Arabic Pasts 2021 is happening from 7th - 9th of October.
This annual exploratory and informal workshop co-hosted with SOAS University and the University of Oxford offers the opportunity to reflect on history writing in Arabic.
Please download a pdf of our programme here, or find it detailed below.
Click here if you would like to register to join us online.
Day One (Online)
Thursday, 7 October 2021
Welcome and Introduction (1:00 – 1:30 pm)
Session 1: Idealised Pasts (1:30 – 3:30 pm)
Chair, Leif Stenberg, AKU-ISMC
Didactic Disputes: A History of Ashʿarism from 8th/14th-century Tunis
Caitlyn Olson, New York University Abu Dhabi
Constructing a Historical Narrative of Sunni Theology: Ibn al-Mibrad’s (d. 909/1503) Genealogy of Ḥanbalī Uṣūl al-Dīn
Arjan Post, KU Leuven
Unravelling the “Postclassical”: Characterising Philosophical Theology After Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210))
Tariq Mir, SOAS, University of London
Building the Future upon the Ruins of an Exalted Past. The Islamic Golden Age Topos in the Writings of the Nahḍa Intellectuals
Mouttalib Sophia, ENS de Lyon
Coffee Break 3:30 – 3:45 pm
Session 2: Lost Texts and Other Recoveries (3:45 – 5:15 pm)
**Chair, James McDougall, University of Oxford **
Recovering Lost Texts and Authenticity: Textual Traditions as Living Institution
Kevin Jaques, University of Indiana and KITAB Project
The Emergence of Arabic Annals in the 2nd Hijrī Century
Edward Zychowicz-Coghill, University of Cambridge and King’s College
Transmission of Middle-Persian Texts to Early Arabic Historiography – the Case of Bahrām Čūbīn
Joonas Maristo, University of Helsinki
End of Day One
Day Two (Aga Khan Centre, London, & Online)
Friday, 8 October 2021
Session 1: What Texts Do (9:30 – 11:00 am)
Chair, Hugh Kennedy, SOAS, University of London
Stories of Justice: Judges and Courts in Ottoman-Arabic Historiography
James Baldwin, Royal Holloway
Constructing Image and Competing for Legacy of an Early Islamic Renunciant: Ibn al-Jawzī’s Manāqib Maʿrūf al-Karkhī
Zhicheng Ye, SOAS, University of London
Coffee Break 11:00 – 11:15 am
Session 2: Memory, Text, Community-1 (11:15 – 12:45 pm)
Chair, Sarah Bowen Savant, AKU-ISMC
Memory and Textual Communities: An Analysis of Saḥnūn’s Mudawwana
Aslisho Qurboniev, KITAB Project, AKU-ISMC
The Life and the Reader: Studying Manuscript Circulation and Text Reuse of the Biographies of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn
Gowaart Van Den Bossche, KITAB Project, AKU-ISMC
A Case Study: Iranian Localization of the Memory of Zindīqs in the Early Abbasid Period
Yuko Tanaka, SOAS, University of London
Lunch Break 12:45 – 2:00 pm
Session 3: Memory, Text, Community-2 (2:00 – 3:30 pm)
Chair, Fozia Bora, University of Leeds
Arabic Memory, Syriac Writing: Did Muslim Legends Inspire Christian Arab Martyrdoms?
Simon Pierre, Sorbonne Université
Constructed Narratives of Apostasy in Medieval Arabic Historiography
Salimeh Maghsodulou, Institute of Islamic Studies - McGill University
Writing the Reincarnated: Druze Textualities and Political Time
Aamer Ibraheem, Columbia University
Coffee Break 3:30 – 3:45 pm
Session 4: Early Arabic Pasts (3:45 – 4:45 pm)
Chair, Karen Bauer, The Institute of Ismaili Studies
The Shape of History in the Qurʾan
Mohsen Goudarzi, Department of Classical & Near Eastern Studies, Religious Studies Program
A Theory of Paganism in the Syriac Cave of Treasures and its Deployment in Ibn al-Kalbī’s Kitāb al-Aṣnām
Asad Uz Zaman, The Ohio State University
End of Day Two
Day Three (Online)
Saturday, 9 October 2021
Session 1: Raising the Profile of a Historian (1:45 - 2:45 pm)
Chair, Arezou Azad, University of Oxford
Uthmān ibn Sanad (d. 1828) for Understanding the History of the Gulf During the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
Saleh Alkhulaifi, SOAS, University of London
An Indian Historian’s Arabic Craft: ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī’s (d. 1923) History of Islam in India
Mohsin Ali, UCLA
Coffee Break 2:45 – 3:00 pm
Session 2: Historical Subjects and Modes of Expression (3:00 – 5:00 pm)
Chair, Letizia Osti, University of Milan
Ibn Khaldūn in His Subjective Lexicon - The Emotional Constellation of an Intellectual in Transition
Laila M. Jreis Navarro, Fondecyt
What is Kurdish about an Arabic Fatwā? Two Centuries of Kurdish Jurisprudence in ‘Abdulkarim al-Mudarris’s Jawāhir al-Fatāwā
J. Andrew Bush, Harvard Law School
A Study of Zayn al-Dīn al-Makhdūm’s al-Ajwiba al-ʿAjība ʿan al-Asʾila al-Gharība
Noorudeen Pattasseri, Hamad Bin Khalifa University
Agenda Setting in Modern Coptic Death Memorials: Histories of the Deceased as Vehicles for Political Expression
Weston Bland, University of Pennsylvania
End of Workshop