Many of the artefacts we see today in the ‘Ancient Near East’ collections of European and American museums were purchased in the late 19th and early 20th century from dealers who specialised in smuggling archaeological artefacts to Europe from Baghdad.
The diaries of steamship officer and artefact trader Joseph Svoboda reveal both the personal and political sides of archeological trading in the late 19th t early 20th centuries.
A contemporary revision of the still prevalent narrative of the ‘Golden Age-Decline-Termination’ of the Islamic World. This examination of intellectual history highlights new and emerging figures in an attempt decolonise the history of Islamic Thought.
