Lecture (7): Sufi Spaces in Mughal India in honour of Annemarie Schimmel

Recently I have been thinking a great deal about Annemarie Schimmel. In part because I recently bought a local print of The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture, which is not only exceedingly accessible but a true delight to read for, I suspect, academics and the laity alike. And in part because it's quite hard to not think of her when you are taking German classes at a center named after her.

The gardens inside Annemarie-Schimmel-Haus are particularly verdant. Source: the author.

It is therefore quite appropriate then to have a lecture by James L. Wescoat Jr. today entitled "Landscapes of Sufi Space in Mughal Delhi and Lahore." Perhaps even more appropriate given that Lahore has a street named after her.

Lahore: Dr. Schimmel standing next to a road dedicated to her. Source: unknown

The presentation is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Annemarie Schimmel Memorial Lecture series. From their website:

James Wescoat, the Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discusses how Mughal tomb-gardens often sought physical proximity to Sufi shrines in ways that reshaped them in their era, and ours. This presentation explores the evolving spatial relationships between Mughal and Sufi landscapes of Delhi and Lahore—from Humayun's tomb-garden in the Nizamuddin area of Delhi to the Mian Mir tomb-complex of Lahore.