This collection features digitized materials from the Timurid Architecture Research Archive, a collection of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT. The archive contains documentation of various architectural monuments dating to the Timurid Period that was created or collected by Dr. Lisa Golombek, Curator Emerita of Islamic art at the Royal Ontario Museum, and Donald Wilber (1907-1997), a scholar of Islamic architectural history who also served as a United States intelligence officer during the 1950s-60s. The materials in this archive include field notes, architectural drawings, and photographs, most created by Golombek during field research for her dissertation. Many of these photographs and drawings appear in The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan1, a 1989 survey of Timurid architecture published by Golombek and Wilber that remains a foundational reference work in the field.
The majority of this archive is not digitized or available online. A complete finding aid of the archive's contents is available via the MIT Libraries' ArchivesSpace. To request access to materials in person or through a virtual consultation, please follow the instructions found on the website of MIT Libraries' Department of Distinctive Collections. Contact akdc@mit.edu with further questions.
1 Lisa Golombek and Donald Newton Wilber, The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan, Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology 46 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1988) ISBN: 0691035873, 9780691035871.