Profile

Fatih Tarhan is a doctoral student with a focus on medieval art of the Islamic Middle East, especially from Anatolia and the Levant. He is particularly interested in art productions which developed in-between the designations of identity, in particular the intercultural transfer of Byzantium and the Outremer with the Islamic world. As an advocate for visual culture studies, he is also interested in theology and Islamic visuality.

Tarhan holds a BA in art history of Europe and America from the Freie Univsersität, Berlin and an MA in history of art and architecture of the Islamic Middle East and Arabic from SOAS, University of London. In his MA dissertation, he focused on the Konya city gate’s spolia program of the Rum Seljuk sultan ‘Ala al-Din Kayqubad, demonstrating a newly introduced spolia concept to Anatolia which set new standards for artisanship for what followed afterwards in the realms to the west of the Rum Seljuk state.

The art historical journey already started prior to his B.A. studies at the Academy of Arts, Berlin, where Tarhan pursued archival work with the art collection of the Academy. After his B.A. he worked in several museums, institutions, as well as in the Gallery EIGEN+ART before turning towards academia again. He expresses his gratitude for the support of the Stanley J. Seeger ’52 Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University.