Dr. Miriam Kühn ist Kuratorin am Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin. Sie studierte in Bamberg, Paris und Bonn. Ihr Forschungsschwerpunkt ist die mamlukische Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte.Dr Noha Abou-Khatwa is Adjunct Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Her PhD is from the University of Toronto. Prior to her PhD she started and directed projects for the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation.PD Dr. Gül Sen habilitierte sich an der Universität Bonn und erhielt Venia Legendi für das Fach Islamwissenschaft. Derzeit ist sie als Vertretungsprofessorin für Islamwissenschaft an der Universität Heidelberg tätig.Yehoshua Frenkel is Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Haifa. His research interests embrace popular culture, Islamic etiquette, communal practices, social history, and legal discourse in Middle and Late Caliphate Egypt and Syria (1055-1517).Prof Dr Bethany J. Walker is Research Professor of Mamluk Studies at the University of Bonn and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology. As a historically-trained archaeologist, she directs several field projects in Jordan and Israel.Dr Abdelkader Al Ghouz is an intellectual and social historian of the Islamicate world. Currently, he is the publication manager for the Cluster of Excellence "Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies" at the University of Bonn.

This edited volume represents the research results of two international conferences organized and sponsored by the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg: "Environmental Approaches in Pre-Modern Middle Eastern Studies" and "Material Culture Methods in the Middle Islamic Periods".A groundbreaking work in material culture methods

The work consists of three parts, which correspond to the themes Environmental History and Material Culture Studies and a third which bridges the gap between the two approaches (Practice and Knowledge Transfer). The present papers cover a wide range of such topics as urban pollution, local perceptions of weather, rural estate economy, Sufi understandings of nature and the body and mind, houses and socialization, text and gardens, local know-how and interdependence in medieval Syrian agriculture, crop selection and the medieval agricultural economy etc.

This edited volume represents the research results of two international conferences organized and sponsored by the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg: "Environmental Approaches in Pre-Modern Middle Eastern Studies" and "Material Culture Methods in the Middle Islamic Periods". The following work consists of three parts, which correspond to the themes of the aforementioned conferences (Contributions to Environmental History and Material Culture Studies) and a third which bridges the gap between the two approaches (Practice and Knowledge Transfer). The present contributions cover a wide range of such topics as urban pollution, local perceptions of weather, rural estate economy, Sufi understandings of nature and the body and mind, houses and socialization, text and gardens, local know-how and interdependence in medieval Syrian agriculture, crop selection and the medieval agricultural economy.