow at The Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College, June-July; since 2010 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut.