Doha - Experts participating in the Second Biennial Symposium on Islamic Arts have called for a return to traditional methods of water conservation and landscaping to address the severe shortage of drinking water in various parts of the world.
The three-day symposium, titled 'Rivers of Paradise - Water in Islamic Art and Culture' will conclude today. The event is hosted by the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUQ).
Mohammed Al Asad, Chairman of Board of Directors of the Centre for Study of the Built Environment in Amman, said people in the Middle East, under the impact of oil wealth and changing lifestyles, have discarded their traditional Islamic water conservation landscapes, though countries in the West are now developing such practices.
Yesterday, he spoke on the topic 'Water scarcity and landscaping in the Islamic World: Contemporary solutions to historical problems', where he presented a contemporary water conserving landscapes project that is being carried out in Jordan, which included gathering, processing, developing and disseminating information on water conserving landscapes.
Massive population growth and increases in ground pollution levels have meant that while demand for fresh water is increasing rapidly, supply sources are falling under the threats of serious environmental degradation.
Integrated sets of solutions have emerged over the past few decades to address the challenges of water scarcity. A few of these relate to landscaping and comprise the practices of Water Conservative Landscapes. Though such practices have been developed in the Western world, they incorporate age-old practices, many of which had been developed and used regularly in the Islamic world, said Asad.
In his presentation on 'the archaeology of urban water systems: the cases of Nafpleio and Nafpaktos in Southern Greece', Marcus Milwright identified significant areas in which archeology has contributed to the study of Islamic water systems. Marcus is Associate Professor of Medieval Islamic Art and Archaeology in the Department of History in Art of the University of Victoria, Canada.
Catherine B Asher, a professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota, spoke on the water traditions in the South Asian landscape. She explored sophisticated traditions of architecture in South Asian countries, associated with water from 2500 BCE, with a special focus on South India.
Perween Hasan, a specialist in architecture of the Indian subcontinent, gave a presentation on water and architecture in Moghal Bengal.
A lecture by Linda Komaroff was titled 'Sip, Dip and Pour; Toward a Typology of water vessels in Islamic Art'. She discussed some of the ways in which we can identify and classify water vessels and the extent to which their function might transcend or be restricted by such distinctions as time, place, material and decoration.
© The Peninsula 2007
