VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents a Special Lecture: The Four Rivers of Paradise: Gardens in Muslim Contexts, Sunday, Sep 26, 2010 2:00 PM, at the Caroline Wiess Law Building. Presented by Dr. Azim Nanji, Senior Associate Director, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University.

Jannah—the Arabic word for garden—is used in the Qur´an for paradise. The word is also used to refer to the setting for the primordial act by which humans were created. Jannah, the garden, thus functions as both part of the story of Creation and as the theater in which the initial human drama unfolds.

The idea of the return to paradise, the garden, which is the promise and aspiration of the believer, has long spurred human imagination and creativity to create gardens as part of the landscape inhabited by human beings on earth. In this richly illustrated lecture, Dr. Azim Nanji will portray how this creativity has been expressed in the gardens of Muslim societies, across time and space, particularly through the gardens of the Alhambra in Spain (pictured) and the Shalimar Gardens built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in Lahore, Pakistan.

This program is generously sponsored by His Highness Prince Aga Khan Shia Imami Ismaili Council for the Southwestern United States. Additional promotional support is provided by the Friends of the Arts of the Islamic World at the MFAH, and the Society of Iranian American Women for Education.

Admission to this program is open to the public and free with general museum admission. General museum admission is free for museum members and for members of cosponsor groups. 

A reception to meet the speaker follows the program.