Sanctity Elusive and Manifest: The Nilometer at al-Rawda Island and its Cosmological Entanglements

Heba Mostafa received her doctorate from Cambridge University’s Department of Architecture in 2012, where she also taught courses on Islamic art and architecture. She previously held positions at the American University in Cairo and the Arab Academy for Science and Technology. She holds a B.Sc. in Architectural Engineering from Cairo University (2001) and an MA in Islamic Art and Architecture (2006) from the American University in Cairo. Between 2012 and 2014 she was the Sultan Post Doctoral Teaching Fellow/ Visiting Assistant Professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Art History at the University of California, Berkeley, in the areas of History of Islamic Art, Architecture, and Urbanism. Between 2015–16 she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence where she explored the role of narrative in shaping sacred space in early Islam. Between 2014–17 she was Assistant Professor of Islamic Art, Architecture and Urbanism at the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas.

Current Research 

Heba Mostafa’s research explores the development of Islamic architecture during the seventh and eighth centuries with an emphasis on the interaction of the political and religious in the mosque, palace, and shrine. Since 2021, she has been the recipient of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (Modalities of Nature Veneration in Medieval Islam) which explores the natural and primordial roots of nature veneration in Medieval Islam, working to embed nature guardianship as intrinsic to Islamic cultural identity through an exploration of Cairene urbanism and Nilotic ritual practice. A central focus of her research is the river island of al-Rawda and its ninth century Nilometer.