András J. Riedlmayer, 1947-2026
"But if you really want to make a librarian mad, burn down a library."

András Riedlmayer, Bibliographer and Director at the Documentation Center of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture in Harvard’s Fine Arts Library for 35 years, passed away on 9 February 2026. A polyglot with an encyclopedic mind, he was generous with his time and expertise, helping many scholars of Islamic art and architecture navigate the extensive resources of the Harvard Libraries. He has also been important to the development of this digital library, a contribution we celebrate in this month’s Archnet update. 

  • András Riedlmayer -Authority Record
    He fled his homeland at the age of 9, was Bibliographer and Director at the Documentation Center of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard for 35 years, and testified in international war crimes tribunals regarding the destruction of cultural heritage in the Balkans

    András Riedlmayer was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1947. His family immigrated to the United States following the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, settling in Chicago where he studied history at the University of Chicago. He was a Fulbright Scholar in the Middle East and Balkans as a Fulbright Scholar. He then went on to study Ottoman History and Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and to pursue a Master’s in Library and Information Science at Simmons College. From 1985 until his retirement at the end of 2020, he was Bibliographer and Director at the Documentation Center of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture in Harvard’s Fine Arts Library where his mastery of multiple languages, keen intellect, and generosity of spirit were appreciated by the many scholar he helped guide through users through North America’s largest collection of research materials on Islamic art, architecture, and archaeology. 


    He was a past president of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association; served on the board of the Islamic Manuscripts Association, and as an officer of the Middle East Librarians Association (MELA). In 2018, MELA honored him with the David H. Partington Award for excellence in the field of Middle East librarianship and scholarship, and in 2022, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Middle East Medievalists (MEM), an international, professional non-profit association of scholars interested in the study of the medieval Middle East.


    In the 1990s, he began documenting the systematic destruction of libraries and other cultural heritage in the wars following the breakup of Yugoslavia and organizing postwar assistance to cultural institutions in the region. In 2002, he appeared as an expert witness before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), testifying on the subject of cultural heritage destruction during the trial of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Since then, he has testified in nine cases before the ICTY, including the trials of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić and his military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladić. He also testified in the genocide case brought by Bosnia-Herzegovina against Serbia in the International Court of Justice. The archive based on his fieldwork for the ICTY is held by the University of Connecticut.


    He passed away on 9 February 2020.


    Sources:


    “2018 DAVID H. PARTINGTON AWARD.” MELA Notes, no. 92 (2019): 28–29. https://www-jstor-org.libproxy.mit.edu/stable/26923565.


    Aida, Gradascevic. In Memoriam: András Riedlmayer | Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute. February 11, 2026. https://humanrights.uconn.edu/memoriamandrasriedlmayer/, archived at: https://perma.cc/PW56-G2HQ.


    Aida, Gradascevic. The Andras Riedlmayer Collection | Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute. March 1, 2023. https://humanrights.uconn.edu/icty-digital-archive/the-andras-riedlmayer-collection-2/, archived at: https://perma.cc/2375-A9J2.


    BHAAAS. “BHAAAS | A Life Devoted to Truth: András Riedlmayer, Honorary Member of BHAAAS and Witness to Cultural Destruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Has Passed Away.” Accessed March 17, 2026. https://www.bhaaas.org/en/a-life-devoted-to-truth-andras-riedlmayer-honorary-member-of-bhaaas-and-witness-to-cultural-destruction-in-bosnia-and-herzegovina-has-passed-away, archived at: https://perma.cc/6QHX-HMW7


    Dewan, Rachel. “USCBS Remembers András Riedlmayer (1947-2026).” US Committee of the Blue Shield, February 12, 2026. https://uscbs.org/uscbs-remembers-andras-riedlmayer, archived at: https://perma.cc/6DBA-N85V.


    MEM Lifetime Achievement Award. (n.d.). Middleeastmedievalists.Com. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://www.middleeastmedievalists.com/lifetime-achievement-award/, archived at https://perma.cc/6Q5P-3J3J.


    MemoriTree. “András Riedlmayer Obituary - Cambridge, Massachusetts,...” Accessed March 17, 2026. https://memoritree.com/memorial/andr-s-j-riedlmayer.


    Necipoğlu, Gülru. “In Memoriam: András Riedlmayer (1947–2026).” Academic Program Website. Harvard AKPIA | Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Harvard University, February 10, 2026. https://agakhan.fas.harvard.edu/harvard-akpia, archived at https://perma.cc/ESK4-VMJK.


    Rabbat, Nasser. “Letter from AKPIA@MIT Program Director Announcing the Passing of András Riedlmayer.” Academic Department Website. Outside Events & Announcement/Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, Masscahusetts Institute of Technology, February 10, 2026. https://akpia.mit.edu/outside-events-announcements/, archived at https://perma.cc/3VUR-926A.


    Riedlmayer, András. “Remarks by the Recipient of the 2022 MEM Lifetime Achievement Award.” Al-ʻUṣūr al-Wusṭá, vol. 31, November 2023, pp. iv–vii, https://doi.org/10.52214/uw.v31i.10299.


  • Kosovo Cultural Heritage
    Curated by András Riedlmayer, this collection of images and documents attests to the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage during the Kosovo War

    In preparing my exhibition, Burned Books and Blasted Shrines: Cultural Heritage under Fire in Kosovo, I took my little packet of burned books up to the paper conservators at the Straus Center for Conservation, on the top floor of Harvard's Fogg Art Museum. I watched as the conservator picked out these small bits of charcoal -- the carbonized fragments of manuscripts and old books. They were hard and black, some had shiny surfaces that reflected the afternoon sunlight. Looking closely, one could distinguish: smooth, blackened fragments of leather bindings; loose fibers or carbonized pieces of woven cloth from the inside of the spines of books; chunks of charcoal in which one could still see the fused layers of pages; still smaller fragments of burned paper; black charcoal dust. One larger piece, softer and grayish in color, not completely turned to carbon, was still recognizable as a book: the remains of a spine, or perhaps the fore-edge of a volume, less than an inch wide and perhaps 2-3 inches long, with the curled edges of charred pages still visible on the narrow ends. It had come from the burned-out interior of a 15th-century mosque in Pec.


    In my office, I keep a copy of a poem, an elegy for the burned Sarajevo library by a Bosnian poet, which talks about the removal of tons of such clinkers from the ruins of Bosnia's burned out National Library. In Prishtina the National Library still stands, but an estimated half of all the books in public libraries in Kosovo -- nearly a million books -- were destroyed in 1998-99. It brings home the vulnerability of the human knowledge that institutions such as universities and libraries are established to cultivate and preserve. We like to believe that we can be keepers of the records of civilization and we do our best to preserve them from fires and floods and other natural calamities. But what can one do to keep books and human beings safe from those who would destroy them?

    Andras Riedlmayer, Harvard University

  • Josephine Powell: Photographs of Afghanistan 1959-68 / جوزفین پاول
    An exhibition catalog with an essay by András Riedlmayer, "How Josephine Powell’s Photographs came to Harvard"
  • Remarks by the Recipient of the 2022 MEM Lifetime Achievement Award
    András Riedlmayer reflects upon his career on in these brief remarks to the Middle East Medievalists
  • Resources for the Study of Islamic Architecture
    Compiled to help researchers at a time when resources on Islamic architecture were extremely limited, the major document was one of the primary resources guiding the development of Archnet's original digital library
  • The Nine Domes of the Universe : the Ancient Noh Gonbad Mosque
    A beautiful book on the ruined yet still glorious Abbasid-era mosque near Balkh, Afghanistan with a contribution by András Riedlmayer
  • Ferhat-pasina Dzamija Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina
    András as instrumental in documenting this 16th c. mosque over time, including its destruction during the in the Bosnian War and its eventual reconstruction
    The Ferhad Pasha Mosque Complex in Banja-Luka was blown up during Bosnia's inter-ethnic war from 1992 to 1995, on May 7, 1993 in the early morning hours. After destroying the buildings on the site, Serbian nationalists bulldozed and removed the debris of the destruction. Today, the outline of the mosque's foundation in an empty grass lot is the only proof of its former presence.

    Built in the late sixteenth century, the mosque complex included a madrasa (medrese), a Quranic school (mekteb), a dar al-hadith (darülhadis), a bathhouse (hamam), a fountain (çesme), clocktower (saat kulesi or sahat kula), three tombs (türbe) and a cemetery. A caravanserai (kervansaray) and a market (bedesten or bezistan) were also built at the same time to bring income to support the mosque and its institutions. These were all constructed as part of Sokollu Ferhad Pasha's waqf, or religious foundation, in Sarajevo. He also commissioned an aqueduct, a bridge and a palace in the city. An inscription over the main entrance of the mosque dated construction to 1579 (987 A.H.), which corresponds to Ferhad Pasha's rule as the district governor (sancakbey) of Bosnia before he became the provincial governor (beylerbeyi). By the time of its demolition in 1993, the complex included only the mosque, the three tombs, the fountain, the clock tower, the cemetery and a house for the imam.
    The Ferhad Pasha Mosque featured an elaborate multi-domed roof system over a brightly lit central prayer hall, flanked by vaulted galleries to the east and west and with a semi-domed qibla iwan projecting to the south. Fenestration on the mosque included two tiers of windows on the main structure, with fourteen windows on the large central dome and four on the semi-dome of the qibla iwan. A third tier of three windows sat above the portico and above the qibla iwan. Inside, the windows had colored glass in plaster frames, some decorated with gold. Spanning 6.58 meters in diameter, the inner surface of the central dome was decorated with Quranic inscriptions of the Sura Al-Fatiha and painted arabesques. The qibla dome had Quranic inscriptions and paintings as well, with the names of God decorating the pendentives. The minbar was made entirely of marble and the painted mihrab niche had seven tiers of muqarnas at its crown.

    A three-bay portico preceded the sanctuary, covered by three small domes carried on four marble columns and arches. The center dome over the entrance was slightly elevated. The two central columns featured muqarnas capitals while the outer two had diamond-cut capitals. Adjoining the mosque at its northwest corner, the octagonal shaft of the minaret rose into a single muqarnas balcony and a conical cap. Inscriptive plaques decorated each face of the minaret base. The three domed tombs at the mosque complex were each octagonal in plan. These tombs housed the graves of Ferhad Pasha and his sons, his extended family, and two of his close assistants.

    A U.K.-based trust called The Soul of Europe, together with the Swedish foundation Cultural Heritage without Borders, planned the reconstruction of the Ferhadija Mosque. Although the local Bosnian Serb authorities have tried to thwart their efforts. Reconstruction began in 2007, and the mosque reopened in 2016.

    Sources:

    Ayverdi, Ekrem Hakki, and I. Aydin Yüksel. Avrupa'da Osmanli mimârî eserleri, 496, 549-612. Istanbul: Istanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1981.

    Borger, Julian. "Banja Luka Mosque Rises from Rubble, 23 Years after It Was Destroyed." The Guardian. May 06, 2016. Accessed May 06, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/06/banja-luka-mosque-bosnia-herzegovina-serbia-reopens-reconstruction.

    Haverford College. "The Destruction of the Ferhadija Mosque". Accessed August 27, 2004; inaccessible October 7, 2010. http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/banjaluka/ferhadija.html

    Haverford College. "Sites of Worship Deliberately Destroyed by Serb Religious Nationalists in Banja Luka". Accessed August 27, 2004; inaccessible October 7, 2010. http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/banjaluka/banjaluka.html

    Mostar, the Balkans, and Europe. "The Ferhadija Mosque in Banja Luka". Accessed August 27, 2004; inaccessible October 7, 2010. http://users.tyenet.com/kozlich/ferhad.htm

    Ravlic, Aleksandar Aco. Banjalucka Ferhadija: ljepotica koju su ubili. Rijeka: AARiS, 1996.

    Riedlmayer, Andras. "Banja Luka's Ferhadija Mosque Rises Again." Bosnian Institute News:. May 02, 2008. Accessed May 06, 2016. http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=2373.

    Soul of Europe. Accessed August 27, 2004. http://www.soulofeurope.org/
  • Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992-1996: A Post-War Survey Of Selected Municipalities
    The text of the 2002 report prepared by András Riedlmayer for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
  • Egypt-Cairo-IbnTulunMosque-1847
    Archnet would not has such a rich library of historic images were it not for the help of András
  • Mosquée de Paris, France
    One of the photographs by András in the Archnet collection
  • Restorations of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock and Their Political Significance
    An article co-authored by Beatrice St. Laurent from Muqarnas X: An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture