Nasser Rabbat, the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. His interests include Islamic architecture, urban history, heritage studies, Arab history, contemporary Islamic art, and post-colonial criticism.
Professor Rabbat has published numerous articles and several books on topics ranging from Mamluk architecture to Antique Syria, 19th century Cairo, Orientalism, and urbicide. His most recent books are Taqiy al-Din al-Maqrizi: Wijdan al-Tarikh al-Masri (2024);Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project (2023); Nasser Rabbat: Critical Encounters (2023); and ‘Imarat al-Mudun al-Mayyita (The Architecture of the Dead Cities) (2018). He is currently editing a book on the cultural history of Syria, tentatively entitled, Syria: The Land Where Cultures Met, and writing a history of Mamluk Cairo.
Prof. Rabbat worked as an architect in Los Angeles and Damascus and taught at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich; École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris; and NYUAD, UAE. He held several research appointments in Cambridge MA, Princeton, Los Angeles, Cairo, Granada, Rome, Paris, Doha, Bonn, and Florence. He regularly contributes to several Arabic newspapers and consults with international design firms on projects in the Islamic World. Professor Rabbat served as a member of the 2019 and the 2022 Aga Khan Award for Architecture Steering Committees.
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