In 2011, the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin celebrated the 100th anniversary of the German excavations of the Islamic-medieval site Samarra. The former Abbasid capital (836-892 A.D.) around 125 km north of Bagdad is one of the largest archaeological ruins in the world and one of the key sites in the field of Islamic art and archaeology. The excavations led by Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre between 1911 and 1913 represent a primary moment in the establishment of the field. Today, a hundred years later, our knowledge on Abbasid art has widened immensely. This volume includes papers given at an international symposium organised by the EHG together with the Museum of Islamic ARt from June 30 to July 02, 2011 to discuss the latest state of research on the former Abbasid city and its impact on Islamic art. Articles touch the history of the excavations, the city of Samarra and its finds as well as other recently studied Abbasid sites.

Volume 1 of the „Contributions to Islamic Art History and Archaeology“ presents a part of the papers from the first two colloquies of the Ernst Herzfeld-Society, 2005 and 2006. They include research based on fieldwork and work relating to art history, epigraphy, and literature. The chronological scope reaches from the early Islamic to the modern period, the geographical range from Andalusia as far as China.

Die Themen von Band 2 der „Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie“ (BIKA) umfassen Architektur, Malerei, Textilkunst, Kleinkunst, Bauforschung und Archäologie. Neben der Analyse einzelner Werke in verschiedenen Regionen islamischer Kunst stehen synthetisierende Beiträge. Geographisch reicht der Band von Spanien über Iran bis Indien und zurück nach Europa; chronologisch von frühislamischer Zeit bis ins 20. Jahrhundert. Jeder Beitrag wird von einer englischsprachigen Zusammenfassung eingeleitet. Insgesamt 160 Abbildungen in Farbe und Schwarz-Weiß – die meisten hier erstmals veröffentlicht – illustrieren den Band.

In 2011, the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin celebrated the 100th anniversary of the German excavations of the Islamic-medieval site Samarra. The former Abbasid capital (836-892 A.D.) around 125 km north of Bagdad is one of the largest archaeological ruins in the world and one of the key sites in the field of Islamic art and archaeology. The excavations led by Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre between 1911 and 1913 represent a primary moment in the establishment of the field. Today, a hundred years later, our knowledge on Abbasid art has widened immensely. This volume includes papers given at an international symposium organised by the EHG together with the Museum of Islamic ARt from June 30 to July 02, 2011 to discuss the latest state of research on the former Abbasid city and its impact on Islamic art. Articles touch the history of the excavations, the city of Samarra and its finds as well as other recently studied Abbasid sites.

Geographically spanning from Spain to Central Asia, the themes included in the fifth volume of Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie encompass architecture, archaeology, and urban history, painting and the arts of the book, restoration, and historiography. While two contributions are concerned with the Early Islamic and Early Medieval periods, the majority of the articles deal with topics from Early Modern and Modern times. Together, they shed light upon a wide range of current research topics and approaches.

The concepts of frontier, boundary, and border, and consequently of spaces and regions they delimit, have left a persistent mark on the perception of geography, whether expounded in premodern Muslim textual sources, or by modern geostrategists. The ten essays in this volume explore diverse aspects of geographic, confessional, political, and theoretical liminality spanning from Early Muslim Arabia to contemporary Islamic art. In addition to art historians and archaeologists, this volume is of interest for students and scholars of Border Studies, as well as Social and Cultural Studies.