Arabic Pasts: Histories and Historiographies
Research workshop
Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations
October 09 - 10, 2025
London
The annual Arabic Pasts workshop brings together scholars at all career stages to reflect on methodologies, research agendas, and case studies for investigating history writing in Arabic in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond in any period from the seventh century to the present.
This year the Arabic Pasts workshop welcomes Queen Mary University of London as a partner. We will host the workshop in person at the Aga Khan Centre and welcome proposals that deal with the practical and conceptual challenges of working on history writing in Arabic. We encourage scholars working at all career stages to join us.
By way of example, papers might elucidate the following sorts of questions - or others:
- How do nations today tell their stories with respect to their pasts? In what ways do educational institutions, museums, media organisations and proponents of heritage use history writing to shape loyalties and senses of belonging in society?
- When and how did pre-modern and modern historians writing in Arabic conceptualize the history of Palestine as a distinct geographical and political unit? What are the Arabic historiographical traditions regarding the city of Gaza and its hinterland, and how have they developed in the last two centuries?
- How is the past used in creative arts, re-enactment, games, and augmented reality?
- What do we consider works of fiction and how do they differ in authorial intent from historical chronicles? Does this authorial intent make a difference in how we treat these sources? What can we learn from combinations of fiction and non-fiction sources, if anything?
- What is the relationship between Arabic and other languages and scripts in bi/multi-lingual and bi/multi-alphabetic texts (tarikh, documents, other genres) across time?
- How can marginalised communities and their varieties of Arabic be given due attention?
- How can all genders (including non-binary) be given due attention when our sources are often composed by male political, intellectual and religious elites?
- How can we explore the past algorithmically? Can digital methods enhance our understanding of the past? Can they also limit or even alter it? Which new digital tools are being developed? What seem to be particularly promising approaches? What is lacking?
Prior to the workshop, we will also run a hands-on workshop on digital methods for Arabic texts - no experience necessary. Please get in touch early if you are interested in joining as we will have to cap participation.
Arabic Pasts is co-convened by Anna Chrysostomides (Queen Mary), Yossi Rapoport (Queen Mary), Hugh Kennedy (SOAS), Lorenz Nigst (AKU-ISMC), and Sarah Bowen Savant (AKU-ISMC).
Please submit an abstract of 300 words or less in word document by Friday, 16 May 2025 to ArabicPastsConf@aku.edu. Also please be in touch if you would like to join the digital methods workshop.