Good evening and welcome to Ressia, the research seminar in Islamic art. Thank you for coming so numerous and I'm very happy to have Mariam Rossero and Anna McSweeney tonight doing a double act. And I will briefly introduce them for those who may not know them very well and then I'll pass over for the seminar. Remember to write your questions or points in the chat and I will then read them out aloud at the end of the presentation. So, Mariam, Mariam Rossero when received her PhD from Oxford University, and the book based on her doctoral thesis has been recently published, open access by Braille in 2021, as articulating the hijab, cultural patronage and political legitimacy in a land loose the the Amirid Residency 970 to 1010 CE. She has been a curator in the Middle Eastern section at the Viennese since 2002. And currently she's the lead investigator for the Viennese project, crafting medieval Spain, the Torrijos ceiling and the global museum, funded by a British Academy, live a huge small project grant, and in collaboration with Anna, Anna McSweeney, and the 3D College Dublin. The ceiling will be re-displayed at Viennese in 2025, and Mariam is also contributing to plans for its display and interpretation. And Anna McSweeney is an alumna of source. She received her MA and PhD in Islamic art at source. And she's now a lecturer in the Department of the History of Arts and Architecture at 3D College Dublin, where her teaching includes a module on the art of Islamic Spain and North Africa, and one on the arts of the book, also used in the collection of the Chastabiti Library. Her publications include a book on the nastried wood and ceiling from the Pertal Palace, entitled From Granada to Berlin, the Alhambra Cupola, also recently published in 2020 by Verlag Kettler. Anna is a co-investigator of the Viennese research project I mentioned before with Mariam. And today, Anna and Mariam will talk to us on an interesting subject that has not received much attention so far, and it's the use of wood in Islamic interiors. Thank you, Anna and Mariam, and over to you now. Thank you very much, Anna, for the introduction. I'm just going to share my screen before we kick off. So we wanted to start by quoting a poem. This building, which embellishes the Alhambra, is home for the man of peace and of war. Fortress that guards a palace, fortress say, will also a happy meeting place. This splendour is shared by a ceiling, floor and four rooms. Marvelous its stuccoes and tiles, but even more prodigious the carpentry of its ceiling. After being assembled, it was lifted precisely to its lofty position. Here, just as in poetry, there are paradigms, antitheses, circumlocutions and inner meanings. The tower shows us the face of Yusuf, like a sign in which all the beauties reach their fulfilment. And the glorious Khazraj, whose works for the good of the faith, are as bright as sunlight. So these verses were written by the Nasseridh court poet Ibn al-Jayab, and are written in plaster on the walls of the Alhambra's tower palace, the Torre de las Cautivas, or the Calahura, built by Yusuf I in 1349. This is the translation given by Jose Miguel Puerta-Vilches in his book, Reading the Alhambra. It celebrates its carpentry ceiling and even refers to how it was constructed by being prefabricated on the ground, before being lifted precisely to its lofty position. Since the ceiling in the Torre de las Cautivas today dates from the 19th century, we're showing you another of the Alhambra's spectacular ceilings in the Palatio de Comares constructed just a year later. For the last couple of years, and Anna for much longer, we've been studying this type of carpentry ceiling through the Crafting Medieval Spain project, which Anna mentioned in the introduction, which is funded by a British Academy and Leave the Hume Trust small project grant. Our focus has been this ceiling in the V&A collection, which comes from the lost palace built after 1492 in the small town of Torrijos, just north of Toledo, by the noble couple Gutierrez de Cardenas and Teresa Enriquez, who were close courtiers of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. The V&A ceiling is one of four ceilings that survived from this palace, which was dismantled in the early decades of the 20th century. The ceilings are displayed in collections in Madrid, the Loire and San Francisco, and the V&A ceiling will soon be re-displayed at V&A East Storehouse, which is a render of what that might look like, which is the new collections and research hub that the V&A is building in Stratford, East London, and which will open to the public in 2025. The ceiling has undergone conservation, and this has provided the opportunity to look closely at it for the first time in about 100 years. And to combine in our research project the different expertises required to study a ceiling like this in order to understand its construction, patronage and historical context, which we've done by assembling an international and interdisciplinary group of collaborators. We're not going to talk in more detail about the project here, as we recently spoke about it at the Islamic Art Circle, but please feel free to ask us small questions about it later. We're more interested in exploring with you this evening is where such a project might go next. The Torijo ceilings are examples of a type of carpentry known in Spanish as carpentaria de lo blanco, meaning white carpentry. The white probably referring to the widespread use of pine wood, which appears whiter than other woods when freshly cut. In Spain, this technique flourished between the late 13th and 16th centuries and was used predominantly to make decorative ceilings that combined Islamic and Northern European styles and techniques. These wooden ceilings, many of which survived today, were made for religious and secular buildings in Muslim, Christian and Jewish contexts across Iberia, and you've got two examples here. They're often considered within the category of Mudecha art, a terminology we've been careful to avoid. As you might know, the Spanish term Mudecha has come to refer to Muslims on the peninsula who lived under Christian rule, following the conquests of Islamic territory. In the 19th century, it was applied to art history and implied that any object made in an Islamic style must have been made by Muslims. More recently, terms such as Mudecha and Moorish have been rejected because they perpetuate an outdated idea that a particular race and religion were central to the design and patronage of these artworks. We do not know the religion of the craftsmen who made these ceilings, so calling them Mudecha or Moorish is at best misleading. Guild regulations from 16th century Granada note the requirement to elect both old and new Christians, i.e. converts to the offices of the guild, which implies that there was a mix of cultural and confessional identities among the carpenters at this time. It is perhaps because these ceilings are made that a wide variety of buildings across religious and geographic boundaries that scholars have found them difficult to classify. And neither fully Islamic nor entirely Spanish, the ceilings tend to fall between the gaps in art historical discussions of the period. The Islamic origins of this carpentry technique were unquestioned for a long time. But more recently, the specialist who's made a career out of studying, restoring and even creating new ceilings in this technique has come to a different conclusion. This is architect Enrique Noire, whose 2020 publication, The Carpentry That Interlaced with My Life, is a kind of memoir charting his career discovering and working with Strapwork Carpentry ceilings in Spain. Leaving aside some of the problematic language he uses, for example, he constantly refers to quotes Islamic invaders. He argues that quotes, these works were not made by mysterious Islamic artisans, but sprang from a deep rooted woodworking technique that already existed in the peninsula long before the Alhambra or the Al-Khazar of Seville were conceived. He states that quotes such a sophisticated carpentry based tradition could not emerge in Islamic territories where wooden gable roofs were and still are practically non-existent. He argues that the ancestors of this tradition of carpentry roofs were raft a pair roofing frames that quotes must have been the habitual roofing in Visigothic Spain with Toledo as the epicenter of this technique. One problem here is that we have no standing evidence of Visigothic examples. Another quote, there is no doubt whatsoever that this could only be done by carpenters already accustomed to the use of the framing set squares, but could never be achieved by a hypothetical carpenter from the east who had never made sloping wooden roofing frames in his country of origin. Though ironically, he elsewhere refers to the first roofing frames of the Karawiyin mosque in Fez. Another quote, the factor that finally convinced me of the northern European origin of this woodworking technique was the control of the entire process of roofing construction by the use of triangular templates in the form of set squares. He states that set squares are unknown in Morocco. Another quote, this type of carpentry is still practiced and where they claim to have inherited it from Al-Andalus, my emphasis. This question about the use of set squares or equivalent tools in Islamic societies is certainly one that we would like to look into more deeply and would welcome your thoughts on this. Maira believes that the quotes new Islamic masters lacked carpenters and that quotes there were no skilled woodworkers from the east. Finally, his overriding argument is that Christian carpenters converted to Islam at the time of the Muslim conquests. And this is how the technique entered Islamic architecture, that it was an indigenous Hispanic technique practiced by the Visigoths. He quotes the authors of these works did not come from the east, but were the heirs of a tradition originating in Toledo, or even came from Toledo itself. He believes the widespread use of this carpentry ceiling in the Alhambra is because quotes the Nasrid monarchs contracted the same carpenters who were supplying the nobility of Toledo or Seville to build the roofing of their palaces, i.e. that the carpenters were Christian. He does not explicitly say so in this book, but the fact that we have very comparable wooden carpentry ceilings in North African mosques is thus because the ceilings would have been made by Andalusi craftsmen, another widespread historiographical assumption that should be addressed and corrected, and that these craftsmen were descended from Christian converts who bought these carpentry skills with them. Not at all want to disparage Enrique Nuero's huge contribution to the technical understanding of these ceilings. And he surely writes that a tradition of roofing frames and set squares and a possible indigenous carpentry tradition based around Toledo is what helped this technique to become widespread in later centuries. But his discussion of Islamic architecture is laden with historiographical issues and outdated notions and assumptions. We have seen this as a provocation to dig deeper into the use of wood in Islamic architecture. And we've given interiors in our title rather than architecture because we want to include large scale furnishings like doors and furniture, like Mihrab's minbars and cupboards, which feature very comparable decoration and also possibly construction methods to the ceilings and may have been made by the same craftsman. So we want to explore what a research project on wood in Islamic interiors would look like. And we're really hoping to crowdsource your comments and feedback. So please don't hold back. So staying with the subject of wooden ceilings for now. It's important to open the question out to the North African context, but this has been beset by problems of access and documentation of the relevant buildings, as well as historiographical prejudices as we've already touched on. But in recent years, great strides forward have been made through the work of Spanish scholars and in particular Antonio al-Magro to document and revisit key monuments in present day Morocco. The most important of these for our discussion today is the Kutubia mosque in Marrakesh. During the building's extension after 1163, four monumental wooden ceilings were incorporated into the roofing of the Kibla wall, alternating with plaster, moccanase vaults. These ceilings were constructed in the simple technique of Pari Nudio, or rafter and collotrus. That seems to characterize the earliest ceilings, but continues to be used alongside more complex ceilings with stalate decoration. In two of the ceilings on either side of the Mihrab, the Almisate, which is the flat central section, is constructed around large eight pointed stars. Very like the motif that becomes so widespread on Spanish ceilings, where it's called a rueda or a wheel, it's seen all over the Torijos ceiling, for example. Alfonso Jiménez-Martín, who's written about these ceilings together with Almagro, has no doubt that they date from the time of the Kutubias extension in 1163, which would make these ceilings some of the earliest surviving and dateable examples. Jiménez also comments on the maturity of the technique used at Kutubia, i.e. that this was an architectural tradition already well developed by the 1160s. The images we're showing you all come from the amazing resource Ataral, the atlas of Almohad architecture, led by Antonio Almagro, which we highly recommend. And you can now also refer to the article The Kutubia Mosque Revisited, published by Almagro and Alfonso Jiménez in the latest issue of Mokarnas. As they point out there, the wooden ceilings of the central nave, I'll just go back quickly to show you what I mean. So these ceilings here are probably much later dating after the 17th century. And another example of wooden furnishing at the Kutubia Mosque was the retractable Maxura, which Almagro has also recently written about and we'll come back to that at the end of the presentation. And of course, on the on the right, the famous minbar commissioned from Corduban Carpenters, which though created in a very different technique, featured designs in complex geometry. Another Almohad Mosque with wooden ceilings is the Kasbah Mosque, also in Marrakesh, founded by the Caliph Almansur in 1185. Some of these ceilings seem to have affinities with those at the Kutubia. And we're very grateful to Inigo Almela for sharing with us not only his knowledge of this building, but also his photographs of the ceilings. And we were very much hoping he was going to be here with us this evening, but unfortunately he hasn't been able to, he's been detained, so I haven't been able to attend. However, in the current state of research, it's not possible to say whether these ceilings date from the 12th century, or could be the result of later interventions by the Sadiens. Important evidence of the existence of wooden ceilings at the Almohad Mosque of Seville has recently been found in the form of two aliferes that were found in excavations in the Mosque's former patio, sorry, in the former Mosque's patio in 2010 and 2016. The construction of this building dates to the 1170s, and eyewitness descriptions tell us that the greater part of the mosque ceilings were made of wood. The prayer hall of this building covered nearly 12,000 meters squared. Anyone who's been to this to Seville Cathedral will be able to comprehend the vastness of this structure. And most of this wood was probably brought from Morocco. The aliferes are one of the many words in the study of these ceilings that it is impossible to translate into English, so included a little diagram which hopefully helps you understand where they are located on these kinds of ceilings. The two aliferes were identified as being made from penis silvestris, more commonly known as Scott's Pine. And the first to be found, which is this one over here, was radiocarbon dated with a 95% probability between the years 995 and 1155. So there can be no date that these Sevillean examples indicated the existence of wooden ceilings in the mosque that date to the Islamic period, and likely followed a model of mosque roofing already established at the Qutubiyah. Let us bear in mind that the earliest datable surviving ceiling of this kind on the Iberian Peninsula is that at the Cathedral of Terwell, which was created in 1261. There's a wider context of wooden ceilings in North Africa, but these have received very little attention. And a closer study is needed before we can fully understand their relationship with Iberian ceilings. For example, the stellate ceiling of the madrasa latrine in Fez, which dates to the 1320s, and is comparable though on a smaller scale to the Qumara ceiling at the Alhambra. And the ceiling of the madrasa but in Naniya also in Fez dates to the 1350s. These madrasas are full of carved wood in different techniques and extensive wooden furnishings, all of which would repay further study. In the Nazrid context, the ceiling of the Quatorial de Santo Domingo in Grenada has been dated to 1283, a date confirmed through dundro chronology. This is only two decades after the earliest surviving quotes Christian example, which has a much simpler Parinodio construction. The Grenada ceiling seems to be the first surviving example with a fully developed eight pointed star design. Noire also says that this is a very mature example and that quotes it is obvious that it had to be constructed by expert carpenters, whether Christians from Toledo or Cordoba, or others who had conserved the traditional techniques based on the use of set squares. So this is something else we might question. But the most spectacular example in the Alhambra is of course the Cuba or domed Hall of Sultan use of the first in the Palace of Comares from 1350, which would become the throne hall of the Catholic Monarchs in 1492. Made from over 8000 individually carved pieces of wood, its inscriptions indicate that it represented the celestial dome of the heavens. But it's important for us to open out this question beyond the Andalusian and migraby context. Another famous wooden ceiling is that spectacular McCarnas vault over the Capella Palatina in Palermo, which can be dated to the 1140s. And it's made from wood that would have been locally available in Sicily. Lev Capetekin and his default thesis argued for separating the origins of the ceiling structure from the origins of its painted decoration. While the paintings have been firmly linked to the Fatimid realm, it is famously argued that a workshop, and it is famously argued that a workshop of Fatimid painters came from Egypt to decorate the ceilings. Capetekin has linked the construction of the McCarnas and the technical details such as the ribbing of its tiny cupolas to a Magraby and Andalusi architectural tradition. He cites contemporary standing examples of McCarnas domes in the Almoravid and Almohad buildings. The Kubbeted Baru de Yen in Marrakesh from 1117, the Great Mosque of Tlemason 1136, Alcaraoui Yen in Fez 1134 to 43, Tinmal 1153 to 4 and the Kutubia. Those McCarnas vaults as we have seen date from the building second phase in the 1160s and alternate with the wooden ceilings. There is also a palatial example of McCarnas painted with scenes from the courtly cycle in the fragments of decoration of Ibn Mardanesh's palace in Murcia. He was the rebel king between 1147 and 1172 who held out against the Almohad takeover. And I'd like to mention here the recently published book by Abigail Krasma Balbale, the Wolf King, Ibn Mardanesh and the construction of power in Al-Andalus. But all of these vaults are made from plaster, not wood, a problem that Capitan does not attempt to resolve. He also highlights that the Capella Palatina ceiling is a unicum and cites other examples of architectural woodwork in Sicilian churches, which are much closer to the Spanish ceilings we've been looking at. The most compelling extant example is the wooden roof of the cathedral at Cefalú. The construction of the church was completed between 1131 and 1148 that continued into the 13th century. And I'm not sure myself of the accepted date of the Cefalú ceiling and I'm hoping that there's somebody in the audience who might be able to clarify that. Since from the mid 12th century, its contemporary with the Almohad examples we discussed earlier, and further supports the idea of an existing North African architectural tradition which was deployed in the Cotabia and also influenced the construction of Norman churches. To acknowledge the use of wooden ceilings in Sicilian and Spanish architecture has not been discussed in connection with each other. A point that Capitan made in his 2013 article, The Daughter of Al-Andalus, and is the result of another disciplinary boundary that it's time to break down. The work of Sicilian architectural woodwork have been studied by Ariel Fine, and I'm hoping that she might be here today to tell us more about her studies and the discussion later. Working outward still further. Of course we have very important examples of carpentry in Fatimid Egypt. There are many things or architectural elements, but in large scale items of furniture, in particular the portable mehrab's made for the tombs of Saida Racaia, datable 1133, and Nafisa, datable 1154. The unique use here, as I understand it, is different from what we see in Spain. The geometric elements are created to interlock from behind without the use of glue or nails, a technique known today as kundikari after the Ottoman word for this technique. And according to architect Uel Sabri, who is working on a project to save this craft from disappearance today, this technique seems to have developed in both Egypt and Anatolia in the 12th century. And of course from Mamluk Egypt, we have fabulous examples of carpentry in the fabrication of mimbars, such as these panels from the mimbar for the Ibn Talun Mosque, made in 1296. We're thinking about this in a Mediterranean context because our specialisms lie here, but we're obviously aware that there is a much wider subject here when we encompass the eastern Islamic lands as well. While woods might have a relatively low status in art historical studies across disciplines, in lands where trees are scarce, it was obviously a status material. Indeed, some of the earliest examples of Islamic art are made from wood. There are many beams from Samara, for example, and also the earliest phase of the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Though these structures seem to have been flat beams, and the woodwork is a foundation for painted or carved decoration, rather than using carpentry to create something decorative in its own right. Another one lovely comparison that we owe to Marcus Milwright. One of the scenes in the painted in the vault of the audience hall of the mid 8th century, a mired bathhouse, Kossaya Amra, shows sawyers using a technique to carve planks and beams from a tree trunk. Another technique was observed in the 19th century by Jane de la Foire in Souza and by Hans Wolf in Iran in the late 1930s. These sawyers were not necessarily making beams for building construction, but the presence of this scene in the vault of at Kossaya Amra invites speculation that it was self referencing its own construction. Although the other painted scenes around it are drawn from late antique representations of labours. Going back to Henry Kenwera's assertion, quoted above, that there were no skilled woodworkers from the east, we think it is safe to say that there were. On the one hand, there is the use of wood, which is obviously widespread in Islamic architecture from its earliest examples. On the other hand, there is the use of carpentry to make specific kinds of objects. And one question that we have is whether there is regional distinctiveness and variation in the carpentry techniques and as a correlative in the geometric techniques used. Is it valid to compare traditions of geometric carpentry in Al-Andalus and Egypt if the techniques used are totally different? Is there something in the geometry itself that is regionally distinctive? I'm not an architect or carpenter, nor do I understand enough about the geometric principles behind the ceiling designs. Is it essential to understand these more technical aspects to see where carpentry traditions might relate to each other? And on that note, I'm going to hand over to Anna. Thanks, Mariam. Can you hear me? Yep. Thank you. Okay, so what we know about carpentry practices and particularly the work of those specialised in Carpinteria de lo Blanco in Medieval Spain comes largely from the later guild documents and manuals. Ordinances from the newly codified guilds in the 16th century, Seville and Granada, classify the different carpenters according to type and status. There were carpenters of agricultural implements, those who made altarpieces and religious sculpture, those who made musical instruments, and those who specialised in Carpinteria de lo Blanco, among whom there were joiners, interlaced carpenters and geometricians. If you could move the next slide. Yeah, thanks, Mariam. Those of the highest status among the Carpinteria de lo Blanco carpenters were those who were capable of constructing the most complex interlaced ceilings. The documents describe how they had to pass an exam, which included being able to make the media naranja or half orange ceiling. And the image you see is of Terrell Cathedral, the previous image was of painters and carpenters in Terrell Cathedral, just generally working in specialised, working with carpentry on the ground. But the next image is of the media naranja ceiling, this special type of ceiling, and this is one of the Torrijos ceilings. The first the importance of geometry that the carpenter who passed the exam to prove he could make these kinds of ceilings was known as El Geómetro or the Geometer. The four Torrijos ceilings are all different, but they include one of these highly complex media naranja ceilings, now in the Archaeological Museum in Madrid. As a result of this complexity, surviving examples are very rare and the Torrijos dome is one of only six to survive. The first geometry in making and the requirement for a master builder, a carpenter, to be skilled in applied geometry is something that's written about at length in a variety of medieval sources. The 14th century Magrubi historian Ibn Khaldun wrote that, quote, carpenter needs a good deal of geometry of all kinds. This is either a general or a specialized knowledge of proportion and measurement in order to bring the forms of things from potentiality into actuality in the proper manner. And for the knowledge of proportions, one must have a course to the geometrician end quote. Dr. Poliu has examined Islamic treatises on applied geometry in her book on the top cover scroll. Many of these treatises sought to use geometry to solve problems that might be encountered by artisans, emphasizing the need for an applied knowledge of science. The writings of 10th century Abbasid philosopher Al Farabi included examples of the application of geometry to carpentry. As on what is needed by the craftsmen from geometrical construction, the Persian mathematician Abolwaf Abuzjani from the 10th century examined the application of geometry to architectural construction such as tiled hemispherical domes. A copy of the Abuzjani construction manual dated 1203 survives in Cairo, this time with a title that includes the tools needed by the carpenter, entitled Book of Joinery on constructions with ruler, compass and set square. We're interested in the relationship then between these treatises and the applied work of Aladifas or master builders as they're known in medieval carpentry. How were they used and to what extent do they describe existing practices? In the Spanish context, a carpentry manual composed in the early 17th century provides a key text for understanding how applied geometry was used in Carpenteria de la Blanca. The author was Diego López Darenas, an architect and master builder who worked in Seville. His carpentry manual, the brief compendium of white carpentry and treatise on master builders, was first published in 1633. Drawing from this long intellectual tradition of writing about geometry and craft in the Islamic world, it was probably condensed from a longer manuscript by the author written in 1619. In it, López Darenas underscores the importance of a knowledge of practical applied geometry to making complex wooden ceilings. And he notes that, quote, the royal regulations of the kingdom of Seville obliged the master builder to be an expert in geometry. It includes highly specialized technical details and drawings. It also uses specialized terms derived from the Arabic, which are still in use today among carpentry specialists. For example, the phrase limas muamres, a technical term for the beams that sit at angles to the ceilings, comes from the Andalusian Arabic term muamar, meaning trimmed or edged. It's interesting to consider how the persistence of these technical terms that derive from Arabic might point to a wider inheritance of carpentry techniques, decorative styles and functions from Islamic contexts. Just like Albus Jani's 10th century book of joinery on constructions with ruler, compass and set square, López Darenas describes the tools used by the master carpenter in the making of ceilings, like those at Torrijos, as the ruler, compass and cartabón. The cartabón is the triangular template made of wood that's similar to the roofers square, the Stanley square used by carpenters today. A set of six cartabones, each fixed at a different angle, were used to measure all the angles used in the design and construction of a ceiling like those in Torrijos. They allow the carpenter to measure the pitch of the ceiling, the angles of the structural beams and to construct the geometric designs and all the shapes needed for its hundreds of parts. And it's this tool, the set square or cartabón, that Enrique Noérez suggests was not familiar to the early medieval carpenters of North Africa, but which, as the Albus Jani treaties clearly states, was in widespread use, at least according to the texts, in Baghdad by the 10th century. While some work has been done on the López Darenas manual, including by Enrique Noérez and by Gloria Chipoliu, we're yet to understand how the practices it describes relate to the wider carpentry practices in Islamic contexts. Were similar sets of cartabones, these set squares, used to make, for example, the Mamluk minbars, were the divisions of labor and the status of carpenters, according to their specialisms, as set out by López Darenas, common to carpenters across North Africa, for example. We're keen to hear about descriptions of medieval working practices of carpenters in Islamic contexts to find out how they might relate to those apparently consistently used in Al-Andalus until the 17th century. One reason why architectural wood has often been ignored by scholarship might be its frequent characterization as a cheap material. Wood and plaster with brick construction were the dominant materials used in North African and Andalusian architecture after the 12th century. These materials, wood plaster and brick, have tended to be framed in the literature as inherently inferior to materials like marble and stone, which perhaps because they were more difficult to carve and transport, and were also features of a European classical architectural tradition, were considered more prestigious and worthy of attention than wood plaster and brick within the art historical scholarship. This question of value is one that's crucial to our understanding of these ceilings and of decorative carpentry more widely. Value can be found in the areas of highly skilled labor attached to making these ceilings, as well as painting, gilding and mounting them. The design, carving, gilding and painting of wood in a strappered ceiling raised its value far beyond that of a plain wooden ceiling. While we don't know what was originally paid for the four ceilings in Torijos, we can get some idea of their cost by reference to contemporary descriptions of other ceilings. Our collaborator in this project, Maria Teresa Cicote, has explored this in her research, revealing that in his 14th century, Encyclopedia Locrestia, Catalan author Francesca Eschimine, described how a gilded wooden ceiling was more expensive than a stone ceiling. Value can also be measured in the reuse and movement of decorative wooden features. Reuse is, of course, a well-known practice. The caba was famously built in 608 from beams reused from a shipwreck. Reused wooden panels can be found in the earliest of contexts. Lopez Pertigniet, who's written a lot about nasrid carpentry, discusses the wooden doors of the monastery of Las Welgas in Burgos, which, as suggested previously, were reused elements from an earlier wooden minbar, possibly from the Almohad period. Much later, our collaborator, Maria Teresa Cicote, has shown how the relocation of ceilings in the Castilian 16th century context was not unusual. She has descriptions of translocated wooden ceilings like that brought from Toledo to the Palacio de la Infantada in Guadalajara, where it was viewed by Emperor Charles V in the 1520s. So these are entire ceilings that were moved from place to place. It's possible that the V&A Torrijos ceiling was made for a different room or even different palace, and then later moved to the Torrijos Palace. So the examination of the ceiling by the conservator at the V&A, Victor Borges, has shown how originally panels of the ceilings that would have linked seamlessly with the next, and you can see that here in the image on the right, are now interrupted by lines of gilded moulding that outline eight sections of the ceiling. It seems that these mouldings were added to hide losses of the ceiling at a point where the sections were joined, which suggests that the ceiling was re-erected. But these mouldings date from very shortly after their ceiling was originally built. So it raises the possibility that the ceiling was moved from one place to another very soon after it was originally made. This salvage and relocation indicates the inherent value and status of this ceiling. And of course we know from the large scale movement of Spanish ceilings in the 19th and early 20th centuries of wooden ceilings that dismantling and re-erecting the ceilings multiple times was both possible and considered worth the time and expense. There's also value in the raw material of wood itself, which was highly prized and it's sale restricted and regulated by the 16th century. It's likely that the flourishing of monumental wooden ceilings and furniture in the 12th to 16th centuries reflects an abundance of wood of high quality and high value in Al Andalus. But by the time the Torrijos ceiling was made, this supply was likely less reliable. We know, for example, that in the City Guild documents of carpenters for Seville and Granada from the 16th century, permission to trade in wood was restricted to designated members of the Carpenters Guild. The kinds of ceilings we've been studying from the Alhambra Coppola to the Torrijos ceilings are made using mostly smaller pieces of wood that are fitted together and constructed in panels. I think you can see that quite well here on this reverse view of one of the Torrijos ceilings, the one that's in Madrid. And these sit on then on a structure of larger supporting beams. The throne hall, as we've said in the Alhambra, is made of over 8000 individually carved pieces of wood. And while we haven't counted those in the Torrijos, they must number in their thousands. This of course allows for greater stress flexibility for the natural expansion and contraction of wood. But it also enables carpenters to specialize and use particular wood species for particular parts, according to the requirements for carving, weight bearing or decorative clarity. We know a little about the kinds of woods that were prized in Nazareth constructions from work done by specialists like López Petíniet and Eduardo Drobacho. Analysis of the Alhambra Coppola seen here on the right from the early 14th century showed that many different types of wood were used in individual ceilings. Atlas cedar was used for the carved polygons and inscription frieze, Mediterranean pine for the moccanas, maple for the pine cone motifs, and poplar for the undecorated framing elements, and fir for the support sections. This was probably common practice. Tests on the Cuartoreal de Santo Domingo, the 13th century Nazareth palace Mariam mentioned earlier, found four different wood types Mediterranean pine, Maritime pine, Portuguese oak and Atlas cedar. Mostly the woods were sourced from the local region. And many of them were native to the area around Morocco around sorry around Granada, but cedar was probably imported from Morocco. It was prized as a lightweight, robust and durable wood that resists decay and can hold finely carved detail. It was used in the inlaid wooden minbars made for the Cotabilla Mosque in Marrakesh in the 12th century. For the city Balhassan Mosque for example in Clemson from 1296, as well as the throne hall of Comares from 1350, and we can see it in many examples from the 13th and early 14th centuries. But it's used the use of cedar dramatically declined after the mid 14th century. It was not found among 81 samples analyzed by López Petínia from the Alhambra dating from the period after 1316. Analysis of wood types has not yet been carried out on the V&A ceiling, but samples of wood from the Torijos ceiling that's in the Legion of Honor in San Francisco were analyzed by the Alab in California in the 1980s and identified as pine and some walnut. The lack of cedar in the Alhambra from the late 14th century may be related to a wider decline in supply of cedar from the forests of North Africa. Atlas cedar is an endemic species from northwest African mountains. Environmental studies by Daniel Abel Shad and colleagues from Granada University among others have documented the decline of the population in the western reef driven by a combination of climate change and human activity. Note that the use of cedar for al-Muad building projects in North Africa and in Al-Andalus likely contributed to a sharp decrease in the Atlas cedar forests in the reef, evident in the data from the period. This environmental impact of the use of wood in monumental constructions in the medieval period is one aspect that we're interested in thinking about in a broader project on wood. Did an overused and subsequent decline in the availability of particular wood types lead to changes in building practices? How are particular wood types valued, sourced and used? Cedar seems to have been replaced largely by high quality pine wood as we see in later ceilings and doors in the Alhambra and other sites from the 14th century. Despite this decline in cedar, the large quantities of wood used in buildings in North Africa and Al-Andalus indicate this abundant supply of high quality wood in the medieval period. It suggests there were well developed trading networks for a variety of types of wood in the region. Marcus Millwright again cites evidence that teak and tropical hardwoods, possibly from East Africa, were imported by sea to the ports of the Persian Gulf and shipped to Baghdad and Samara in the Abbasid period. Wood identification analysis on the Samara beans in the V&A has confirmed that they were made from teak. Documentation then relating to wood trades mostly notes however the shipments of large quantities of wood rather than smaller quantities of specialized woods like cedar. Evidence from the shipbuilding industry, wood trade, survives in the archive of the crown of Aragon for example, documenting the 1344 arrival of a Nasserid boat in Almería from the port of Bades in Morocco with a considerable load of wood, 320 fustas and 230 remos, which refer to different sizes. Leo Africanus as the 15th century Andalusian diplomat Al-Hassan Muhammad Al-Wazan was noted in his autobiographical work how good wood for shipbuilding was available from the mountains around Bades from where it was exported. There's also the considerable quantity of hidden wood necessary in the building projects of this period. Wood was used not only in the visible structures, the decorative ceilings and doors that we see today, but these decorative ceilings like in the Alhambra were covered with wooden roofing structures that protected and supported them. Wooden scaffold was required in large quantities to raise these prefabricated woods. The throne hall of the Comares Palace that you see on the left, one of the most monumental wooden ceilings at 11.3 by 18 meters off the ground, so it's 11 meters squared and 18 meters off the ground, would have required extensive scaffolding to erect, for example. Wood was also used in the making of the plaster molds that were made to make the plaster panels that cover the interior walls of medieval buildings at this time. We would like to understand more about the contemporary value of wood and how it was source-traded and used in the wider medieval context. This brings us then to a question we've been asking about the relationship between these monumental ceiling constructions and other carpentry elements of the period, like doors, minbars, cabinets, chairs and tables, and this is really my final section here, where these made in the same workshops by the same carpenters. We know that the most complex of ceilings, the Mediana Rancha, were overseen by the highest grade of carpenter, El Geometro. But it seems likely that in fitting out an Almohad Mosque or a Nasred Palace, for example, the monumental wooden doors and ceilings, one of which you can see here from the Alhambra again, would have been part of the same job and completed in the same workshop. Wooden furniture primarily survives from the medieval period as mosque furniture, Mihrab's, minbar's, Koranstan's, later freestanding furniture, cabinets, chests and chairs, and fixed architectural furniture, doors, windows, frames and screens. Decoratively, these seem to share many features with the geometric designs of the ceilings. Similar designs are found on doors and minbar's from this period. The geometric designs of the ceilings, which are based on 8, 12 and 16 pointed stars, and use a combination of fathades and lathos in their elements, are also found on wooden doors like these, this of the Salad de las Dos Sermanas of the Alhambra. These use the same system of interlocking dovetail joints as the ceilings. In her study of Nasrud carpentry, Lopeth-Bethinyeth relates the designs of the doors to those of the ceilings. But she argues that the system of construction used on the doors is more complex than those of the ceilings, making their construction more sound and solid, and that's presumably to withstand the movement of the door and the strain it incurs from hanging on a hinge. She suggests that the technique used in doors predates the Nasrud period, that understanding the construction of monumental doors was crucial in the development of this carpentry technique, and that their complex geometry necessitated the work of specialized geometries capable of working to this high level. Minbars, particularly the movable armoured minbars that we saw before, would presumably require the same level of solidity in construction as the doors. In his paper on the retractable Maxora screen of the Kutubia Mosque in Marrakesh that Marion mentioned, Antonio Almagro quotes from a 14th century description of the movable Kutubia minbar and the retractable wooden screen that will be raised for the entrance of the ruler. The master builder is named as Alhaj Jajal Malaki from Malaga, who's documented as having worked on the city of Gibraltar. Despite their use of fine inlay and a mix of materials including metal's bone and ivory, the minbar's doors and other wooden interior architecture seems to draw from the same techniques and styles as the ceilings made in Torichos hundreds of years later. Is their value in considering them together would be the question that I think I'm going to finish on. We have a short video to show you of this the Kutubia screen that Antonio Almagro has uploaded as part of his the article published so we can share the link with that as well. I think Marion's going to set up the short video. It's just it's of the model of the Maxora screen in the Kutubia Mosque. Sorry, I'm just having difficulties finding it again now. Bear with me. Yeah, we'd really like your comments on and feedback on all of this and things we've been thinking about all these questions that we have. Can you see that? Yeah, that's perfect. So it shows the Maxora screens being raised by a system of ropes and pulleys that are actually hidden underneath the floor in front of the Mihrab. And that's these are wooden screens. These were wooden screens. And then the portable minbar wooden minbar. And these are these are all from the extension of around 1163 of the Kutubia Mosque. Which could also be brought out and in hidden from view without people pushing it. I think we just thought this was a fascinating and quite fun video to end on. We don't we don't know where the screens are. I don't think the screens still exist at all, but there's some archaeological evidence for them. But they're described as being made from wood. So it'd be interesting to consider what they originally looked like. So this part of the model is based on what they've excavated. So this is all based on understanding excavations from the Kutubia. We'll see a side angle in a second so you get a better sense of what the kind of mechanism is that's driving this. My cat's decided to join us. It does have a sound to this video, but it's all in Spanish so it's probably easier not to. And the sound isn't great either. I've put the link in the chat so you can also find this on YouTube and watch it again if you like. Do we leave it there, Anna? Yes, I think so. Well, thank you very much. That was really nice to end with that video. Extraordinary. Extraordinary, yes. Thank you very much for this very interesting lecture on a very complex subject. Obviously you've done so much work already and there is a lot of, you know, a lot of sort of areas that would be very interesting for you to continue to look into. So please, audience, write in the chat your points and your questions and if I can sort of start the conversation. I wanted to ask a bit more about the types of wood because Anna has talked about the types of wood. Pinot Silvestre, Maria mentioned the Carpenteria de lo Blanco and I'm wondering whether the Carpenteria de lo Blanco is a term that refers more generally to wood feelings or it refers more generally to carpentry rather than to a specific type of wood because as you mentioned the types of wood were several. And of course we know, I mean, if I remember correctly, the historian Marakushi, the, you know, a native of Marrakech who writes at the end of the 13th, beginning of the 14th century, he lists the woods that were used for the mimba in the Cordoba Mosque, which is now lost. And he, you know, he mentions red and yellow sandalwood and ebony and even Indian wood. So, you know, with the assumption that wood obviously was traded from a number of areas including very far away, which obviously has economic source in economic and trading implications which you refer to. And so I think that I don't know whether you have any further idea on that, but another point that derives from that is about the selection of woods. I mean, so of course the selection of the correct wood is just as important as the carving process.  Yeah, so the question on Carpinteria de lo Blanco and the naming of that, you know, we have the López de Arenas, which is 17th century, which talks about Carpinteria de lo Blanco. And at that time they were using pine largely, so the Torijos ceilings are mostly pine and, you know, of that type. So I think, you know, that phrase Carpinteria de lo Blanco refers to this type of carpentry, but it doesn't, you know, we don't know what it was called earlier on essentially, we don't know what it was called in the 12th century. The selection of woods is really important. I mean that, you know, that description of the types of woods used in the minbar and, you know, the evidence from the minbars and from doors and from, you know, more furniture that uses smaller pieces of wood shows. They were able to source lots of little pieces of ebony for example and bone and ivory and mix it all. But for the ceilings, which needed larger pieces, we have mainly the woods that I was talking that I mentioned, you know, I mean cedar early on and then this use of overwhelming use of different types of pine. But, you know, what I found interesting looking at the Alhambra Coppola wood types, which we know a little bit more about the five different woods, is that they very much chose, you know, exactly what you say, the carpenters know which type of wood to use for which part of the ceiling, which part of the construction. The coppler is a lighter kind of wood, it's less dense, and that's used, you know, very much for the construction behind, so for the supporting elements. And cedar is used for where you want to have certain, you know, sharpness of detail, for example. So yeah, I mean we need to know that's something that we'd love to know more about how much did they specialize in that way. Some of the properties is important. Some of the properties are about repelling insects, aren't they Anna as well I mean you know more about this than I do but choosing things like cedar to make your ceilings out of their kind of naturally insect repellent. So then they have contributed to these ceilings surviving across the centuries as well. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Let's see if there is anything in the chat please write in the chat. And thank you for sharing the Sarah Chaudry, the video. Okay, while we're waiting, I was thinking of another area that I would very much like to know more about. And that is, you know, this, this, it's not really a distinction, it's a combination of tangible and intangible heritage. So you know you've done a lot of work on the physical reality, the techniques, the styles. And, and I wonder whether you will also go into the, the meaning surrounding these works, not just in terms of social context of where they were used and what kind of symbology that could have been within the space and you know the symbology given to the space but also in terms of whether the woods themselves had a property that was symbolic, like it happens in many other cultures. So I think that's something that that last point you made is not something that we've particularly thought about but I mean in Torijos like Anna was discussing that the sort of, it's more to do with the with the polychromy and the gilding of them that makes them such expensive ceilings and then it becomes about kind of showing off your, your wealth and your patronage power, especially to be able to commission the top quality artisans to make a, the hemispherical type of ceiling. And in terms of, I mean going back to Torijos there's lots of other devices that are used in those ceilings that relate to the to the patron specifically so there's not just the ceiling with the sort of eight pointed stars and the geometric decoration but then other many other elements incorporated so they're very they sort of are speaking about the patrons of the palace in that case. But yes I mean that's definitely something that we need to be thinking about as well. Thank you. There is something in the chat Francisco Mamani. Thank you very much for this presentation. Bravo. I have a question maybe I didn't understand it very well you don't agree with the hypothesis that there were only Christian carpenters behind the construction of the ceiling in a landalus. Yes. Anna do you want to say more about it. Well, yeah, you've looked at the, the, the craftsman a bit. Yeah, so this, you know this, we don't really know who, you know, we don't know the religion of the people who made the ceilings, you know, they don't, they're not explicitly said we do know that they're, you know, in the six by the 16th century they're different carpenters were drawn from different religious denominations, but I think we're we're interested in as well in in where those techniques you know geographically where those these techniques and styles might have come from. And, you know whether they were drawn we think from North African area from that from the Islamic context. But they do not their religious affiliation of the carpenters we don't know, you know we don't know but we would definitely wouldn't agree that they were only Christian carpenters because there's no evidence for that. I suppose there's an argument that some of them might have been carpenters working in Castile, but we're not, you know, going to make, you know, past judgments on what religion they had. But I think you know the no areas hypothesis is, is that this is an indigenous Hispanic tradition, and that there is no, you know it doesn't come it's not you know what as people have thought before that it was that something that developed and not I mean it's not that it came into the Netherlands with the, with the conquest in the century I mean it seems like it from from all the evidence at the moment it seems like something that developed in North Africa in the 12th century. And that, you know, then there's a merging of technologies and aesthetics on the Iberian Peninsula so it could have met an indigenous Hispanic carpentry tradition but that's not to say that it was not also. There was not also an Islamic tradition of it, if that makes sense. And I think you've demonstrated quite well the, you know, the spread the widespread technical skills of carpentry and a vast area of the Islamic world. And we could have gone much further but obviously in the interest of time. Nadim, it's amazing that this type of ceiling traveled to Latin America, however, it never came to Egypt seems it was a one way transition. What do you mean by a one way transition. Well, just, I'm just wondering what he was. Yeah, so it was. Yeah, I mean it came to Latin America as a result of, you know, the Spanish conquests and in the new world. So that is, it's quite as a kind of logical transition in that case. There are I mean you'd know better than me Adam that you know there are examples of wooden ceilings in Egypt that we'd like to understand better. Actually, I wanted to ask you about that as well. So maybe maybe he'd be able to shed some I mean, you know, we're aware that there are these other many other things that we you know we haven't had the time yet to kind of do all this research and we're hoping that we're not necessarily the ones to do it either you know that it would just be wonderful to have a kind of big collaborative project that brings together. I think. The technical issue. I mentioned that they aimed to call for an interdisciplinary project. Absolutely yes and you know all the different regions. Tom Nixon. Thanks for the fabulous talk. It's really wonderful how far you've been able to take this project. You touched briefly on overlaps between wooden and plaster moccano ceilings. The media naranja ceilings also have parallels in stone terracotta in the dome of the Chapel of San Jeronimo in Toledo. Do you have much evidence for exchange of skills between workers in different media. Do you imagine your project will focus principally on wood alone. That's, that's a great question Tom we had a fantastic visit to that chapel in Toledo. It's an imitation media naranja wooden ceiling cupola made of what we think is terracotta and then glazed and luster painted tiles imitating wood and it's the terracotta is left to look as if it's wood it's made in the 15th century, probably by a merchant Manises as far or from Valencia as far as I remember. And that overlap is is really evident and really important I think for a study of ceilings this because they you know plaster moccanas and plaster itself always seems to occur alongside wooden ceilings whether that's in the walls or in moccanas leading up to it or in complimentary ceilings as you saw in the Cotabia mosque. Yeah we think that's really important. We haven't gone that far yet on the on the on the project at all. I think we are thinking about wood in particular in this project focusing on wood. And at least that's the area that we think is is we're working on now but I think exchange of skills we haven't seen that much evidence for but haven't really been looking out for it. So what you find I think are you know you get these moccanas ceilings in plaster complemented by these wooden painted and decorated and carved ceilings so they're not the same imitating each other. But I think definitely they would have worked alongside each other in the same buildings in the same structures. Thank you. Claire Anderson. Thank you for both. Thank you both for a great presentation. Has the engineering treaties of al-Muradi useful at all for your thinking about the applied geometry and craftsman knowledge. I've never heard of the engineering treatise of al-Muradi so please tell us more. Yes. Claire that will be on our reading list. And I should emphasize that we've just pulled together the things that we've been thinking about. And this is you know this isn't necessarily even the beginning of it is just you know we all feedback now for where to go. I would like to ask a question. Is it also common for artisans to use nails to fix the smaller wooden panels when creating wooden furniture. For members of wooden doors is it more often to use nails to fix the small wooden panels. And the doors then the alambra doors don't have nails so they use a particular because you know the ceilings tend to have nails because of the gravity you know to avoid them falling off where they would with the especially changes in temperature. But the door is and you know as far as I know the min bars don't originally have nails. I think when you look at them now in images often there are nails but they're put in later and they're very visible these big nails that are put in later. But we do have decorative nails. So we went to when we were in Toledo in October we went to the Convent of Santa Isabel which I showed a picture of the ceiling. We were taken inside the refectory where there's this amazing. I mean we didn't really have time to bring it into the talk today but there's a door. There are other doors as well which I think look a bit more like the Dos Hermanas doors from the alhambra but there are in this case it was a it was a mashrabiya door. Which may be from the 15th century the foundation of that convent and that's got decorative nails on it so part of the sort of it's it's got mashrabiya it's got carving it's gone in inlay in different resins and it's got these decorative nails so I think it kind of depends on the technique that's being used on a particular object. Sure. Thank you. Nina Carter. Thank you for the talk. Extremely beautiful. Are there any other architectural features in the Torrijos site which appropriated from neighboring of Sarawak cultures. If it's a matter of getting exotic feature as a one of probably more interested in contracting foreign craftsmen if they're interested in building a cosmopolitan culture. More interesting training local craftsmen craftsmen obviously do prefer to work with woods they know. So the Torrijos site doesn't exist anymore. But we have, you know, good documentation that we've been able to piece together so we've got some photographic documentation and we know where other and drawn engravings from the 19th century and a good plan and we've got examples of plaster and stone elements that have been removed from the palace and are now in different nearby locations. And it all conforms very much to a very sort of what was becoming a standardized vocabulary for noble castilian palace construction in the 14th and 15th centuries and we think there's a good argument that can be made that the architects who are working on buildings for the Catholic Monarchs in Toledo at a more or less contemporary period were also working on the Torrijos Palace.  Probably Miné meant building a cosmopolitan culture so where the craftsmen that came from abroad? Not that we have any evidence for. In the case of Torrijos they were local, I mean the architects that we know about who are working for the Catholic Monarchs are local or they come from Flanders, you know, they're coming from northern Europe. We have that, Doc, that in the archives of the Alhambra they refer to a master from Torrijos in fact so there's probably also people working there who came from Torrijos as well. Thank you. Blair Winter, does your research shed light on the construction of the domes in the Moscow in Kordova? They are considered quite innovative and I wonder if your research shows a continuity going back in time? We haven't looked at those in this project. They're stone and 10th century, so we're not thinking about those at the moment. Rose Walker, a brilliant session. Thank you. Have you looked at the carved beams and corbels in Samiland in Segovia every century? Stay, John, from the plain painted beams. I'm not sure they help you but have always thought that their forms and motifs relate to Andalusia examples, even if in some cases already used in the north. Thank you. We'll have a look at that. Hamza Vargas, a fascinating presentation. My question is about the geometric patterns. Is there a tradition of interpreting the patterns used? Any spiritual meaning behind the use of an eight-fold or 12-fold rosette? Not that it's been that we are definitely aware of. When you remember the poem that we quoted from the Alhambra earlier, it was in the marvels of the making of this carpentry and of the ceramics and the plaster work. The poet really talks about that, so not about a spiritual meaning behind them. I know some people would argue that there is some kind of sacred geometry behind them. But in the documentation that we've read about them were descriptions of them or poems about these ceilings we haven't found or the geometry we haven't found that. I mean, not that we, I mean, I think any interpretation that we put on that would be our own interpretation. I mean, I'd like to read something that is from the period about that kind of interpretation, but I'm not aware of anything that talks about that kind of symbolism. The example, you know, the only example that sort of talks about its own symbolism is the Komare ceiling, isn't it, where the inscriptions refer to, you know, they seem to refer to that ceiling as representing the sort of seven heavens. Right. Thank you very much. The piece of concern is the carpentry workshops. Might it be possible that there were different specialities in every workshop? It's possible. There's just so little information about the workshops. Not enough about workshops. Yeah, I mean, what do the guilds, there's multiple specialisms in the sort of guild regulations aren't there? There's four or five specialisms in the guilds of Ghanad and Seville that I've read and I think, you know, that probably reflects the specialisms that there were, you know, going back as well, but you know, before the 16th century. So that specialisms of carpentry is now workshops physically we don't know, you know, whether they worked alongside each other or not. So I have to imagine some kind of collaboration between the people who painted and decorated the ceilings and those who made the structure of the ceilings. So referring to previous, Adam says you have core-built ceilings from Egypt. And then also referring to a previous question on Muradi's circa 13th century, early on the Luzi engineering treaties, I'll send you the details. Sarah Chowder, many thanks, Mariam and Anna, for this interesting talk just some thoughts regarding the patterns and whether they could be regional. This is true as some patterns have been used much more extensively in some parts of the Islamic world than others. Based on my observations in the Iberian Peninsula, the rosette motif in 8 and 16 point form features extensively. But what I found further interesting is that there is less adherence to geometric construction rules and tiling than would be seen in more advanced Islamic artistic practice. This the Alhambra is one of the most advanced though. This lack is most notably in the ceiling that are attributed to the Mudeja sites. There could be several reasons for this but two aspects I would suggest could be that in trying to comply with structural aspects using established tradition for constructing vaulted ceilings perhaps a compromise was made in the quality of the geometry. Secondly, it's a very advanced geometry that would need to be consulted to design geometry that could work in a 3D form. This therefore brings more questions to the light regarding those exams the geometers were required to do. I'd be very pleased to see more of those. Thanks so much Sarah that's really I mean that's really helpful to think about. As you know the geometry is one aspect of these that I feel like I need to understand more. But I don't think we know anything about the exams do we know that we just know that they have to pass through these different levels of qualification in order to reach the level of master craftsman master carpenter. I mean it's one thing, you know, drawing out these designs on a flat page, but it's absolutely another thing as, as, you know, people will know grading them in 3D and cutting the, you know, drawing and cutting the angles on the wood in for a 3D structure. And maybe that's why there are only six of these many and a lot of ceilings left, you know, or survive that we have. They're they're extraordinary geometrical instructions incredible. There's an article by Noéry and two other colleagues about the, the Mediana Racha ceiling from Torijos, which is in Madrid because unusually in that case you can view it from behind that you know this sort of reverse that we showed a picture of. And so they've tried to reconstruct the kind of method in the geometrical approach to making that ceiling and they, they do say if I understand it correctly that there's a point where the geometry has to be slightly fudged in order to get it to fit into the into the hemispherical form. So I think it's, you know, there's principles but then there's how that's applied in practice when, when the ceilings being built. Olga Bush. Thank you and I'm Mariam for the great presentation of your far reaching project. I wonder if the new research there's another ceilings in the churches of Granada together with the 16th century carpenters manuals can contribute further to the construction and types of wood. I mean there are hundreds and hundreds of ceilings artists and other ceilings across the Iberian Peninsula. And in terms of types of wood I guess you know somebody has to agree for that analysis to happen. I remember they've done a lot of analysis of the wood because they've been doing such extensive conservation projects on you know on the building over the last few decades but I wonder whether that's the kind of normal process if a church is going to be conserved whether it would be habitual to take a sample for wood identification, which I imagine is not the case. That would be nice. But yeah. Thank you. Anderson says the Dalmouradi actually is likely 11th century but surviving copies 13th century. Interesting. I'm also relating to the question, the connections between wood and ceilings made of different materials says Ibn Marsook also describes a complex ceiling that he says looks like wood but are in fact made in plaster and brick. That's amazing. I'd love to hear more about that Tom. Jane. Thank you so much for this fantastic presentation you're raising such important question I look forward to hearing how this research develops. I agree that there is a useful connection with the Sicilian material, both in the extent ceilings and in architectural furnishings. You might consider looking at the documentation of the 12th 13th century Messina cathedral ceiling, which although it does not survive there are some extra fragmentary panels in documentation of its medieval appearance and construction. Would you consider any of the Frequilla material like much of the Egyptian material. The construction techniques are different but may still be fruitful. Yes, of course. Yes, that would be fantastic. I'm wondering if Ariel is able to clarify the date of the Chaffaloo ceiling.  Do you know Al Paio's Udorel work. He has discussed how mathematicians taught artisans the geometry from the 10th century in the Eastern context. I would imagine a similar approach pertained to Al-Andalus. No, don't know it. He's actually it's been he's been really helpful. I've been reading trying to understand what the geometries were up to. So yeah, thank you. I think it does apply definitely in Al-Andalus. Thank you very much. Can I have one final question and then I promise we close because you must be absolutely. My final question is about whether any of these ceilings are modular structures in the sense that they could be done in pieces on the floor. All of them. That's how they're constructed. Because the Median Arangha image, beautiful image that you showed the inside of the inside, you know, the other view. It looks like a unicorn, a unicorn in that it doesn't look made of pieces, you know, in a modular form. I think some of that has to do with later restorations. Right. Some of the bits that have fallen out of the ceiling and then have been replaced. I mean, we know in the V&A ceiling from Torijos that they're quite there seem to have been interventions into it at different times that, you know, we can't necessarily date but and also from some of the pictures of the palace just before it was dismantled. It's not necessarily in a good condition. So I think some of that. So they were all modular ceilings. But where, you know, in that rare case where you can see the reverse that's maybe slightly disguised by the fact that it's now, you know, it's a permanent installation in the museum and it's been restored. So it's got these then, you know, it's a patchwork. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, thank you so much, Anna and Mariam for this very interesting session and for answering all these questions. What shall we necessarily answer? Thank you everybody for all the comments and further thoughts please get in touch with us because we'd love to keep talking about this subject. We're giving you a virtual applause and thank you very much again and have a good evening. Thank you very much. Good luck for the proceeding. Well, I'm sure you'll know you'll hear what we start thinking about in the in the chat. Thanks everybody. Okay, thank you. Bye bye.


Welcome back to The Breakfast here on PLOS TV Africa. Final conversation this morning is on World Workplace Safety and Health. It's a happy world day for safety and health at work. The annual day is observed on the 28th of April and raises awareness on the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases. Here's a look at what it's all about. Annual World Day for Safety and Health at Work is observed on the 28th of April to raise awareness on the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases. It is a campaign intended to focus attention on creating and promoting a safety and health culture that can help reduce the number of work-related deaths and injuries. The International Labour Organization started observing the day in 2003 in the face of rising incidences of workplace accidents and diseases. It is estimated that 500 million people suffer from such hazards annually and 2.3 million succumb to the accidents and work-related illnesses. That is an average of 6,000 deaths every day. This year, the World Day for Safety and Health at Work focuses on leveraging the elements of an occupational safety and health system as set out in the promotional framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention 2006. The International Labour Organization will take this opportunity to raise awareness and stimulate dialogue on the importance of creating and investing in resilience, occupational safety and health systems. It will also be drawing on both regional and country examples in mitigating and preventing the spread of COVID-19 at the workplace. In Nigeria, there are more than 164,000 confirmed cases of the disease. This indicates an urgent need for companies to observe and follow the requirements for the World Day for Safety and Health at Work. Each of us is responsible for stopping deaths and injuries at work. The government is responsible for providing the infrastructure, laws and services necessary to ensure that workers remain safe and that enterprises flourish. This includes the development of a national policy and program. It also includes a system of inspection to enforce compliance with occupational safety and health legislation. Employers are responsible for ensuring that the work environment is safe and healthy. Workers are responsible for their own protection and that of others. It's also their responsibility to know their rights and participate in the implementation of preventive measures. Work hard, observe all COVID-19 safety precautions and stay safe. Happy World Day for Safety and Health at Work. Happy World Day for Safety and Health at Work and we're wishing that to all Nigerians and everyone who's watching us this morning. We'll say good morning to our guest Michael Ogul, his HR expert. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much and good morning. Morning to you. This is not a very familiar discussion around Nigerian workplaces. Mostly because a lot of Nigerians are used to just whatever it is that they see, they take at the office. So let's start with talking about how much we lack in our Nigerian work environment. How much do Nigerian workers lack with regards to health and safety and the respect for Nigerian workplaces? Okay, thank you so much for that question. And I would say that the awareness, like you rightly said, it's on an average basis. So if you take a workplace that has about 20 employees, for example, maybe about five to eight of them will be aware of safety principles, safety measures, and safety procedures. However, we have a lot of manufacturing companies in Nigeria that are very safety conscious and very safety aware. For example, you have Nigerian bottling company PLC. You have several bottling company PLC. Where before you enter these factories, you are giving a safety briefing, and then you are giving personal protective equipment before you enter the factory. However, we also have a couple of safety guidelines enshrined in our labor and employment laws, like the Factory Act, the Employee Compensation Act, just to mention a few. Okay. Well, I've been to a couple of those factories, like you mentioned, and yes, I agree that those things do exist. But one thing that I also believe is lacking, besides these companies, they all have international head office branches where I believe those safety rules and regulations trickle down to their offices here in Nigeria. Besides that, Nigerians are aware, really, of what a safe working environment should be like. Do Nigerians demand enough of those safe working environments? Thank you so much. And to be very honest, I will say that very few Nigerians are aware of their rights in terms of safety. That is not to say that they cannot demand for a safe working environment, but because their awareness is low, a lot of them cannot make those demands on their employers. And when the introduction was reeled out about the World Health Safety Day, as enshrined by the ILO, you would realize that COVID-19 has been classified as an occupational disease in the recent reports on occupational safety and health as released by the ILO. So their awareness is very low. However, both government employers and HR practitioners and even safety professionals have a lot of work to do to carry this awareness and let people know that they have a right to a safe working environment. All right, Mr Ogul, I want us to, you know, break this down for the layman to understand. While we're saying that Nigerian workers and even workers all over the world have their rights to health and safety at work, what exactly do we mean? Could you help us break this down into, you know, the basics? So what would it mean for there to be health and safety at work? Okay, thank you so much. Let's start from our local laws. The Niger Labor Act puts it that the employer has a duty to provide a safe working environment. What that means is that the environment must be safe. The tools that the employer uses to work does not expose them to hazard risk. You know, also the employer must put in place insurance, you know, policies that will ensure that if there is a workplace accident, such employee who is involved in an accident must be taken care of. Also, there is the duty on the employer to ensure that there is continuous training, continuous enlightenment around safety rules, safety procedures, and finally, the provision of personal protective equipment. These are just some of the basics. All right, and go back to when you spoke about COVID-19, because it obviously opened up a lot of conversations about the safety of health workers, and of course has changed, you know, I believe a lot of the way that we work here in Nigeria Inclusive has also opened up the space for remote working and for people to be able to work from home. And so how would you say that, you know, the Nigerian workspace has been able to adapt to have a safer working environment in the face of a pandemic? Thank you so much for that question. And so when we look at the COVID-19 pandemic, it happened on all of us in Nigeria. Even globally, there was no playbook for any company to adapt. So most of the things that we began to do as employers and employees were things that we did as we learned to adapt. However, let me put it on record that a lot of employers began to change their mode of working and they adapted almost immediately. So I can tell you some of my colleagues who work in other companies have rotational shifts. So it's not everyone that comes to work every day. And for those who are on site, social distancing has been observed. They are giving personal protective equipment like nose mask. And for those who work in factories, they are giving protective gloves and all of that. So a lot of organizations really adapted. If we take a scale of one to 10, we can say eight out of every 10 organizations has adapted. Even some of the traditional organizations who said remote working is impossible. I've had to use technology to make their work more efficient and effective. So you mentioned a bit earlier in our conversation, some laws we have in Nigeria that provides for health and safety of Nigerian workers. Well, in terms of how it applies in the practical world, how would you rate the level of compliance to these laws, especially by Nigerian employers, to their staff? Okay, thank you for that question. And I would rate the level of compliance a five out of a 10. The reason is because safety is a worldwide phenomenon, regardless of what the primary mode of business the organization is involved in. So I've been to a lot of factories and some of them observe safety regulations. But if you go to other companies who are not involved in manufacturing, they barely have safety protocols. So the level of compliance is a five out of 10. Can it be better? Yes. Can Nigerians, what kind of things can Nigerians sue their employers for? In what ways would you say an Nigerian can take advantage of the labor laws and seek justice if he feels like his life was threatened in the workplace or his safety was threatened in the workplace? Can you give us examples? Okay, one of the examples I would like to cite is in the Workman's Compensation Act, which is now the Employee Compensation Act revised 2010, there's what we call mental stress or mental duress.  So that's one of the examples enshrined in our laws. Of course, there are also other things the employee can sue for, workplace accidents that happen on site. And then also accidents that happen when the employee is on his way to work. So these are some examples of cases where an employee can ask for compensation or go to court. So duress. Yes. I took a look at the Employee Compensation for Workplace Injury in Nigeria and legal remedies. So indeed, I was really surprised to see that an employee can actually sue a company if they don't do this. They're actually entitled to compensation if they get an accident on their way to work, on their way to get lunch, if they've been put under mental stress. But I want to really ask about the applicability of these laws. Because in a situation where an employer would dare to tell an employee, this month we're going to pay all of you half salaries and you can do nothing about it, what really can an employee do about that? So that's a very dicey question. But let me also let you know that the National Industrial Court of Nigeria, which is the Superior Court of Recony, has actually passed judgments on issues that you have raised in this question. There have been awards of people who had proven cases of mental duress. There have also been cases of people who have been compensated for accidents and all of that. Now coming to the issue of salary cuts, an employer cannot just cut salaries arbitrarily or unilaterally. They need to engage their employees to say, this is what is happening in the business, what would you suggest we do? Because there is a contract of employment and that contract of employment dictates what happens and how the employment relationship proceeds. So if the employer wants a salary cut, they need to engage their employees. So that's the way forward. Lastly for me, can an employee seek compensation if he or she is sexually assaulted in the workplace and the company doesn't protect them or anything like that? How do these laws protect employees from sexual harassment and assault? Yes, so when we go back to the ILO Convention that was referenced when the introduction was read out, Nigeria is a signatory to the ILO and so a lot of the ILO conventions have been ratified by Nigeria and the National Industrial Court, which is the Court of Superior Recony, has been empowered to import international best practices when it comes to determining cases around sexual harassment, victimization, bullying, retaliation and all of that. So yes, if an employee has proof, such an individual can seek redress at the National Industrial Court of Nigeria. All right, so Mr Ogul, basically the summary of what we said today is that Nigerians or workers even globally have a right to their health and safety at the workplace and that they even need to go step forward to research and find out what their rights are. I mean they need to know what they are entitled to, what compensation they deserve and all of that and also importance for them to seek redress in the court of law when their rights are breached. I mean that's basically what we're saying, isn't it Mr Ogul? Yes, please. All right, fantastic. Thank you very much for your time, you're a human resource expert. Thanks for speaking to us today. Thank you so much for having me. All right, so Wednesday, April 28th is the World Day for Workplace Health and Safety, read up on the laws, you know what you're entitled to in the workplace.  Yes, mental stress.  How many people can even complain?  So there's a lot, you know, that Nigerians need to learn to demand a safer work environment and stress, man, Plus TV Africa needs to unstress me. Anyway, thanks a lot for, for, for staying with us all through this Wednesday morning. It's been a very interesting time and we hope that you enjoyed it. If you missed out on any of our conversations this morning, quickly join us on our social media platforms at Plus TV Africa, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel at Plus TV Africa. Yes, thank you very much for keeping it to date with us. I am Annette Felix. And I am Osao Ghe Ogboa. See you at nine.


Welcome to the Tomato Seed Savers Club. At this plot here, we have over 136 varieties of tomatoes that we are saving. One thing about the tomato, the male and the female parts are within the blossoms, so the bees and the pollinators do not cross pollinate, where like with many of the crops like squash or cucumbers, the bee will fly from one flower to the next flower and cross pollinate. We have 10 varieties, and each of the varieties is 24 inches apart, and there's 48 inches between each variety, so we have 10 rows of 10, and then if we look down this row, basically all of the stakes are 24 inches apart, and on these we might have like four or five in a row, or we might have up to ten in a row. So each of our varieties is picked when it has four to eight tomatoes on the vine, so Dan marks each of the stakes that have like six to eight tomatoes on. On Tuesdays and then on Thursdays, we gather up those tomatoes, and usually we have like Dan and Randy will be doing the picking to make sure that all of the tomatoes match the variety, and so if there's all of a sudden there's big tomatoes and there's a little one in there, then what we would do is we will put like a red tape around it, and the red tape basically means that it's not one of our chosen, and then volunteers can pick these and take these home. And then what we do is, so this is a good example, so today Tomato Gathers will put the piece of tape on the box, and then they will pick these tomatoes. So this one here, this is Olina Ukrainian, and definitely one of my favorite tomatoes. So this, you can see that these tomatoes grow up to like a pound, pound and a half each. Many of the seed savers save the flesh, so we have a seed saver that basically dehydrates, so all she does is slices the tomato, takes the seeds out and takes the slices home to put them on her dehydrator. We have a couple juicers. The juicers basically will slice the tomato in half, take it home and run it through the processor, and normally with the juicer you can leave the skins on, because that's where the bulk of the nutrition is.  So basically our seed savers are in here, they're collecting each of the varieties, and now Ginny, she dehydrates the tomato, so basically what she's doing is just the tomato slices, Joan is extracting the seeds, and you can notice as we had talked about the tag definitely follows the tomato all the way through the process. So once they fill the cup up, they put it in, we use Styrofoam because Styrofoam can be reused, also if you use like a paper cup it will start leaking, and then what I do is I have a box that has partitions, and this particular box is like a wine box, basically I cut it in half so it's got the perfect partitions. The other thing with the fermentation process, the fermentation process does is a little smelly, so if you definitely want to, what we will do is put them in plastic totes and leave them in our garden so we don't have that problem. You definitely don't want to put them in your basement, because then all of a sudden you'll have little fruit flies that will also come. So we save the seeds from each of the varieties like three times. So then as Dan picks the variety he puts like an X on the steak, and once it has three Xs then he puts that red tag on the steak so we know that it's one that we can share with our volunteers. So the tomato seed basically has a gel coat that covers the seed, Mother Nature has basically designed this, so if a tomato would fall off in the fall it would not germinate until the spring. The rain, the snow would basically remove that gel coat, so what we do is we basically put it in a cup and it needs to be in the, and you can see there's like scum on the top. So basically you need to let it do the fermentation process like five to ten days, and then what we would actually do is, and you know that the seed still has that label on it, we'll take that label, we'll put it on our cup, and then what we're going to do is we're going to throw that in there, and then what we do is we'll add water, and you will notice like all of the scum floats to the top, and as we wait, you know maybe like 30 seconds all of the good seeds go to the bottom, and then what we will do is we will pour that top layer off, and you can see the seeds when they're starting to come, and then we will continue to do that process, and normally it takes probably like three or four times before the water runs clear, and part of what is floating to the top is the gel that did cover the seeds and then also maybe some of the pulp that was left in the tomatoes as you did it. You definitely, when you do it in the cup, you want to make sure that you have some tomato juice. If it's just sitting on the bottom, it'll basically dry out and it'll be hard to take off, and plus the fermentation process will not take place, and you can see the seeds are floating to the bottom, and the debris is sort of staying at the top, and you can see like it's getting clearer and clearer as each time that we do it. So then our last part of the process will be using a strainer. The key is to get them switched up a little bit so that when you pour it, everything comes out. The other thing you want to definitely check your strainer, so if there's any seeds that were left over from last time, because you definitely don't want to cross-taminate, and then what I normally do is I, and what we found is with the paper plate, it's sort of like if it's windy out, it's not going to blow away, and then just remembering that we take that tag and we move it onto the plate, and now what I will do is put this in a dry space, and then like every two to three days, basically I will move the seeds around as they dry, now when the seeds are 100% dry, what we will do is we'll then move them into like an envelope, and part of the process that tag is coming along with us, and that blue tag will be on here, and then in the winter time when I have spare time, then I'll label each one so they're easy to identify, so we have 136 varieties, and we have some of them are the NDSU varieties that Dr. Yeager started back like in 1913, also up to like Neil Holland, Dr. Bull, the other thing we're doing is we have all of the different dwarf tomatoes that we're experimenting with, and then also a lot of the historic varieties for like Shumway and some of those seed places, the other thing is like one of Jan's favorites, he's into the midget tomatoes, so we have lots of those little small tomatoes, and then also I am more into like European tomatoes, so like the German and Bulgarian and those types of tomatoes, so each one of us sort of adds a different flavor to our seed plot, so the Tomato Seed Sabers Club, so this is our third year, so this year we have 136 varieties that we will be saving, the first year we saved 100, the second year we basically we planted 50 of our best, and then 50 additional new ones, so at the end of this year we'll have 250 varieties, so basically the benefit of the Seed Sabers members is they get up to 20 different varieties that they can choose from each year for their own personal gardens, the other thing is as you saw inside, they are saving the flesh, and the other thing is with all of the tomatoes that are tagged, or the red tagged, they get to share all those too.


Thousands of years ago, the invention of the wheel changed the way we lived and traded. Today, air suspension similarly impacts how we organise our transport. Your air suspension system gives your trailer strength and stability when it's loaded, flexibility and a low centre of gravity when it's not. But what is it exactly and how does it work? The air suspension system is mounted onto the chassis with fixed suspension support. On the other side of the axle, we find the air suspension bellows. When these bellows receive air pressure, the trailer moves up. Usually a trailer suspension consists of more than one axle. These axles are all connected, so they carry exactly the same amount of weight. Does it look like your trailer slopes towards the back? Don't worry, the weight is still evenly distributed. The air suspension system acts as our first loading point. This point is the theoretical centre of the trident, or in other words, the average location between the axles. Our second loading point is the kingpin, or the coupling between the truck and the trailer. Unlike the kingpin, the air suspension is flexible. By lifting the last axle, you shift the load point towards the front, which helps you to distribute the weight in your trailer. By lifting the first axle, you shift the loading point to the rear, which redistributes some of the weight towards the front. This saves your tyres and brake pads when your trailer is empty and gives you more traction when you're loaded. Are you ready for takeoff?


Yeah, so obviously when everything sort of hit and the league shut down and I was in Sydney for a little while and then went back to Scotland with my family, that's sort of where they're based and just spent time with my son and really just spent some family time and yeah it's hard obviously physically it's impossible really to keep fit in the hotel room. The other club did well and sent me in some weights and stuff to keep on track but there's only so much you can do just sitting in the hotel room but Coxy's finding that out now but yeah I'm just enjoying the fresh air at the moment, just seeing different people and speaking to different boys but yeah I think training today will be a little bit of running which it always is in a pre-season sort of atmosphere but I think it's pretty simple, we've got five games to go in the season to make the finals to push up as high as we can in the league you can't get incentivised for that and you shouldn't be the club like Western Sydney you know so for us it's just about finishing off where we were under the new manager and the way we were playing we were starting to put some performances together and with that and turn some results so for us it's just about getting back to that level as quick as possible and massive carrot for us at the end of the road is finals and you know taking this club where it should be. I don't think there's a limit on this team I think in terms of one-off games and big game experience I don't think anyone in our in our dressing rooms two-phased about we've got plenty of boys that have won the whole thing before plenty of boys that have been at the top of the league bottom of the league so we do have experience in in the a-league and in terms of one-off games anything can happen and I think we've shown that we have a tendency to rise for the bigger games it's now just a case of getting that more consistent and you know if we can get five good results then I don't think anyone will be wanting to play this come final stop.