This talk focuses on three tombs in China, two that belong to Muslim royalty and one whose occupants are unknown. The first two, in Nanjing and Dezhou, Shandong province, were built during the reign of the Yongle emperor (r. 1402-1424). The third, in Guyuan, Hebei, almost definitely was constructed during the Yuan dynasty; Ananda, a grandson of Khubilai who converted from Buddhism to Islam, and King George the Ongut have been proposed as occupants. Through architecture, unique convergences of China and Islam in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are proposed.
Nancy C. Steinhardt is Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She is author or co-author of "Chinese Traditional Architecture" (1984), "Chinese Imperial City Planning" (1990), "Liao Architecture" (1997), "Chinese Architecture" (2003), "Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture" (2005), "Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts" (2011), "Chinese Architecture in an Age of Turmoil, 200-600" (2014), "China’s Early Mosques" (2015), "Traditional Chinese Architecture: Twelve Lectures" (2017), and more than 100 scholarly articles or essays. Professor Steinhardt is a recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Institute for Advanced Study, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Getty Foundation, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Social Science Research Council, American Philosophical Society, Graham Foundation for Advanced Study in the Fine Arts, Van Berchem Foundation, and Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art. She is involved in international collaborations in China, Korea, and Japan.