House of Islamic Art and Culture

August 18, 2023 11:57 AM

Bayt Al Fann ("Art House") is a website featuring Islamic art, architecture, food and history, including detailed artist interviews. They have a very active Twitter presence and archive many of those threads, including beautiful Hajj certificates, Kufic script, Ismail al-Jazari, the "father of robotics", paper quilling and Islamic art, ancient manuscripts of Mali and Timbuktu, Turkish ebru marbling, the Middle Eastern roots of the samosa, and mosques in Malaysia, the Philippines, China and ancient Africa as well as mosque ceilings from around the world.

There's so much to see at the site; scroll down on many pages to load more links.

Interviews with poets and writers
Conversations with curators

(My one complaint is that they often don't credit the photographers whose images they use, especially in the Twitter compilations, but they seem to be getting better at that.)

posted by mediareport (5 comments total)

We mustn't leave out their wonderful post about cats in Islam & Muslim culture!
posted by Numenius at 12:24 PM on August 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

lol I was tempted to add that
posted by mediareport at 12:42 PM on August 18, 2023

One of my favourite twitter accounts. If anyone knows of a Mastodon or Fediverse account posting or reposting their stuff as a bot please let me know.
posted by phigmov at 1:29 PM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Some creators I know consider Bayt Al Fann the very worst form of cojntent mill
posted by scruss at 4:11 AM on August 19, 2023

I've gone back and forth on them for a few years, scruss, for sure. Ultimately it was the artist interviews that convinced me they were worth a post. Some of the social media stuff can get a bit cloying, but the 3 women behind the site seem committed to art and artists in a way that puts them above "content mill" status. For me, anyway.
posted by mediareport at 6:08 AM on August 19, 2023