Walid Akef

Walid Akef is currently completing his PhD dissertation in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. He specializes in the architectural history of the pre-modern Mediterranean world, with a focus on North Africa, southern Italy, and Iberia. His research examines periurban and suburban landscapes of power, particularly the villa-like estates that proliferated in the western Islamic world before their re-emergence in Renaissance Italy. His broader interests include the use of art for political propaganda, cultural exchanges across the Mediterranean basin, and the historiography of Islamic art in English, Arabic, and Spanish intellectual circles.

Walid received his BA in Islamic Archaeology from Ain Shams University (Cairo, 2008), an MA in Art History from the University of Granada (2015), and an MA in Muslim Cultures from the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations in London (2019). He has taught as a teaching assistant at Ain Shams University and at Harvard University, and has published in Arabic, Spanish, and English in both regional and international journals. His research has been supported by the Aga Khan Program at Harvard, Villa I Tatti in Florence, the Center for African Studies and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC.

Research Areas

• Islamic Art and Architecture
• Mediterranean Art

Publications

• “Vanished Murals in Mamluk Cairo: Crusades, Chivalry, and Mediterranean Entanglements,”
  Forthcoming.
• Review of “José Tito Rojo, Los primeros jardines de la Alhambra (1238-1314): Una hipótesis paisajística, Discurso pronunciado por Electo Ilmo. Sr. D. José Tito Rojo en el acto de su recepción académica el 30 de noviembre de 2023 y contestación del Ilmo. Sr. D. Antonio Almagro Gorbea (Granada: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de Nuestra Señora de las Angustias de
  Granada, 2023), 100 pages.” Forthcoming in the Bulletin critique des Annales islamologiques 39 (2026): 210–11. (in Arabic)
• “Architecture of Triumph, Jihad, and Mediterranean dialogue in the Alhambra. An Analytical Study of the House of Paintings and its Mural. Part II,” Muqarnas 41 (2024): 3–78.
• Arabic Translation of Doris Behrens-Abouseif, “Sicily, The Missing Link in the Evolution of Cairene Architecture,” in Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk Eras, eds. U.Vermeulen and D. De Smet (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 285–312. Published on: https://harvard.academia.edu/WalidAkef
• “Architecture of Triumph, Jihad, and Mediterranean dialogue in the Alhambra. An Analytical Study of the House of Paintings and its Mural. Part I,” Muqarnas 40 (2023): 69–102.
• Co-authored with Íñigo Almela, “Una nueva traducción del capítulo 157 del Kitāb Al-filāḥa de Ibn Luyūn”, Al-Qantara 4, no. 1 (2021): e02 (en español)
• Review of: “Vivir el Islam en tiempos de pandemia (Experiencing Islam in Times of the Pandemic), Casa Árabe [Soundcloud Channel], Madrid and Cordoba, Spain, May 27-June 16, 2020,” International Journal of Islamic Architecture 10 (2) (2021): 511–13 (https://doi.org/10.1386/ijia_00059_5)
• “The Andalusian Domes. Types, Origins and Characteristics (القباب الأندلسية: أنواعها وأصولها ومميزاتها ٩٢-٨٩٧/ ٧١١-١٤٩٢),” Annals of the Arts and Social Sciences, Kuwait University, Monograph 539, Vol. 40 (2020) (Book in Arabic)
• “¿Cómo se llamaban los edificios andalusíes? La evolución denominativa de los palacios de
  Comares y de los Leones en la Alhambra”, Candil 15 (2015): 291–348. (en español)