The 6th century Byzantine marvel, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, may be returning to its orgins as a place of worship by once again becoming a mosque. The former church is now a museum.

For eight years, the vast collections of Islamic art at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has been unavailable to the public, but now visitors can enjoy the collection as never before. Holland Cotter of the New York Times has a review.

Everyone knows that the First Crusade began with a call from Pope Urban II to free Jerusalem from the Muslims. That is, everyone but British historian Peter Frankopan, whose new book, The First Crusade: the Call from the East, offers a different explanation.

Discoveries continue to be unearthed at the Perperikon archaeological site in Bulgaria. The latest is the tomb of a 14th century Ottoman conqueror.

The harbor at Yavneh-Yam in Israel has been an important port since the Roman era, but now researchers think it was also "one of the final strongholds of Early Islamic power in the region."

In his 2007 dissertation for the University of Nottingham, Norman and Anglo-Norman Participation in the Iberian Reconquista c.1018 – c.1248, Lucas Villegas-Aristizabal considers the contribution of the Normans, especially Crusaders, in the Christianizing of the Iberian Peninsula.

Elizabeth Lapina of Durham University in Great Britain reports that she is seeking papers and proposals for the upcoming publication, The Crusades and Visual Culture. The submission deadline is December 1, 2011.

For ten years, archaeologists have been excavating the Islamic convent/fortress near Aljezur, Portugal. recent discoveries include "a mosque, 21 burials and a funerary head stone with an Arabic inscription," all of which have added to the impressive site.

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland has begun a project to digitize its collection of Islamic manuscripts. A gallery of images, including covers and bindings, is available on the museum's website.

Undoubtedly, one of the greatest places of worship in history is the Aya Sofya, also known as Hagia Sophia or “Church of the Holy Wisdom.” Located in İstanbul, the church is visited by over two million tourists a year. Terry Richardson of Today's Zaman offers a history. (photo)

A medieval Islamic necropolis, containing over 200 human remains, has been discovered in the southern Portuguese city of Beja during renovation of a high school.

A 500-year-old, handwritten copy of the Koran, owned by the University of Manchester's John Rylands Library, has been scheduled to be digitized and available online. The manuscript is the size of a large-screen television, and it is too fragile to be displayed. (photos)

Central Minnesota is the home of Hill Museum at St. John's Abbey, an unlikely site for the world's largest collection of historic religious manuscripts. Ray Suarez of PBS Newshour interviews Father Columba Stewart, director of the museum. (video)

Scholars have debated the existence of the Prophet Muhammad, but Petra Sijpesteijn, professor of Arabic language and culture at Leiden University, believes proof exists on Egyptian papyrus manuscripts.

In the 8th century, the caliphs of Cordoba, Spain constructed the magnificent great mosque. After their conquest, 13th century Christians rechristened the building a cathedral. Now the two cultures have begun to clash again over tourist signs.

In 2007, Rita J. King and Joshua Fouts collaborated to create Al-Andalus, a virtual Alhambra, on Second Life, in order to explore the concept of Convivencia, the "Spanish term for the harmonious 'living together' of Muslims, Christians and Jews in the southern Iberian Peninsula during the Islamic caliphat." (photos)

Now through August 8, 2010, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts will host Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam, an exhibit that "focuses on some of the most important Sufi ideas and practices that found expression through the arts of the Islamic world."

A team of scholars at Germany’s Berlin-Brandenberg Academy of Sciences is about to complete the first phase of the Corpus Coranicum, a 20 year project to create "a central repository of imagery, information, and analysis about the Muslim holy book."

Archaeologists working on a site near the village of Yikpabongo in the western African country of Ghana have discovered dozens of clay figures depicting people and animals dating from the 7th to 13th centuries. They believe the artifacts are evidence of a pre-Islamic society.

From December 8, 2009 to May 3, 2010, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University will host Crossing Borders: Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting-place of Cultures, "which tells the story of how Jews, Christians and Muslims have together contributed to the development of the book as an object of great cultural importance."

Experts have long held that the Islamic religion did not reach into southeast Asia until the 13th century, but new evidence found near Ache, Indonesia, may dispute that claim.

On its website, BBC America has posted a series of videos on the Freer and Sackler Galleries exhibit Falnama: Behind the Book of Omens, the exhibit, which runs through January 24, 2010. The exhibit focuses on "a group of rare and unusual manuscripts that were once used to explore the unknown through divination in 16th- and 17th-century Iran and Turkey."

University of Minnesota professor Susan Noakes has received a US$70,000 grant for two years for a project entitled “Globalization of the Middle Ages.” The research will be funded by the university's Imagine Fund.

In 1864, the Imperal Library of Russia acquired the "collection of ancient Kufic Qur'ans on parchment bought from Mme Desnoyer, heiress of Arabist Marcel who was among the members of the learned French expedition to Egypt equipped by Bonapart," a magnificent set of about 2000 parchment leaves in Arabic, illuminated in full color and gold.

A new study shows that some Lebanese men carry genes traceable to Western Europe, a heritage, say researchers, from Crusaders who established settlements and castles in the country in the 11th through 13th centuries.

The Pergamon Museum in Berlin has signed a long-term agreement to become the home of the Keir Collection of over 1,500 pieces of priceless Islamic art. The pieces were collected over the past fifty years by Hungarian-born property developer, Edmund de Unger. Upon his death, the collection will become the property of the museum.

Researchers and lovers of the Alhambra, the 14th century palace in Castile, Spain, have long puzzled and marveled at the Arabic inscriptions which cover the walls and arches of the building, wondering "What are these walls telling me?" Now Juan Castilla, from the School of Arabic Studies at Spain's Higher Scientific Research Council, has produced a video which claims to translate 3,116 of more than 10,000 inscriptions carved around the building.

Ottoman architect Koca Mi’mar Sinan Aga , usually referred to as Sinan, was born on April 15, 1489. His innovative approach was to transform the Ottoman civic and religious architecture of the Ottoman classical period.

500 years after the Inquisition expelled many Moors from Spain, DNA proves that their "genetic legacy" is still strong, according to Professor Mark Jobling, of the University of Leicester.

A 7th century inscription in stone by an Arabic traveler may help solve a mystery about the Qur'an pondered by scholars for centuries: Why was the text seemingly written without diacritical marks?