Umberto Bongianino is principally interested in the architecture and material culture of the Islamic Mediterranean between the 10th and the 15th centuries. His studies have focused on a number of topics, including the Islamic components of Norman Sicilian art, ceramic production and trade in Fatimid Egypt and Syria, Fatimid architecture and archaeology in Cairo, Tunisia, and Libya (Ajdabiya), and the history of Islamic calligraphy and epigraphy in the pre-modern period. His doctoral research concentrated on the arts of the book and manuscript culture in the Maghrib and al-Andalus, between the 10th and the 13th centuries. That resulted in his first monograph, titled The Manuscript Tradition of the Islamic West: Maghribī Round Scripts and the Andalusī Identity (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). His current research focuses on the calligraphic traditions of later periods, the visual culture of the late medieval and early modern Maghrib as discussed in contemporary Arabic sources, and Moroccan epigraphic textiles from the nineteenth century.

Source: University of Oxford