2col   2hi Harar Qur…

Harar Qur’an, Harar, Ethiopia, 1773.

FOR 9/28

‘ISLAM IN AFRICA’ WILL OPEN AT LONDON’S SAM FOGG OCT 9 w/1 cut

avv/gs set 9/19 #712576

LONDON — Sam Fogg will hold a groundbreaking exhibition, “Islam in Africa,” at his gallery at 15d Clifford Street October 9–26.

The exhibition will showcase the diversity and richness of the Islamic art of Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa. The first of its kind in the United Kingdom, the exhibition will include art objects and manuscripts from African Islamic traditions that have been almost entirely overlooked by major collections.

In East Africa, Islam spread along the trade routes that connected the coast of Africa with the Arabian Peninsula and India. Arab merchants established settlements as early as the Tenth Century, which grew into cosmopolitan mercantile states such as Mogadishu, Barawa, Mombasa, Malindi, Kilwa and Zanzibar.

The Sultanate of Zanzibar presided over a lucrative trade in cloves and other African raw goods, particularly ivory.

A wooden panel, inscribed with Qur’anic verses intended to ward off malign influences, by repute came from explorer David Livingstone’s house there. Such panels, as well as carved doors, are a distinctive feature of the architecture of Stonetown, Zanzibar’s capital.

From the early years of the Harari Emirate is an illuminated Qur’an, dated 1773, in its original distinctive Harari binding. Very few such early East African Qur’ans have survived.

Other items from Harari culture include wooden boards inscribed with verses from the Qur’an. Qur’an boards, found across the whole of Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, were used as a means of teaching the Qur’an.

The exhibition includes several manuscripts showing the development of the Western Sudani style through the ages. An early example is an Eighteenth Century copy of the medieval Spanish author Al-Kala’i’s Life of the Prophet.

A further development of the tradition is seen in a costly and pristine Nineteenth Century copy of al-Juzuli’s pilgrimage manual, the Dala’il al-Khayrat. Representing the very culmination of the tradition is an early Twentieth Century printed Qur’an, the large, abstract and very bold patterns of which are the fullest and most colorful expression of Hausa Qur’anic illumination.

The Saharan fringes of the Sudan are represented in the exhibition by a Nineteenth Century Berber minbar (pulpit), probably from the Atlas region.

For additional information, www.samfogg.com or +44 (0) 20-7534 2100.