The Fatimids and Nile Ceremonies with Heba Mostafa

Date: Thu, May 10, 2018 01:00PM - Thu, May 10, 2018 02:00PM
Price: Free with Museum admission

This talk will explore the relationships between Egypt and its life source, the River Nile. Mostafa discusses the river’s sacred role as the focus of veneration ceremonies.

The Nile’s annual flood lies at the crux of a self-evidently critical cycle in Egyptian life. As a conduit of divine grace, the Nile ensured Egypt’s prosperity in no uncertain terms. The mandate to govern Egypt was (and still is) contingent upon this critical responsibility to gauge, control and otherwise manage this relationship between Egypt and its life source. Veneration of the Nile manifested in Fatimid Egypt in complex and intertwined ways that relied on the performance of rituals and ceremonies to guarantee an ample flood. These ceremonies enshrined critical symbolic mediation, connecting divine beneficence with Egypt’s prosperity via the grace of the ruler. This talk will explore these relationships by considering the role of the Nile as a sacralizing agent and the focus of veneration ceremonies, centered on the river island of al-Rawda in Cairo and the Nilometer located on its southern tip.

Heba Mostafa is Assistant Professor of Islamic art and architecture at the History of Art–Graduate Department of Art at the University of Toronto. She received her doctorate from Cambridge University’s Department of Architecture in 2012, and holds both a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering from Cairo University (2001) and a Master’s degree in Islamic Art and Architecture (2006) from the American University in Cairo. Her research centres on Medieval Islamic architecture and urban history with a focus on the Umayyad period, as well as Greater Syria and Egypt in the Islamic period.