Join us for the second seminar paper of 2021, part of our ongoing series co-supported by the Institute of Historical Research and organised in collaboration with the Oxford Architectural History Seminar. For more information on the series click here. Soumyen Bandyopadhyay’s paper will provide an overview of the evolution of the port town of Muscat and the diversity of its religious architecture owing to the town’s cosmopolitan make up.
This talk will focus on the evolution of the coastal town of Muscat, the capital of Oman in the Arabian Peninsula, between the fifteenth and the early-twentieth centuries. It will take a long view of the town’s evolution from a small settlement within the kingdom of Hormuz and its expansion under the Portuguese, to emerge as a key port within the Western Indian Ocean region. Following the Omani ejection of this formidable colonial power in the mid-sixteenth century, the movement of people from the Interior increasingly begins to shape the destiny of the city, to which the late-seventeenth century travelogue of Engelbert Kaempfer stands witness. It brings about a landward focus – the city gradually turns away from the sea, which has a significant impact on Muscat’s urban form. In the early-twentieth century, we see the consolidation of settlements extra muros, following the setting up of the Muscat Levy Corps, the transformation of agricultural land once supplying fresh produce and water to seafaring vessels into pleasure gardens, and the building of the first paved road to connect Muttrah with Muscat. The mediaeval cosmopolitanism displayed by port towns such as Muscat also brought in diverse ethnic and religious influences. The talk will tell also the story of the many influences that shaped Muscat’s religious architecture over the past centuries. The impact of various Islamic denominations and associated ethnicities – the Sunni-Baluchi, Shia’i-Luwatiyyah, Sunni-Wahabbis, as well as the Ibadi-Omanis of the Interior, all projected their influences on Muscat’s mosque architecture
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay is the Head of School and the Sir James Stirling Chair in Architecture at the Liverpool School of Architecture (LSA), having previously held professorial positions at the Manchester School of Architecture (MSA) and Nottingham Trent University. He directs the Centre for the Study of Architecture and Cultural Heritage of India, Arabia and the Maghreb (ArCHIAM, www.archiam.co.uk), an interdisciplinary forum with research projects in Oman, Qatar, Morocco and India. More recently ArCHIAM, working with the Qatar National Library, has developed a major digital archive on Gulf architecture and urbanism, as well as an online encyclopaedia, with a view to it becoming the world’s largest digital archive on this area of study. Bandyopadhyay has extensive experience of architectural practice in India and the Middle East and has undertaken advisory and consultancy work in urban development, regeneration, architectural and urban design, and conservation. In addition to his published works in journals, he is also the author of Site and Composition (Routledge, 2016) and Manah: Omani Oasis, Arabian Legacy (Liverpool University Press, 2011) and co-editor of The Territories of Identity (Routledge, 2013), The Humanities in Architectural Design (Routledge 2010) and Thinking Practice (Black Dog 2007).
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