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el taller 2025 presents: Madinat Al-Zahra exhibition at ISAW

February 28, 2025 | 10:00 AM | ISAW

Dear friends and colleagues,

Please join us in New York on Friday, February 28th at 10:00AM for our second event of 2025, a tour of the Madinat Al-Zahra exhibition at ISAW. The tour will take place at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) (15 E 84th St, New York, NY) and will be facilitated by our colleague Abigail Balbale. This event is free and open to the public. Please register at this link to attend.

The exhibition explores how the Umayyad family, ruling from their capital Madinat al-Zahra (936–1013 CE) in Cordoba, Spain, transformed the Iberian Peninsula into a bustling hub for scholars, artists, and diplomats from Baghdad to Byzantium. The Umayyad’s desire to express their power, or al-mulk, led them to forge a thriving cosmopolitan society with international tastes in luxury goods, unique architectural styles that blended Islamic and Classical traditions, and a scientific curiosity of the universe.

This exhibition is curated by Antonio Vallejo Triano, director of the Conjunto Arqueológico Madinat al-Zahra, and Eduardo Manzano Moreno, Research Professor at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid.

The loans are generously granted from four Spanish museums (Conjunto Arqueológico Madinat al-Zahra, Museo Arqueológico y Etnológico de Córdoba, Museo de Jaén, and Museo Arqueológico Municipal de Jerez de la Frontera) and four international institutions (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the American Numismatic Society, and the Hispanic Society Museum & Library).

Keep an eye out for more details on our upcoming events. Look out for future emails or visit wp.nyu.edu/eltaller for further information. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].

¡Hasta pronto!


Sandra Baena Velázquez

On behalf of the coordinating committee

Abigail Balbale
Jordana Mendelson
Sarah Pearce
Víctor Sierra Matute
Ameya Tripathi

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