Conference Participation
The following is a list of conferences attended by members of the Early Islamic Empire team.
Conference Participation 2019
Romanization and Islamication in Late Antiquity – Transcultural Processes on the Iberian Peninsula and in North Africa, Bard Graduate Center, Nov. 18, 2019
Stefan Heidemann (Hamburg University, Bard Graduate Center) will give a Brown Bag Lunch presentation on Monday, November 18, at 12:15 pm. His talk is entitled, “Romanization and Islamication in Late Antiquity – Transcultural Processes on the Iberian Peninsula and in North Africa.”
Since the early 2000s, comparative empire research has become a surging field. One of the most intriguing questions is, how do empires transform the culture of a peripheral region, including religion, economy, and society? At Universität Hamburg, ancient history (Prof. Sabine Panzram) and Islamic Studies joined forces to compare transcultural assimilation processes in the historical region of the western Mediterranean with a focus on the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa during the first millennium CE, or the so-called “Long Late Antiquity”, including the Early Islamic Period. The economically significant Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb were peripheral regions both in the pagan–later Christianized–Roman Empire and the Islamic Empire. At the beginning of the millennium both regions were characterized by cultures, Celt-Iberian and Berber, that were influenced by Hellenistic civilization, but maintained their own distinct characteristics. Both the Roman and the Islamic empires shaped the formation of societies, cities, landscapes, and material culture. Both introduced a salvation religion, originating from the Middle East, as the state religion, but took a different approach to their social implementation (forced religious homogenization / religious albeit not equal plurality). After the end of each of the two empires, the Roman culture flourished under the Germanic leaders, as did the Islamic culture under the autonomous Umayyads and Aghlabids. While in the Iberian Peninsula the Roman-Christian element remained in evidence for centuries, despite Islamication, the previously Roman-Christian culture of North Africa (Augustine) disappeared almost entirely two to three centuries after the Arab conquest. Here, the cultural Islamication merged with a religious Islamization. This historical situation permits the construction of theoretical models of transcultural adaptation processes in a space that, although geographically distant from the imperial centers, nonetheless continued to be of importance.
This talk will take place in the Seminar Room at 38 West 86th Street and is open to the BGC community and invited guests. Please RSVP to alec.newell@bgc.bard.edu.
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DAVO/ DMG International Congress
26th International DAVO Congress and 2nd Session of the Section for Islamic Studies of the DMG
The Department for Culture and History of the Middle East of the University of Hamburg under the auspices of jun. Prof. Dr. Serena Tolino, the German Middle East Studies Association for Contemporary Research and Documentation (DAVO) and the Section of Islamic Studies of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft organize the conference "History, Politics and Culture in the Middle East,"
in the Asien-Africa-Institute of Hamburg University, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1 (Ost), 20146 Hamburg.
Panel „The Early Islamic Empire at Work”
Stefan Heidemann, Universität Hamburg, ‘The Reach of the Empire’
Abstract: In the 8th and 9th century, the Islamic Empire (7th-10th c. CE) was situated in the center of the Eurasia and Africa. It had reached its largest extent of political and military control. The Byzantines had halted the Islamic Empire’s expansion at the Taurus about the time of al-Muʿāwiya. In the west the battle of Tour and Portier 741 in Europe, and the contest between the Tang and the Islamic Empire at the battle of Talas in 751 marked the end of expansion toward the opposite cardinal points. The neighbors of the empire were economically weak in comparison. The politically struggling Byzantine empire, with a drastically shrunken monetary economy, and the emerging Carolingian empire, with a gradually evolving monetary economy. The Tang Empire was weakend by the An Lu-shang Rebellion in its center Chang An even receded from the Tarim Basin. In the north and north-west of the empire were dominated by nomad confederations, the Khazars in the north-west, and Turkish nomad confederations in the north-east. To the south were some tribal states in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Arabian Seas.
This situation allowed the Early Islamic Empire to reach economically and culturally far beyond its political control. Five zones of ‘reach’ will be discussed
- the western European,
- Maghrib the sub-Saharan African,
- the Arabian Seas,
- the Eastern European, and
- the Central Asian.
All five zones viewed together allow a better assessment of the importance of the Islamic Empire in its impact on the history of Eurasia and Africa.
Hannah-Lena Hagemann, Universität Hamburg, 'On the Edge of Empire: The Jaziran North in the Early Islamic Period'
The paper looks at the history of the Jazīran north before the end of the 9th century CE. This territory bordered the caliphal province of Armīniya and is usually referred to as ‘Diyār Bakr’, one of the three subdivisions of al-Jazīra established following the conquests of the 7th century CE. Contrary to common assumptions, however, Diyār Bakr as an administrative entity does not appear to have existed before the mid-10th century CE. It is not attested in the literary or documentary record before that time, and the region’s major cities (Āmid, Arzan, and Mayyāfāriqīn) seem to have had a very loose connection with both the province al-Jazīra and the empire as a whole. The coin record in particular implies that imperial control of the Jazīran north was limited at best until the reign of al-Muʿtaḍid (r. 892-902 CE). The paper seeks to address the question of how the Jazīran north negotiated its position between imperial authorities, Armenian princes, church officials, and local lords all attempting to secure their share of influence. To what extent can this region be considered to have been part of the sphere of imperial authority? What was the role of Christian and other local elites in governing this territory, and how much autonomy did they enjoy? What does the history of the Jazīran north tell us about imperial policies of provincial governance, and what does it mean for our understanding of the Jazīra as a province in the early Islamic period?
Antonia Bosanquet, Universität Hamburg, ‘Slave Trade and Governance in 8th and 9th Century Ifrīqiya'
The westernmost province of Ifrīqiya was notoriously difficult for the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphate to control. Repeated rebellions and usurpations of leadership frequently set it outside imperial authority, despite the extensive military commitment of the caliphate to the region. Only in the ninth century, with the establishment of the semi-independent Aghlabid dynasty, was Ifrīqiya characterized by political stability and economic growth.
This presentation will examine the link between these two aspects. How was the province’s wealth related to the development of trade patterns throughout the eighth and ninth century and how did these trade patterns contribute to ending the destabilizing conflicts between the political, ethnic and religious factions in the region? Reference will be made to the slave trade, which is highlighted in the descriptions that Arab geographers and historians give of the region.
The information that geographic and historical texts provide about the economic and political history of Ifrīqiya will be related to numismatic and archaeological evidence, as well as legal texts from ninth century North Africa, in order to draw wider conclusions about the political and economic reorientation of North Africa following the Arab conquest.
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Eleventh Seminar on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Numismatics in Memoriam Boris Kochnev, Hofstra University, New York, March 9, 2019
Boris Kochnev Memorial Seminar on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Numismatics at Hofstra University - March 9, 2019
[Program ]
For more information contact: aleksandr.naymark"AT"hofstra.edu
Abstract: Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg)
Sanjar’s Conquest of Ghazna 510 / 1117 - Some Remarks on Late Ghaznavid History and Culture
A large parcel of a hoard of Ghaznavid gold coins, ending seemingly with a closing coin of 510/1117 allows various new insights into the culture and history of the late Ghaznavids. The new information concerns cultural practices at Ramadan, information to the history of Sistan, where the Tārīkh-i Sistān left us uninformed about the period between from 448/1056 to 462/1069, and finally information on the conquest of Ghazna by Sanjar in 510/1117.
Dinar of the Ghaznavid Malik-i Arslan of 510/1117 (reverse - obverse)
© Universität Hamburg, Photo Collection, no. GT-1583
Antiquarianism in the Islamic World, Bard Graduate Center, May 9-10, 2019
“Antiquarianism” is the term of art used to describe the investigation of the European past through its material remains before art history and archaeology emerged in the nineteenth century as the disciplines devoted to its study. In the period between 1300 and 1800 the encounter with ruins in Northern Europe, North Africa, Greece, and the Levant led to the development of new notions of evidence, new technologies of historical argumentation, new forms of literary exposition, and new standards of proof. While history from texts remained powerful, for a few centuries its hegemony was challenged.
The history of antiquarianism in Europe has been the subject of a burst of new work in the past decades. This coincides with the importance attached more generally to “materiality” and the study of material culture. But there has also been a completely new effort to explore this phenomenon, in its own terms, in other cultures. Comparative projects were the focus of conferences at Bard Graduate Center in 2004, the Getty Research Institute in 2010, and the Joukowsky Institute at Brown in 2015, and each of these has resulted in a book of essays: Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China 1500-1800 (2012), World Antiquarianism (2013), and Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison (2017).
The time has come to examine the Islamic world in these same terms and with this same care. That is the goal of this conference.
[ program ]
Abstract: Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg)
Appreciating, Collecting, and Meaning of Ancient Objects in the Early and Middle Islamic Period
The appreciation of objects of the past includes a number of aspects that are sometimes conflated, and sometimes overlap. A term for the appreciation and collecting of ancient goods did not exist as such in pre-modern Arabic lexicography. But we can identify practices, intellectual and even political interaction with ancient objects. Given the sparseness of sources, we have to take at that stage a wide classifying approach to identify those intellectual activities in which we were most interested in: The study of the past through objects.
I will approach this topic less from a literary viewpoint, but from one of material culture, where we can actually perceive a reception of historic shapes and artifacts and where the contemporaries transformed their meaning or included them in new meaningful actions. The assumption is that any taking-up of historical shapes in art and architecture, has to be preceded by a some form of comparison between the present and the distant past. Collecting of ancient artefacts may be part of such a process.
While the first two of the following fields will be a kind of review to map the field of study, research for this conference is done within the third field.
- The first is the ‘useful memory’ in the sense of Jan Assmann. The studied artefacts and the architecture have to be useful visible symbols, resonant within the targeted contemporary society or social group. This resonant effort might be based in part on collecting, but it seems to be mainly based on contemporary visibility of past architecture, still visible and appreciated in the cities of the early and middle Islamic period.
- Secondly, comes the use of ancient objects for magical practices, the use of spolia, hieroglyphs, writings on Egyptian artefacts, and reuse of Roman contorniatae. Sources for these practices are texts, but mostly the artefacts themselves, and spoils turned into magical objects as such.
- The third field looks for the few traces of a practice more akin to the western understanding of antiquarianism, the appreciation and study of the past through objects and eventually collecting them. This kind of study never became a movement that left its reflection in the literature. On the opposite, this interest in ancient objects is only mentioned by passing within other narratives, never focusing our topic. In general these references to the study of objects are usually imbedded in the akhbār, the collections of information about the past.
The conclusion will concentrate on the third field. How does the study of ancient objects fit into the writing of history?
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Conference Participation 2018
Africa 500-1000 - New Perspectives for Historical and Archaeological Research, University of Tübingen, Nov. 14-16, 2018
Kolleg-Forschergruppe „Migration und Mobilität in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter“
Africa 500-1000 - New Perspectives for Historical and Archaeological Research
University of Tübingen, Nov. 14-16, 2018
Abstract Antonia Bosanquet (Universität Hamburg) - Changing Trade Patterns in Ifrīqiya
In a well-known anecdote recounted by Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, the Arab conquerors of the region that came to be called Ifrīqiya are told by its inhabitants that olives are their main source of wealth. Olive oil, they tell him, is sold across the Mediterranean in exchange for gold and silver. However, historians and geographers describing the region three centuries later make almost no reference to Mediterranean purchase of olive oil, although Ifrīqiya is now cited as the main supplier of olive oil for Egypt.
This presentation will examine the shift in trade patterns in Ifrīqiya between the early Arab conquest and the end of Aghlabid rule. I will consider how trade routes, markets and areas of agricultural production developed in response to the changing political power structures and economic relations. The main sources for my investigation are the texts of Arab geographers, historians and jurists. I will compare the insights into routes, towns and transactions that these sources reflect, and relate these both to the contexts that the texts describe and the contexts in which they were written. The information that they offer regarding changing trade patterns between the ninth and the eleventh century can be related to broader questions about Ifrīqiya’s relation to the rest of the ʿAbbāsid Empire and the social and economic reorientation of North Africa following the Arab conquest.
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The Three Years of the Rebellion of Varhrān VI – A Geographical Survey, Princeton/ Berkley Nov 3, 2018
From Ardashir to Phrom Kesar. Workshop on Sasanian Coins and History, Princeton University, Jones Hall 202
This is a workshop concentrating on the history and coinage of late antique Iran and Central Asia, spanning from the foundation of the Sasanian Empire in 224 CE to the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate in East Iran in the eighth century. Presenters, including some of the most distinguished historians and numismatists of the period, will cover various aspects of the history, with a focus on coinage and coin production. Princeton’s newly acquired and catalogued collection of Sasanian and related coins will also be presented to the campus community as an exciting tool for research in late antique history. Sponsored by the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies and Princeton University Library’s Division of Rare Books and Special Collections.
Conference Presenters: Michael Bates, Touraj Daryaee, Stefan Heidemann, Aleksandr Naymark , Khodadad Rezakhani, Robert Schaaf, Nikolaus Schindel, Alan Stahl, Razieh Taasob, Susan Tyler-Smith
Convened by: Khodadad Rezakhani and Razieh Taasob
[poster]
Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg)
Abstract / Introduction: The Three Years of the Rebellion of Varhrān VI – A Geographical Survey
The rebellion of the war hero of the east the Mehranid Varhrān Chōbīn between 590 and 592 CE was the prelude to the war that changed the world of late Antiquity forever. The chronology of the events of this rebellion and the resistance of Khusrō II was well studied by Nöldeke (1878), Higgins (1939), and finally by Tyler‐Smith (2004). The authors remain, however, vague about the geographical extent and duration of the rebellion, and those regions which remain loyal to the line of Sāsān. New finds from Khūzistān and Khurāsān allow to follow the geographical dimensions of the rise and fall of Varhrān II and the heir apparent Khusrō II. While the new findings add to the political history of the Empire, they allows also to propose a new sequence of coin types and its political symbolism.
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The Islam Atlas: A Digital Edition Project, July 27, 2018
Digital Editions, Digital Corpora and New Possibilities for the Humanities in the Academy and Beyond, 27 July , 2018 Tufts University.
Peter Verkinderen (Universität Hamburg) - The Islam Atlas: A Digital Edition Project,
This project seeks to take a fresh look at the most important works of early Islamic geographical writing in the early Islamic period through a new digital edition: the books attributed to al-Iṣṭakhrī and Ibn Ḥawqal. These are centred around a series of 21 maps: one world map and 20 regional maps depicting the entire Islamic world in the 10th century CE. For this reason, Konrad Miller has aptly called this cluster of texts collectively the Islam Atlas. Apart from these maps, the manuscripts contain textual descriptions of the Earth and the areas covered by the regional maps, which provide a wealth of information on early Islamic human geography (settlements, crafts and crops, religious and ethnic groups, routes, administration, …).
Many different versions of the text are extant, in three languages: Arabic, Fārsī and Ottoman Turkish. Despite the importance of these texts, many questions still surround their origin, creation process, transmission and reception. None of the existing editions is adequate for answering these questions, which are crucial for our knowledge of geographical writing in the Islamicate world and for interpreting the information transmitted in these texts. For one, the existing editions are all based on a small sample of manuscripts that were by chance available to the editor, not based on a careful selection; many more manuscripts have become available in the meantime, and preparatory work on the different text versions represented by these manuscripts has been carried out. Moreover, the existing editions do not include editions of the maps, although the latter were obviously crucial to the text. Finally, the existing editions are only concerned with identifying an archetype text, which is in itself an anachronistic notion, and are useless for the study of the history and role of these texts in the centuries after their conception, when they were still extensively copied, added to, epitomized and translated.
The Islam Atlas project will provide an extendable digital edition of all versions of this text and these maps. The digital medium allows a radically different type of edition: the focus will lie on establishing and – as far as possible- dating different versions of the text and the maps. The difference between these versions can be visualized graphically. The texts and the maps will be linked, so users of the edition can navigate easily between different versions of the text and maps, and view the manuscript witnesses for the different text and map versions. The toponyms in the text and maps will be linked to a gazetteer, so that they can be displayed on modern maps and the authors’ knowledge of the contemporary world, and the different geographical spread of the map and text versions, can be visualized on a modern digital map.
This presentation focuses on the workflow of the digital edition process.
Conference of the School of Abbasid Studies Yale, July 10-14, 2018
School of Abbasid Studies - The Fourteenth Conference
Tuesday July 10 – Saturday July 15, 2016, Yale University, New Haven, USA
[ program ]
Abstract Antonia Bosanquet (Universität Hamburg) - Jund, Berbers and Slave Routes: Rebellion in Aghlabid Tripoli
In 196/811-812 Ibrāhīm I, the leader of the nominally ʿAbbāsid Aghlabid dynasty in Ifrīqiya, named his son ʿAbd Allāh as governor over the Aghlabid city of Tripoli. The response of the jund was unequivocal; they besieged their new governor in his palace and did not liberate him until he promised to leave the city. ʿAbd Allāh’s strategy of amassing the support of the Berbers from the surrounding region of Tripolitania returned him to power but it also served to create new ambitions on the part of the Berbers, as well as stoking old rivalries and contentions. The result was a conflict in which the leaders of both the Aghlabid and the Rustamid dynasties were involved, in addition to most of the Berbers and Arabs of the region itself.
At the end of the conflict political loyalties, and the territorial division of the region, continued as before. This presentation will examine the course of the revolt and its relative significance for both sides. This is particularly in view of the role played by Tripoli as a stopover and sale point in the slave trade between west Africa and the ʿAbbāsid dominions. The main question is whether the resolution of the conflict “merely” maintained the status quo, or whether the agreements reached by both parties can be seen as constituting a new basis for power negotiation in the city of Tripoli and the Ibāḍī hinterland of Tripolitania.
Abstract Simon Gundelfinger (Universität Hamburg) - Exercising Control on the Ground: Governors of Abbasid al-Shām
Early Islamic historiography tends to give the impression that the fate of even the furthest-flung region of the ʿAbbāsid empire was decided by caliphs and wazīrs. The distances involved and the slowness of communication, however, clearly indicate that if these courtly elites gave any orders regarding a province, they could provide only general guidelines, and the authorities on the ground must have enjoyed a large degree of autonomy.
It goes without saying that local populations did not always pursue the same aims as the agents of caliphal authority, and it must be assumed that provincial policy-making frequently needed to be (re-)negotiated between governors, qạ̄dīs, tax officials, as well as local notables, militia and their leaders. In this complex interplay, however, the most significant link between the imperial and the provincial level appears to have been the governors who served as intermediaries between the central administration and its local representatives and subjects.
The paper to be given at the 2018 conference of the School of Abbasid Studies aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the governors of ʿAbbāsid al-Shām up to the Ṭūlūnid period. While scholars such as Patricia Crone and Paul Cobb have already contributed greatly to this area of research, it is only as of late that digital toolboxes allow us to search systematically through a wide range of literary sources. The material newly derived from a vast corpus of historiographical works and biographical dictionaries includes more than 100 governors of ʿAbbāsid al-Shām on both the provincial and the district level. The information gathered on their ethnic backgrounds and previous professional experience allows inferences regarding essential strategies of appointing and dismissing governors in the different phases of ʿAbbāsid rule over al-Shām.
Abstract Hannah- Lena Hagemann (Universität Hamburg) - The Limits of Imperial Control: The Jaziran North
The province of al-Jazīra occupies an important place in Islamic history and historiography as the seat of imperial capitals, an agricultural powerhouse, the connector between the two major centres of imperial authority in the early Islamic period, and home to countless revolts and rebels of many different flavours. Yet at the same time, the Jazīra remains a somewhat elusive construct – its constituent parts are contested among the Islamic geographers and chroniclers, both because of its tumultuous political and administrative history under the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids, but also because the pre-Islamic Byzantine-Sasanian border bisected the territory for centuries before “that which is in between the Euphrates and the Tigris” was patched together as “al-Jazīra”. Moreover, our sources say very little about local Jazīran history, perhaps because it remained a Christian-majority province until well into the 11th century and non-Muslims do not feature very prominently in the Islamic historical tradition. While the Jazīra is not unique in this regard, the problem is particularly pronounced – as Chase Robinson put it in his study of Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid al-Mawṣil: “writing a history of the Jazira is writing almost ex nihilo.”
In this paper, I intend to look at an understudied region of the Jazīra, the northern territory bordering (and sometimes overlapping with) Armīniya that is usually referred to as ‘Diyār Bakr’ and counted as one of the three sub-divisions of the province along with Diyār Muḍar and Diyār Rabīʿa. In fact, ‘Diyār Bakr’ is not attested in the literary or documentary record before the first half of the 10th century CE at all, and the region’s two major cities, Āmid and Mayyāfāriqīn, seem to have had a very loose connection with both the province of al-Jazīra and the caliphate as a whole. This presentation seeks to address the question of how the Jazīran north negotiated its position in the power struggle between the ʿAbbāsid empire, Armenian princes, and (local) lords attempting to secure their share of influence. As the Islamic tradition hardly mentions either city, or their hinterlands, for most of the period until the coming of the Ḥamdānids, this paper will also take into consideration Armenian and Christian sources as well as documentary evidence such as coins. The coin record in particular implies that ʿAbbāsid control of the Jazīran north was limited at best until the reign of al-Muʿtaḍid. To what extent, then, can this region be considered to have been part of the sphere of ʿAbbāsid imperial authority? What was the role of Christian elites in governing this territory, and how much autonomy did they enjoy? Finally, what does this signify for our understanding of ʿAbbāsid policy towards the provinces and the internal structure of the provinces more generally?
Abstract Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) - At the End of the Empire. The Return of the Nomads and Millenarian Expectations: The Rebellion of al-Aṣfar at-Taghlibī 395/1004-5 to 406/1016 in Northern Mesopotamia
The demise of the empire in the second half the 4th century H had ripple effects on multiple levels. The political and military void left by the empire was gradually filled with an encroachment of nomads into the most fertile parts, leaving the settled population almost defenseless. Such a situation evoked millenarian expectations.
In 395/1004-5, a certain Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Aṣfar al-Taghlibī al-Ghāzī appeared in the Jazīra in the garb of a ṣūfī and called to jihād against the Byzantines. He mobilized tens of thousands of people. About two years later, in Shaʿbān 397/May-April 1007, his rebellion was crushed by the Banū Numayr. Al-Aṣfar al-Taghlibī’s popular movement was one of a number of uprisings connected with the mysterious name of al-Aṣfar, the yellow, in the final decades of the empire and soon afterwards. His movement signals the return of the nomads to settled area, resulting in a change in the population and mode of production. His millenarian vision attracted thousands of peasants and can be seen as paradigmatic for the crisis after the end of the empire.
Abstract Ahmad Khan (Universität Hamburg) - Imperial Rhetoric and Practice under the ʿAbbāsids
The study of imperial correspondence in ancient and medieval societies is, primarily, a study in the rhetoric of empire and, secondarily, of imperial practice. Emperors and caliphs leaned on an effective imperial bureaucratic machine and an efficient postal system, active in both the imperial centre and the imperial provinces, in order to ensure that ideas were communicated near and far and that caliphal ambitions or instructions were implemented.
The study of caliphal letters is one way for modern historians to listen more attentively to the imperial voice, analyse its rhetoric, and consider its implications for our understanding of imperial claims in the early Islamic empire. Caliphal letters have been studied by a handful of historians: In God’s Caliph, Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds used caliphal letters from Walīd II and al-Ma’mūn located in the works of tenth-century Muslim historians as well as later ones like Sibt b. al-Jawzī and al-Qalqashandī; Wadād al-Qāḍī has argued a strong case for the authenticity of late Umayyad-era state letters; and Andrew Marsham has studied caliphal dispositive and accession documents for the ʿAbbāsid period.
This paper is concerned with caliphal letters addressed to the empire’s provinces during the ʿAbbāsid period, composed in response to moments of unrest and rebellion. I am concerned with identifying how, why, and when the early Islamic empire communicated its imperial claims to discrete communities in remote, distant, but nonetheless critical provinces of the early Islamic empire. How did the sole representative of the early Islamic empire communicate his legitimacy and authority to his subjects in the provinces? How did the empire respond to events -- moments of crises and triumphs -- that occurred in the empire’s distant provinces? What can these letters inform us about the relationship between imperial centre and province?
Abstract Peter Verkinderen (Universität Hamburg) - Dealing with the Abbasids in Fars: Local Lords, Tribal Areas, and the dīwān
Fārs is – somewhat surprisingly, given its economic importance – one of the under-documented areas of the early Islamic empire. Like many other regions in the empire, Fārs is almost only mentioned in the chronicles when events took place there that had a direct impact on the central government.
This obscures the complex social and political situation within Fārs. An exceptional glimpse of this context is offered by al-Iṣṭakhrī's chapter on his native province in his geographical work. In the penultimate section of this chapter, he discusses a good number of important personalities in the history of Fārs (mostly focusing on the past century), some of whom are not known from other sources. The list includes rebels against ʿAbbāsid authority, rulers of semi-autonomous areas within Fārs, local lords with a stake in the state, dīwān directors with a Fārsī background, and members of the high Sasanian nobility of Fārs that up the 10th century still held the highest positions in the administration of Fārs.
Al-Iṣṭakhrī's text brings to the fore questions on the nature of ʿAbbāsid control over different parts of Fārs. This presentation will use al-Iṣṭakhrī's text as a starting point for re-reading the more centre-oriented sources from this perspective. It will discuss ʿAbbāsid strategies of control and the various ways in which local groups dealt with ʿAbbāsid attempts to control their resources in order to limit the loss of their own power.
[ program ]
IX Islamic Legal Studies Conference - The Relationship between the Ruler and Ruled, June 6-9, 2018, Finland.
Our colleagues Ahmad Khan will present a paper on An Empire of Laws: The View from the Province, at the IX Islamic Legal Studies Conference, convened by the International Society for Islamic Legal Studies (ISILS), held under the auspices of the Universities of Helsinki and Tampere, Finland, June 6–9, 2018.
[ abstracts ]
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Correspondence, Cross-Pollination and Control: Transregional Connections and Movements in the Early Islamic Empire, Leiden University, May 17-18, 2018
Prof. Stefan Heidemann will give a talk on Khurasanians in the in the Jazīra and Beyond in the confence organized by Chase Robinson May 17 - 18 May, 2018, at Leiden University.
[ program ]
Presenters will address how temporary as well as permanent, politically motivated and centrally organized as well as socially stimulated movements of people and ideas contributed to an increasing linguistic, religious and cultural integration in the Empire which ensured its survival beyond the 9th-century political break-down.
Abstract: Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) - Khurāsānians in the Jazīra and Beyond
There is a growing awareness of the Arab migration to Khurāsān and its cultural and socio economic impact in the region and beyond for the empire. The migration of (eastern) Iranians to the former Roman West has been less studied. The scholarly challenges are different. The migration was primarily a military one. Iraq and Khuzistān formed the core lands of the Sāsānian and the Islamic empire. Evidence from Iraq can be hardly taken as measure for.an Iranian migration and impact, because the Iranian element was always present there. In the ʿAbbāsid period before Sāmarrāʾ, the Jazīra, Egypt, and Ifrīqiya saw considerable Khurāsānian military deployment. Turning away from the level of commanders and governors and looking at the military population, the Iranian impact in the formerly Roman provinces is hard to identify. While we have numerous traces of an Iranian taste in material culture around the Mediterranean before the Samarran period, the archaeological data itself is slim.
Most data from the literary sources about Iranian military settlements in the West are about the life in al-Rāfiqa/al-Raqqa in the Jazīra. The Iranian military settlers in formerly Roman regions arrived with the efforts of al-Manṣūr to control the western provinces after the defeat of al-Nafs al-Zakīya in 146/763-4. The military settlement was set beside an established city. Persian remained a spoken language in al-Rāfiqa at least until the time of al-Maʾmūn. A new wave of military settlers might have come with the Ṭāhir ibn al-Ḥusayn to al-Rāfiqa in 198/813-4. The interest of Syrian scholars in Iranian literature and their search for knowledge in Iran became apparent in Ṭāhirid period of the West.
Based on this foundation the ʿAbbāsid military settlements in the early ʿAbbāsid to the Ṭāhirid period of the empire, helped to integrate the vast empire and its cultural divisions, by transregional movements, of military, scholars, and probably also of merchants.
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British Association for Islamic Studies (BRAIS), University of Exeter, April 9-11, 2018
British Association for Islamic Studies (BRAIS) - 2018 Conference
April 9- 11, University of Exeter
Panel Session 5 - Islamic Law V: Community, Identity and the Codification of Islamic Law
How does the formulation of legal constructs reflect the engagement of the Muslim community, both with its own traditions and those of other religions? In what manner were legal ideas codified; did canonization reflect the soundness of transmission according to the classical framework of ḥadīth criticism, or was the framework constructed to endorse concepts that were already accepted within the community? This panel brings together projects examining the processes by which legal ideas were codified. They address the peculiarities of the construction of legal thought in the early and classical Islamic periods and the challenges that these present. Whether the status of single-channel hadith transmissions, the role of non-Muslim concepts of purity, or broader questions of Muslim identity, boundaries and interaction, the commonalities and divergences in the approaches to these problems will provide the basis for a discussion that we hope will lead us forward in bridging the many methodological impasses in the interpretation of the rich legal heritage of the Islamic world.
Abstract Antonia Bosanquet (Universität Hamburg) - "She may keep him as her husband; He may not keep her as his wife" Differing views of single spouse conversion in Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma
The topic of single-spouse conversion to Islam is widely discussed in classical legal sources. Whether a husband or a wife who has converted to Islam may maintain his or her marriage with the Christian or Jewish partner, and on what basis, was of significant practical relevance given the widespread nature of conversion in the classical period. But the discussion was also a handy theoretical framework within which to consider wider questions about the relationship between the religions, the hierarchical ordering of man and woman and the fundamental orientation of human nature (fiṭra).
This presentation will examine the teaching about single-spouse conversion in Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s (d. 751/1350) Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma. It will review his summary and analysis of existing legal rulings and then consider his own view of whether a marriage between a non-Muslim and a Muslim convert may be continued.
The position adopted by Ibn al-Qayyim is a minority one, both in the 8th/14th century Damascus of his lifetime and in contemporary debates about the subject. In examining how he arrives at his conclusion, this presentation will explore the various factors that play a role in Ibn al-Qayyim’s argumentation. These include the power hierarchies between the religions and within the domestic household, the emotional and material complexities involved in marriage and rearing a family and not least, the importance of endearing Islam to potential converts.
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Law, Authority and Learning in Imami Shi'ite Islam, University of Exeter, March 22-23, 2018
The Law, Authority and Learning in Imami Shiʿite Islam (LAWALISI) team host one-day workshops every two months whereby scholars working on Sunni and Shiite law come together and share their research results in an informal setting. This provides an opportunity for emerging and established scholars to mix and network and for scholars working on the two legal traditions to explore the diversity of the Islamic legal tradition. The workshops are often text-based with presenters leading the group through Arabic texts.
22nd – 23rd MARCH 2018: Texts on Zakāt, Khums, Ǧizya and taxation in Medieval Fiqh
The aim of this workshop was to analyse how medieval and modern jurists elaborated rules on religious taxation in Islamic positive law. We examined a series of legal texts focussing on the sections on zakāt, khums and ǧizya, and explored the contrasts between the treatment of these religious duties in different political contexts and legal traditions (Sunnī, Imāmī, Zaydī). The issues of translating this type of texts were discussed, with draft translations produced.
Topics and texts examined:
“Zaydī zakāt fiqh and the maʿūna tax” in Sīrat al-Imām al-Mutawakkil Aḥmad b. Sulaymān (d. 566/1171) and Maǧmūʿat rasāʾil al-Imām al-Manṣūr ʿAbdallāh b. Ḥamza (d. 614/1217) (Eirik Hovden)
“Zakāt and ḫums in al-Muqniʿa of Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022)” (Wissam Halawi)
“Recipients of zakāt in Riyāḍ al-Masāʾil of Al-Sayyid ʿAlī al-Ṭabatabāʾī (d. 1241/1816)” (Rob Gleave)
“Import tax in K. al-zakāt of the Hidāya” (Sohail Hanif)
“The ǧizya in aḥkām ahl al-ḏimma of Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751/1351)” (Antonia Bosanquet)
Participants: Mehrdad Alipour; Mustafa Baig; Antonia Bosanquet; Robert Gleave (LAWALISI project); Wissam Halawi (LAWALISI project); Sohail Hanif; Eirik Hovden; Kumail Rajani and Mohammad-Payam Saadat-Sarmadi.
Ninth Seminar on Boris Kochnev Memorial Seminar on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Numismatics in Memorial of Boris Kochnev, Hofstra University, New York, March 10, 2018
Boris Kochnev Memorial Seminar on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Numismatics at Hofstra University - March 10, 2018
[ Program ]
For more information contact: aleksandr.naymark@hofstra.edu
Abstract: S. Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) & Claudia Sode (Universität Köln)
Entangled Cultures: Authentication and Sealing in the Byzantine Border Lands During the 11th and 12th Centuries
In the Islamic Middle East metal seals were used for different purposes than in Byzantium. Only in contact with Byzantium, lead seals were applied to authenticate authentication of letters and documents. Since the second half of the 4th/10th century the Byzantine empire expanded toward northern Syria, Mesopotamia and Armenia. For indigenous Muslim princes the necessity arose to acknowledged Byzantine suzerainity, and for ecclesiastical officials from the Arabic and Syriac speaking regions to respond to the Byzantine administrative traditions. Most seals of that group carry images of the Virgin and military saints of Byzantine type on one side and on the other an Arabic, Syriac or Armenian formulars like „he trusts in God“ in Syriac (sabreh b-alāhā) and Arabic (yathiqu billāh). The iconography dates them into the 5th/11th and 6th/12th. The images of saints seems to be applied regardless the religious faith of the owner. On some of them titles like Vestarches, Patrikios (al-baṭrīq) or Protospatharios (al-ibruṭusbatār) can be found.
Muslim princes, which were not under Byzantine sway, had to correspond with imperial institutions by applying lead-seals. There are some instances, the Kākūyids in Iran, and somewhat later the Dānishmandids and the Rūm-Saljūqs in Anatolia.
Most material for this study seem to come from a large find that was made in Constantinople during the 1860s. A correspondence between the J. G. Stickel and A. D. Mordtmann Jr. describes the circumstances of the find (Heidemann - Sode 1999-2000). Thousands of Byzantine seals came to light in the course of foundation works for the new Ministry of War. Mordtmann, therefore, suggested an important archive 1204 at the Byzantine Forum Theodosii or Tauri before 1204. The seals were dispersed in trade in the following decades. Up to now, about 170 seals with Oriental scripts in various collections could be connected with this hoard. A large number of them are preserved in the collection of Center for Byzantine Studies, Harvard University, at Dumbarton Oaks.
Islamic Law and Sexuality Conference, University of Exeter, Jan. 9-11,2018
Islamic Law and Sexuality Conference , 9th – 11th January 2018
Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies, University of Exeter
Abstract Antonia Bosanquet (Universität Hamburg) - “Without Seeing her Awra.” Classical and Contemporary Rulings on Marital Relations Following the Wife’s Conversion to Islam
Unlike the question of whether a Muslim woman may marry a non-Muslim man, the question of whether a female convert to Islam should be separated from her non-Muslim husband has been extensively debated in classical legal sources. The various answers given to the question relate to further debates such as the legality of contracts concluded before conversion, the interpretation of the precedent set by the first generation of Muslims, and whether a nonconsummated marriage entails the same legal conditions as a marriage in which sexual intercourse has taken place. Far from becoming obsolete, the question has maintained, or reacquired, its relevance in contemporary Islamic legal discourse. The many discussions on this and related subjects might be due to the high proportion of women amongst converts to Islam, many of whom are already living in marriages with non-Muslim husbands.
This presentation will look at how contemporary Muslim jurists, from a range of ideological standpoints, use the classical legal tradition in their formulation of an answer to the question of married female converts. Which aspects of the classical juristic reasoning do they maintain and which aspects receive less emphasis? Particular attention will be paid to the understanding of the role of sexual intercourse in the respective discussions. The solution offered by some classical jurists, that the wife may remain married to her husband without continuing any form of sexual relation with him, is echoed in some contemporary discussions. However, the way in
which contemporary jurists present this solution, the response of other scholars, and the related comments on Muslim-non-Muslim sexual relations, reflect the altered context within which the discussion takes place, together with the changed attitudes to sex and sexuality that constitute the discursive parameters of the debate.
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Conference Participation 2017
The Early Islamic Empire in the 7th and 8th Centuries – Governing the Regions of the Roman and Sasanian World, Princeton University, Nov. 12-13, 2017
Judaism in the 7th and 8th Centuries, Princeton University.
Stefan Heidemann participated in the panel Populations and Settlement.
Abstract: Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) - The Early Islamic Empire in the 7th and 8th Centuries – Governing the Regions of the Roman and Sasanian World
The Early Islamic Empire was by far the largest Empire of Antiquity, uniting most of the Ancient World under one rule, embracing the Roman Mediterranean and the Hellenistic Persian legacy of the Old World Dry Belt. When we want to understand how that Early Empire was able to unite this enormous land mass, the spatial and economic dimension and the dynamics between transregional and diverse regional elites have to be understood. The civilizational momentum in this apex of Late Antiquity of the Islamic empire was to merge the Roman Mediterranean and the Iranian empire into one, allowing for cross-fertilization on many levels.
The Empire lasted from the middle of the 7th century to about 940 was the last of the late Antique empires. A late antique empire is defined as a highly monetized empire; with expenditure largely based on taxes in cash with institutions paid in money from its state coffers, such as the army, the imperial cult of the state religion, public roads, and urban water supply. This changes in about the 940s, when the caliphal administration based on tax-money collapsed, being replaced by regional powers, when a steep de-monetization of economy and tax-administration occurred. A different society emerged with the Seljuqs in the 11th century with Fāṭimids in Egypt. The society which emerged from the Islamic empire is here better known as Goitein’s Mediterranean Society of the Geniza period.
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THE 8TH CENTURY Patterns of Transition in Economy and Trade Throughout the Late Antique, Early Medieval and Islamicate Mediterranean, Oct. 3-7, 2017, Berlin
The “8th century" has been historically and archaeologically considered as a sort of watershed between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The definition of the transformations in this period is a crucial issue, especially concerning continuity and change of the economic structures in the Late Antique Mediterranean world. The aim of this international interdisciplinary conference is to bring together scholars from several disciplines, including Roman, Late Antique, Islamic, and Medieval History, Archaeology, Archaeometry, Numismatics, Philology and Papyrology, dealing with the 8th century’s threshold from different perspectives, in order to re-evaluate the problematic of this transition in terms of continuity/disruption by combining archaeological data and written—literary as well as documentar—sources.
Prof. Stefan Heidemann will be the key note speaker on Oct. 6, 2017, giving lecture on "Transforming spatial economic relations in the Eighth Century - The largest empire of the Late Antiquity."
Abstract: The Islamic Empire was by far the largest empire embracing most of the Roman-Hellenistic World from Central Asia to the Atlantic, except for the lands north of the Mediterranean; most of them being related to the Empire via economic ties. The empire covered three major economic zones, the western Mediterranean, the eastern Mediterranean and the Iranian world. The new empire broke down the boundaries between the old dichotomy of the Hellenized Sasanian Iran and the Roman Mediterranean to transform the lands of the arid Old World Dry Belt creating new spatial realties by its elite structure, its army, its taxation and monetary systems.
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33. Deutscher Orientalisten Tag "Asien, Afrika und Europa", Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Sep. 18-22, 2017
The ERC project “The Early Islamic Empire at Work – The View From the Regions Toward the Center” organizes two panels at the 33. Deutscher Orientalisten Tag, one on 'Oriental Empires at Work' and another on 'Reconsidering Kharijism in Early Islamic History' in cooperation with Dr. Teresa Bernheimer/ SOAS University of London. (panel overview)
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Panel 77: Oriental Empires at Work
Thurs. Sep. 21, 2017, 4-6 pm.
The study of medieval empires often invokes notions of classical empires associated with the precedent of the Roman Empire. For those studying empires of the ancient and medieval world in the Islamic world, in China, and in the Indian subcontinent, the Classical Roman Empire becomes a benchmark for how empires function and operate. This panel seeks to move beyond this historiographical bias in the study of medieval empires and examines the early Islamic empire and empires of South and East Asia. The panelists will explore the role of imperial capitals and whether or not they are central to the ideology and working of empires; how elites contributed to political and religious rhetoric in empires with diverse and multi-confessional communities and subjects; and how the interaction between regional and transregional elites were employed by the empire in its capitals, provinces, and villages. This panel is sponsored by Universität Hamburg, ERC Project: "The Early Islamic Empire at Work - The View from the Region Toward the Center."
Organizers: Stefan Heidemann and Ahmad Khan (Universität Hamburg, ERC Project: The Early Islamic Empire at Work - The View from the Region Toward the Center)
Abstract: Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) - Did the Early Islamic Empire have an imperial capital like the Roman Empire?
In 2005, Hugh Kennedy published an important history of the Early Islamic Empire, 'When Baghdad Ruled the World,' an obvious allusion to similar titles, such as, 'When Rome Ruled the World.' This paper investigates the function of imperial capitals in medieval empires. It explores the role that Rome played in imperial expansion, the empire’s ideology, administration, and its status as the seat of the emperor and then contrasts this with the status and sequence of imperial cities in the early Islamic empire. It studies the changing residences of the caliphs, and explores the curious situation in which the organisation of the early Islamic empire had very little to do with the original home of the religion, Mecca and Medina.
Abstract: Karsten Johannig (Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen) - 'Cosmopolitan Identities between Rome and India'
This paper explores the connections between religion and cosmopolitan forms of language. It does so through a comparative analysis of materials drawn from the so-called Second Sophistic (c. AD 50-250), a classicizing Hellenic elite cultural movement under the Roman empire, and from the Sanskrit courtly culture of early medieval India. Ritual, cosmology and myth were not usually the main themes of the eloquent Second Sophistic speeches. Intellectuals generally added religious elements only when in support of wider-ranging political and cultural themes. In this respect Dio Chrysostom was no exception in his Alexandrian and Borysthenitic orations, given respectively in the metropolis and in the Black Sea frontier town of Olbia. This paper, however, argues that religious discourse was not merely for ad hoc use. Through a comparison of the two speeches, I hope to show that the multifaceted ancient religious world more profoundly served as a backdrop on which Dio could write his own Stoic, cosmopolitan vision. A vision that playfully posits himself as both an expert and a quasi heaven-sent moralist, encouraging and correcting, depending on place and context. Thus, while Dio’s combined use of the obsolete Attic dialect and mythology further strengthens his image of a truth that is both beyond time and place, local factors constantly balance the picture. In early India, in comparable imperial and universalizing societies, poets and courtly intellectuals would likewise try to tap into the king’s heavenly sanction to define normativity. For this, an impeccable mastery of Sanskrit was the ideal tool.
Abstract: Ahmad Khan (Universität Hamburg) - The Early Islamic Empire as an Empire of Elites
This paper uses new documentary sources and the existing literary material to document the ways in which the early Islamic empire operated with a vast and sprawling bureaucracy. It looks at how this bureaucratic system worked at the levels of the imperial centre, the province, and the village. It suggests that if we wish to understand how the early Islamic empire operated in the seventh-tenth centuries, we must pay greater attention to the painstaking and mundane activities of those employed by the state in nearby and far-flung regions of the empire.
Abstract: Hanstein Sebastian (Orientalisches Institut der Universitat Leipzig) - Caliph and Supreme Sultan: The Suzerainity of the Seljuq Sanjar over Baghdad and His relation Toward the Abbasids
Im Jahre 1119 erhob sich Sanǧar (gest. 1157) zum ubergeordneten Grossultan (as-sulṭān al-aʿẓam) des gesamten Selǧuqenreiches, wobei er in dessen Westhalfte das fortan von ihm abhängige Subsultanat der sog. Irak-Selǧuqen einrichtete. Infolge dieser neuen imperialen Ordnung dehnte sich sein politischer Zustandigkeitsbereich auch auf Bagdad und das ʿAbbāsidenkalifat aus, jedoch sollte Sanǧar als Sultan nie personlich bis in die Tigrismetropole kommen. Umso interessanter ist es zu fragen, auf welche Weise er uber die Jahrzehnte hinweg welchen Einfluss in Bagdad ausuben konnte und wie es gerade hier, an einer der Schaltstellen der Macht, um seine Anerkennung als Reichsoberhaupt (in ḫuṭba und sikka) bestellt war. Welche Aufmerksamkeit schenkte der im fernen Ḫurāsān residierende Grossultan den komplizierten politischen Verhaltnissen der Kalifenstadt überhaupt? Im Vortrag soll es insbesondere auch darum gehen, wie Sanǧars Kommunikation mit den sich damals sukzessive von den Selǧuqen emanzipierenden ʿAbbāsiden (al-Mustaršid, ar-Rāšid, al-Muqtafī) verlief, also um die konkreten Kontakte zwischen dem "Sultan der Sultane" und dem zur Herrschaftslegitimation dienenden "Befehlshaber der Glaubigen". Die Beziehungen zwischen beiden Instanzen waren oft angespannt; gegenseitige Ehrungen und Geschenke schlossen nicht aus, dass man zur gleichen Zeit gegeneinander spielte. Im Verlauf einer der schwereren Krisen fehlte nicht viel und Sanǧar selbst ware mit einem Heer auf Bagdad marschiert (interessant ist auch seine Rolle bei den zwei Kalifenwechseln). Dies und vieles mehr ergab die systematische Auswertung einer Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Quellen, welche es unter anderem zulies, uberregionale Netzwerke zu rekonstruieren. Denn naturlich waren in die politischen Affaren und diplomatischen Schauspiele noch einige weitere Personen verwickelt, darunter Wesire und Koniginnen.
Panel 65: Reconsidering Kharijism in Early Islamic History
Wed. Sep. 20, 2017, 9- 12:00 am
"Scholarship on the early period of Islam has concentrated on the political history of the Arab conquests and the development of Sunnism and Shiism as the major branches of the emerging religion. The history and role of what is commonly considered the third major branch, the ‘Kharijites’ (Arabic: khawarij, ‘those who go out’), a blanket term to describe groups of early Muslim rebels who apparently were neither supporters of the Alids nor of proto-Sunnism, has been largely neglected. The main reason for this neglect has been the reliance of scholarship on the mainstream literary sources. While this material is rich and varied, and includes many different kinds of writings (historical chronicles, theological manuals, biographical and legal works, and the like), the extant material mostly dates to the ninth and tenth centuries CE at the earliest— about two to three hundred years after the events it describes. It has been shown to be full of inconsistencies on minor and major issues, reflecting the concerns and debates of a very different period and context.
Particularly problematic with regard to the Kharijites is that reliance on these sources favours the centralizing narratives of later Sunnis and Shiʿites. Few Kharijite works have survived to tell a different story, and thus the Kharijites are depicted as violent rebels and quintessential heretics: the first 'sect' of Islam. Modern scholarship has broadly accepted the perspective of the mainstream tradition. There have been shorter studies on Kharijite sub-groups as well as heightened interest in the Ibadiyya in recent years; however, a proper (re-)examination of early Kharijism is not available, with the most detailed introductions written over 100 years ago (Brünnow 1884, and Wellhausen 1901).
This panel aims to bring together new considerations concerning the history and historiography of early Kharijite movements. By broadening the source base and conceptual perspective, the papers call into question the hitherto almost unchallenged connection between ‘political’ and ‘religious’ Kharijism and examine the extent to which the various Kharijite movements may be seen as anything other than (at most) loosely connected groups of insurgents, thus shedding new light on the intriguing phenomenon of ‘Kharijism’ in early Islam."
Organizers: Dr. Teresa Bernheimer (SOAS University of London, Dep. of History), Dr. Hannah-Lena Hagemann (Universität Hamburg, ERC Project: The Early Islamic Empire at Work - The View from the Region Toward the Center).
Abstract: Dr. Hannah-Lena Hagemann (Universität Hamburg) - Rebels, Zealots, Heretics? Reconsidering Khārijism in Early Islam
The Khārijites are commonly considered the first schismatics of Islam, splitting from the early umma in the course of the first civil war (c656-661 CE) over perceived human transgressions against God's rule(s) committed by both parties to the conflict. They are described as religious fanatics who declared all non-Khārijites to be unbelievers that could lawfully be killed, using excessive force against their enemies (including women and children) and propagating a radically strict understanding of Islamic tenets. At the same time, they are depicted as excessively pious Muslims who stood by their beliefs even in the most dire of circumstances and gladly accepted - indeed, actively sought - a martyr's death. This image of Khārijism has survived through the centuries and proved quite pervasive - many modern militant Islamist groups such as al-Qaʾida and Daesh are frequently referred to as neo-Khārijites. Despite the Khārijites' notoriety, however, we still know very little about them. Their origins remain obscure (despite the Islamic tradition's insistence on the Battle of Ṣiffīn as their point of departure), as does the development of the various Khārijite 'sub-sects' that burst onto the scene seemingly all at once, at the same time and place, in the context of the second civil war. Indeed, what Khārijism meant in its various different contexts remains poorly understood: what, if anything, connected the various Khārijite rebels and revolts across the vast territories of the early Islamic empire? Should we think of 'political' and 'ideological' Khārijism as one single, cohesive phenomenon? What does Umayyad-era Khārijism have in common with ʿAbbāsid-era Khārijism? Does the picture of religious zealotry and heresy hold up under closer examination of the source material, especially non-literary sources? This paper will address some of these issues and questions and seek to sketch out avenues of future research, asserting that a reassessment of Khārijism is vital for our understanding of early Islamic history and historiography more widely."
Abstract: Dr. Antonia Bosanquet (Universität Hamburg) - Ibadi Authority in Abbasid Geographical Texts
In the ninth century the Abbasid enclave of Ifrīqiya was almost surrounded by a number of independent statelets that alternately supported, ignored or threatened Aghlabid sovereignty in the region. The largest of these was the Ibadi Rustamid dynasty, whose political and religious opposition to the Aghlabids is well-known.
Despite the lack of diplomatic contact, the Abbasid geographical authors were anything but indifferent to the Rustamids and the trade routes that they controlled. Their texts – especially Aḥmad al-Yaʿqūbī’s (d. 897) Kitāb al-Buldān - evince both curiosity and knowledge of the workings of the Rustamid state that have proved invaluable for later researchers.
This presentation examines and compares the portrayal of the Rustamids in four Abbasid geographical texts. It also relates these “outsider perspectives” to the “insider perspective” of Ibn Ṣaghīr, who lived in Tahert, the city of the Rustamid rulers, shortly before it was conceded to the Fatimids in 909. A central question is how far the geographical regions of Ibadi authority identified by the Abbasid writers can be seen as exclusively Rustamid, or whether a degree of power-sharing with Aghlabid rule or administration is also recognizable.
Abstract: Dr. Teresa Bernheimer (SOAS University of London, Dep. of History) - Kharijism' and 'the Kharijites': The Case of Early Islamic Iran
The broad geographical area of Iran witnessed an astounding number of uprisings in the decades and centuries following the Arab conquests. The form which these revolts took was as manifold as their number, yet many are described in the sources as being led by 'Kharijites’. Analysizing both the textual and material evidence, this talk will seek to question the nature of these uprisings — and what it was that they held in common. The starting point is the revolt of one Qatari b. al-Fuja’a, an Arab from the tribe of Tamim, who in the late 60s and 70s hijri established himself as caliph in South-Western Iran. Extraordinarily, there are a number of coin issues extant which attest to Qatari’s authority in the areas of Fars and Kirman (69/688-89- 77/696-97). Carrying the famous Kharijite slogan la hukma illa lillah (There is no judgement but God’s), these coins include inscriptions in both Middle Persian and Arabic and lead us to question the context and content of Kharijite revolts: 1) Their audience and support: the sources give the impression that the main following was of Arab background, but the coins seem to be clearly addressed at a local Iranian audience and economy; 2) the claim to authority of the Kharijite leaders: in addition the address amir al-mu’minin, there are also a number of Iranian titles and honorifics attested for Qatari (and other Kharijite rebels), such as dihqan or buzurgwari; 3) the context—both Late Antique and Iranian—of the Kharijite main slogan, la hukma illa lillah, which is usually understood to refer to the quarrels of the First Civil War. Thus, the paper aims to reconsider the history and historiography of early Kharijite movements by examining what 'Kharijism’ and 'the Kharijites’ were in early Islamic Iran.
Abstract: Azaher Miah (Oxford University) - A Reappraisal of Ibāḍī Ḥadīth in Light of Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr's Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh
Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr (d. ca 200/815) was a prolific theologian active in Kufa and Basra. According to Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist, Ḍirār has fifty-seven texts to his name, including the Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh wa-l-ighrāʾ. Discovered recently, the Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh is a promising text for which historians of the formative period of Islam have been waiting keenly. It is dialogical in its style with archaisms strewn throughout; damning references are made to the emerging sects and their fallacious doctrines. Of particular concern to Ḍirār is their increasing reliance on hadith as a basis for dogma despite the preponderance of contradictory reports from the Prophet. Before Ibn al-Nadīm, the Muʿtazilī al-Khayyāṭ (d. ca 300/913) reminds his reader in Kitāb al-Intiṣār of the Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh by Ḍirār. In the 1960s, Josef van Ess proposed that Ibn Qutayba’s (d. 276/889) Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth was written in response to one of Ḍirār’s works. As a result, in 2014, the editors of Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh, Hüseyin Hansu & Mehmet Kaskin, demonstrated that Ibn Qutayba’s introduction cites numerous passages from Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh. The text, it can be said, is rather early. Why, then, do we find textual parallels from Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh to al-Rabīʿ ibn Ḥabīb’s Musnad? Within both texts are thirty-five hadiths sharing similar content (matn) and arrangement (tartīb). The unashamed plagiarism challenges the current scholarship in the field: John Wilkinson (2010) argued that al-Rabīʿ’s Musnad is a fake with a predilection to borrow from Aḥmad’s Musnad. The Ibāḍiyya were supposedly unconcerned with Prophetic reports, and remained so, up until the nahḍa (mid-eighteenth century). For the first time, we have evidence from an unlikely source that upholds early Ibāḍī involvement in hadith transmission."
Abstract: Mehmetcan Akpinar (Tübingen University) Kharijism in Kufa: Accounts on Abū Bakr and ʿAlī according to Ḍirār b. ʿAmr’s (d. ca. 200/815) Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh
2nd/8th century thelogian Ḍirār b. ʿAmr’s (d. ca. 200/815) K. al-taḥrīsh has been recently discovered and published. The work, which most likely belongs to the 2nd/8th-century Abbasid milieu of Kufa, addresses (the problem of) the conflicting nature of the historical material on various topics and demonstrates that contradictory traditions (ḥadīths) are often shaped by sectarian and theological motives, and hence constitute a major problem in terms of their reliability and utility in religious matters. Undertaking this critique, K. al-taḥrīsh presents a wealth of historical traditions which were in circulation in Kufa in the second half the 2nd/8th century, and names several competing camps such as the Khārijites, Shiʿītes, Murjiʾītes, ʿUthmāniyya etc. who supported their political and theological formulations with conflicting clusters of historical traditions.
In this paper, I would like to focus on the group of traditions that K. al-taḥrīsh attributes to the Kufan Khārijite groups, especially on the merits and rankings of the early companions such as ʿAlī, Abū Bakr, ʿUthmān. In comparisons between ʿAlī and Abū Bakr with regard to precedence in conversion, for example, we find a tradition that asserts that ʿAlī was the first person to accept Islam, followed by other traditions according to which the Prophet made ʿAlī his brother and appointed him as his legatee (waṣī) and his successor over his umma. Yet, in another section, the work presents the opposing view, which appears to be defended by the Kufan Khārijites. A tradition reporting a conversation between al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (Basran, d. 110/728) and the grammarian Abū Bakr al-Hudhalī (Basran, d. 167/783) about the identity of the first Muslim reveals that ʿAlī’s primacy is rejected on the basis of his minor age. In this section, other traditions are presented which rather favor Abū Bakr’s precedence in Islam. As I will show in my paper, a unique account in the now-lost Ibāḍī work K. al-radd ʿalā al-rawāfiḍ by a Kufan contemporary of Ḍirār, namely the Ibāḍite scholar ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī (d. early 3rd/9th century) demonstrates the only parallel version of such a tradition preserved in K. al-taḥrīsh. Drawing on several examples, the paper will illustrate the contested borders of political and theological polemics of the 2nd/8th century in Kufan milieus, especially between the Khārijite and Shiʿīte groups."
Abstract: Raashid S. Goyal (Cornell University) - The Piety and Theology of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and the Question of Khārijī Influence
Despite extensive study of his life and thought, the renowned Umayyad sage and scholar al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728) remains one of the most enigmatic personalities of the early centuries of Islam. His relationship to his Khārijī contemporaries and their ideology is particularly shrouded in mystery, with some reports ascribing to him a manifestly anti-Khārijī position while others suggest he was sympathetic to Khārijī ideas and was influenced by them in his theology and teaching. The present study will examine both possibilities based on an evaluation of the narrative material and the texts in which it appears. In pursuit of this line of inquiry, it is hoped that broader themes in the development of militant piety and asceticism will become discernible, especially the degree to which Khārijites were influential in shaping the norms of accepted piety. While Khārijites of the period have typically been portrayed as rigid adherents to their given sects, it may well be the case that many did not subscribe to any distinct set of dogmas and were cast in much the same mold as al-Ḥasan, harboring broadly anti-authoritarian sentiments and disapproving more harshly than most of the worldly infatuations of common believers and their deficiencies in religious practice. By such a definition, the Khawārij would have typified a subset within a general movement of religious zealotry. Conversely, al-Ḥasan’s dogmatic aberrancies can be seen as reflecting a typically Khārijī proclivity for theological debate and experimentation. al-Ḥasan’s application of the term munāfiq, hypocrite, as a less explicit parallel to Khārijī takfīr is supported by other idiosyncratic wordings attributed to him, just as his position rejecting pre-destination, if this view can be affirmed, may accord with early Khārijī thought on qadr."
Abstract: Abdulrahman al-Salimi (Oman) - A Critique of Terminologies in Early Ibadi Literature
This paper examines terminology used in the early Ibadi epistles written during the 1st-2nd/7th-8th centuries. The paper will focus mainly on the fourteen texts published recently under the title “Early Ibadi Epistles (2nd/8th century)" )Brill, 2017), while also including the Epistle of Salim b. Dhakwan (2002). This approach is significant in that it attempts to understand how Ibadi scholars, during the period of the formation of Islam (up to the first half of the 2nd/8th century), sought to distinguish themselves from other Islamic groups in introducing their discourses and their use of terms in the debate."
Technical and Aesthetic Innovations at the Abbasid Court, Sept. 13, 2017, University of Pennsylvania
Prof. Stefan Heidemann will give a lecture on “Technical and Aesthetic Innovations at the Abbasid Court” at the University of Pennsylvania, on Sept. 13, 2017.
Abstract: At the turn of the 9th c. CE, the period between the reigns of caliphs al- Mansur and al- Mutawakkil can be associated with significant changes in material and visual culture such as the re-invention of brass and plant-ash glass technology as well as the creation of what has been called “Samarra style.” Who were the agents of these changes, in what social milieu did they live, and in what locations did these innovations take place?
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'Universal Empire: Comparison in search of a pre-colonial world history' at the 5th European Congress on World and Global History, Aug. 31.- Sep. 3, 2017, Budapest
The 5th European Congress on World and Global History (ENIUGH) will take place in Budapest, hosted by the Central European University (Department of History) and Corvinus University (Karl Polanyi Research Centre at the Institute of Sociology and Social Policy), supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Research Centre for Humanities.
Under the overall theme “Ruptures, Empires, Revolutions” and on the occasion of the centennial of the Russian Revolution, the global context and repercussions of the revolution in particular are discussed while the role of revolutions in global history is debated in general. Further the relationship between empire and revolution is explored aiming at challenging still influential narratives, like the supposedly universal trend from “empire to nation” through a comparative and global perspective on empires and imperial societies.
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Our colleague Ahmad Khan participated in the following section of the conference.
Universal empire - Comparison in search of a pre-colonial world history
Date: 3 September 2017, 09:00–11:30
Venue: Central European University, Nador u. 13, N13 311
Abstract
This panel explores the notion of universal empire as a category which could be used to structure and shape a truly global or at least Eurasian pre-colonial history. Many of the attempts at writing global history before the age of capitalism and colonialism end up trying to export concepts drawn solely from European history and then claim they are global. So we have had debates about a global middle ages, or a global early modernity, some even want capitalism to start in Ancient Mesopotamia. But, instead of trying somewhat paradoxically to shoehorn pre-modern history, an age before European dominance, into categories designed for Europe, we try to explore alternative ways of structuring pre-colonial history. Running counter to the rising trend of "connected history", in the context of the rise of early colonial empires, ancient historians have been moving away from connection to explore comparisons precisely to break out of a European straight jacket. The presentations here, for instance, spring from an attempt to examine alternative ways of conceptualising Rome. Rome has traditionally been thought of in European terms, but Europe is commonly defined as the absence of a new universal Roman empire. In world history, however, universal empire looms large. So here is a context from which we can understand Rome in Global terms:
Convenor / Chair
Peter Fibiger Bang (University of Copenhagen)
Commentators
Hilde de Weert (Leiden University)
Ahmad Khan (University of Hamburg)
Panelists/ Papers
Kristian Kanstrup Christensen (University of Copenhagen) & Karsten Johanning (University of Copenhagen): Imperial cosmopolitanism between India and Rome
Jacob Tullberg (University of Copenhagen): Emperor, Pope and Caliph: imperial universalism between Aachen and Baghdad
Lars-Emil Nybo Nissen (University of Copenhagen): From early-modern to late imperial: Qing, Habsburg and Bourbon dynastic continental realms
International Symposium - Byzantine Gold Coins in the World of Late Antiquity, Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations (IHAC), Northeast Normal University, Changchun, People’s Republic of China, June 23-25, 2017
Abstracts: Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg)
The Islamic Late Antiquity in Western Asian. Concepts, Transformation and Monetary Organisation.
The concept of money in the Late Antique World (Sasanian and Islamic) will be contrasted to the concept of Chinese money. What consequences did this have for the coin circulation and the archaeological finds. While in the Hellenistic World, in its Mediterranean and its Iranian wing, the value of money is theoretically based on the intrinsic metal content, legal scholars, especially in the Islamic Empire, acknowledged the market forces, which usually gave coined money a premium over precious metal bullion. Copper serves as fiduciary coinage, and is regarded as substitute for money by legal scholars, but not as money in all transactions. In the Chinese world the idea money comes from the labor invested in tools, which ultimately resulted in the ubiquitous cash coins. Silver and gold were traded as a commodity in ingots, as silk bales did. Despite being commodities they serve in in a monetary function, but without all traits as money in the western sense. This dichotomy has consequences for the zone of commercial contact, Transoxiana and Xinjang, the regions between the Sasanian/Islamic and the T'ang Empires.
In the seventh century we observe in the Islamic Mediterranean a merger and transformation of monetary zones. Although the Islamic empire stretches from the Hindukush to the Atlantic, certain traits of the Roman Western Mediterranean and the Eastern Mediterranean, and Sasanian circulation zone persisted into the Islamic empire. The focus will be here on the continuation of Sasanian heritage in the Islamic East.
The Transition of the Monetary Situation of Khurasan and Transoxiana between the Islamic and T'ang Empire between 600 and 800
Based on the concepts in the first lecture, Transoxiana will be looked at in greater detail, how the monetary situation changes from the Sasanian to the Islamic period. Firstly, after the Hephthalite victory over the Sasanian, Sasanian silver drachmas flowed to Transoxiana and beyond to the Tarim Basin (Xinjiang). This flow also brought Byzantine gold coins to Central Asia and China. But there monetary function was limited. With the advance of T'ang dynasty to the Tarim Basin in 640 C.E. and theestablishment of the T'ang protectorate over the Sogdian city states, Chinese coins became current to Transoxiana. The Islamic conquest first did not change much of this situation, except the copper coinage showed Islamic and Chinese traits. The Chinese defeat in 751 C.E. against Arab armies at Talas, and rebellion of An Lushan in 755 C.E. resulted in a withdrawal of imperial T'ang interest in Transoxiana. Transoxiana became in the wake of the 9th century wholly integrated into the Islamic empire, and silver dirhams did not reach anymore Chinese main land.
International Conference: Spatial Thought in Islamicate Societies, 1000–1600: The Politics of Genre, Image, and Text, March 30 - April 1, 2017, Universität Tübingen
Recent years have seen new approaches to the history of geography and cartography, as well as spatial thought more broadly, in the Islamicate world. Place and space are now increasingly understood as invented reference systems that are entangled with political, religious, cultural, and intellectual history. Thus contextualized, geographic knowledge proves to be more dynamic and varied than previously thought, and many more genres of literature can be seen as relevant to its study. These include world and regional geographies, urban topographies, pilgrimage guides, administrative manuals, travelogues, religious or astronomical treatises, encyclopedias, legal documents, and belletristic compendia, many of which are accompanied by images or maps. At the same time, questions arise about the importance of geographical knowledge to historical actors and the ways in which spatial considerations affected state policies, as well as quotidian religious or economic activities undertaken by, for instance, political and military leaders, merchants and travellers, or itinerant Sufis and pilgrims. Moreover, opportunities to analyze centuries-old geographic and cartographic texts have been enhanced by new technologies such as electronic data processing, the unprecedented availability of geodata, and the tools of digital cartography. Taken together, it seems that what was previously understood narrowly as the history of geography or cartography is shifting to a more diversely linked spatial history, with new relevance for the study of Islamicate societies.
The aim of this conference is to explore these developments further, with special emphasis on the following four interrelated categories:
- GENRE: Is genre a useful concept for understanding spatial thought in this period? For instance, do works of geography have anything in common with urban topographies or religious treatises? Can we meaningfully speak of the development of an intellectual field with specific methods or standards for criticism? How do images and maps relate to questions of genre? How did literary traditions combine with formal and thematic innovation? What role did geography play in encyclopedic literature?
- AUTHORSHIP: Who composed spatially-oriented texts and from which intellectual or professional backgrounds? What motivated them to do so? How can we discern and describe boundaries or transitions between collectively transmitted knowledge and individual contributions? Was there a direct relationship between the “state” and the composition of such texts? In what times and places did they proliferate? Who designed or drew maps? Is there any indication that authors thought of themselves as a group?
- THEME: How do we understand space and place through texts? Can we detect thematic patterns across genres? How do conceptions and descriptions in the texts respond to each other? What is the relationship between a written text and its accompanying images or maps? What is the relationship between the materiality of a place and its representation in a text? What is the relationship between travel and text? To what degree do thematic patterns correspond with social and political change?
- RECEPTION: Who was the audience for spatially-oriented texts and images? Where, by whom, and for whom were they copied over the centuries? How were they transformed in their copying? Can we reconstruct reception histories for these texts or detect the uses to which they were put? Did spatially-oriented texts and images matter?
In addition to exchange on historical issues, we hope the conference will be an opportunity to discuss directions for future research. What is the state of our knowledge about the manuscript heritage? Are cataloguing, digitising, (re-)editing, and translating pressing tasks? Which tools do we lack that are available in neighbouring fields of study? How can the advance of digital humanities be made fruitful? How can we develop the “spatial turn” in medieval Islamicate history?
Since so far the vast majority of research on these topics has stopped with al-Muqaddasi at around the year 1000, we encourage presentations that approach spatial thought from any part of the Islamicate world within the loose parameters of 1000–1600 CE.
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Abstract: Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) - Defining the Abbasid Empire on its own Terms
Islamic Empire as the pinnacle of the late antique empires in its extent from the Hindukush to the Atlantic had no obvious official term with which the contemporary authors addressed it. There is seemingly also no equivalent term for the capital or residence of the caliph, which distinguish this city from any other. A closer look at the provinces shows that also here the terminology and the extent of the regions covered by a provincial name varies from author to author, and makes it difficult to write an administrative history of the empire. The descriptions of the empire fall along an obvious watershed. These are decades of the regionalization around the 940s. While Yaʿqūbī and Khurradādhbih describe the empire while still functioning, al-Muqaddasī as retro-projects an provincial system to the empire, as the "best divisions in the knowledge of the regions", which never existed in this form.
Agents of Changes in the Material Culture of the Empire. Technical and Aesthetical Innovations at the Abbasid Court. March 15, 2017, Princeton University
In Memory of Elisabeth Ettinghausen (1918-2016), Prof. Heidemann presents a lecture on "Agents of Changes in the Material Culture of the Empire. Technical and Aesthetical Innovations at the Abbasid Court" at the Princeton University, New Jersey, Department of Art and Archaeology in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America.
Abstract: Elisabeth Ettinghausen was always interested in changes and influences in the material culture. The period between the caliphs al-Mansur and al-Mutawakkil, at the turn of the 9th century, can be associated with eminent changes in the material culture and decorative arts, such as the re-invention of brass, and plant ash-glass technology, to the creation of the Samarran style. Who were the agents of these changes, in what social milieu, and where took they place?
Ninth Seminar on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Numismatics in Memoriam Boris Kochnev (1940-2002), Hofstra University, New York, March 18, 2017
Boris Kochnev Memorial Seminar on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Numismatics at Hofstra University
On Saturday, March 18, 2017, the Middle Eastern and Central Asian Program at Hofstra University will hold the Ninth Seminar on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Numismatics in Memoriam Boris Kochnev (1940-2002).
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For more information contact: aleksandr.naymark@hofstra.edu
Abstract: S. Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) & Kevin Butcher (Warwick University) - Assur, Northern Iraq, Settlement Pattern, History, and Coin Finds After the Fall of the Assyrian Empire 614 BCE.
In July 1914 the excavation of one of the most significant capitals in human history, Assur, ended successfully. After a division of finds, the objects were dispatched to Berlin on the eve of WWI.
Coin finds constitute an independent source for the history of the settlement, the Tigris region, and for the coin circulation after fall of the Assyrian empire in 614 BC, from the Achaemenid to the late Ottoman empire. They fill an important gap in the history of Assur, whose name in the post-Assyrian period is hardly attested to. For the Arsacid period, the coin finds highlight the surprising permeability of the border from the Roman provinces to Arsacid north-eastern Mesopotamia.
With the Sāsānian conquest in about 240/1, life in Assur apparently stopped. For the following sixteen hundred years we can distinguish at least three separate settlement phases, and almost each phase corresponds to changing names for the location. While we do not know what the settlement between the 7th and 8th century was called, in the 12th and 14th centuries it was referred to as al-ʿAqr. For this period, we have more literary references to its history, at least compared with the preceding 1,800 years. The coin finds, together with the textual references, allow for an insight into the political and economic development of “a large village”. For the 17th and 18th centuries, the coins point to a revived settlement, now under the name of Qalʿat Shirqāt.
The Origins of the Islamic State, UCL London Feb., 16-17, 2017
The Origins of the Islamic State: Sovereignty and Power in the Middle Ages
The medieval roots of the Islamic state have never been more relevant or misunderstood. Early Islamic history is used to bolster Daesh propaganda of establishing a new caliphate as well as to justify the imposition of strict Sharia law, the oppression and genocide of religious minorities, and the destruction of Islamic (and pre-Islamic) heritage at an unprecedented rate. In turn, ISIL and other Wahhabi and Salafi groups are often critiqued by policy-makers and the world media as medieval in their methods and stance. These developments pose significant challenges for scholars of the early Islamic world.
Our colleagues Hannah-Lena Hagemann and Peter Verkinderen will present a paper on the study of elites in the early Islamic empire on the two-day conference "Orines of the Islamic State" hosted by the UCL Institute of Archaeology and generously funded by the British Academy under its Rising Star Engagement Award scheme.
The conference aims to produce the first comparative account of the emergence of the earliest Islamic states and Muslim rulership, and to open up discussions about how to challenge the simplification of this complex history by ISIL and affiliate groups, western policy makers and the world media.
It will bring together scholars from three core disciplines (archaeology, history and art-history) to discuss the development of power and authority in the earliest Islamic states. It also will be the first to bring together scholars working in different regions: Spain, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. The aim is to explore the problem of the early Islamic state from these different disciplinary and regional perspectives and open up a range of ways looking at power and politics in the Islamic context.
Papers are invited on the following core themes:
- Theoretical and methodological approaches to Islamic states
- Discourse, authority and legitimization
- Muslim sovereignty and rulership
- The workings of the caliphate
- Daesh and the use and abuse of early Islamic History
Second International Congress on the History of Money and Numismatics in the Mediterranean World, Jan. 5-8, 2017, Antalya
The second congress, organized by the Suna and Inan Kıraç Research Institute on Mediterranean Civilizations (AKMED) founded by the Vehbi Koç Foundation, aims to bring together specialists and scholars who study the monetary history and numismatics of the Mediterranean so that the results of their original research studies can be shared, thus contributing to the field. The scope of the papers covers the origins of the concept of money, the monetary and economic history of the Mediterranean region and the coins minted or circulated across this landscape starting from the invention of coinage to the end of the Byzantine era.
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Abstract: Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg)
Creation and Break-up of the Monetary Union of the Early Islamic Empire
The Early Islamic Empire’s economic rise coincided with the process of creating a monetary union in terms of dīnārs and dirhams. Local coinages continued to exist side by side with imperial money, similar to the earlier Roman Empire in the East. The process of monetary integration and establishing a more centralized administration of the minting system took some time and reached its pinnacle with al-Maʾmūnʾs reforms. That system is reflected and enshrined in Islamic law which was formulated in that time. Since the Sāmarrāʾ-period and the shattering of the imperial government system, some regions went their own way in monetary circulation. This process would eventually lead to a fragmented monetary system in the early 11th century, characterized by few interregional trade coinages and a number of regional circulation zones.
Abstract: Alberto Canto Garcia (Universitad Autónoma Madrid)
From Visigothic to Umayyad Coinage: Changes and Solutions in Monetary Policy in al-Andalus (8th – 9th Centuries)
The Islamic conquest of Visigothic Hispania appears as a significant watershed also in monetary terms. After Umayyad conquest, the old Visigothic gold tremisses disappeared completely and fast, comparable only to the disappearance of Byzantine nomismata in Syria and Egypt. The Visigothis coinage was replaced by a new and alien monetary system. This happened in three stages: first, a conquest or transitional phase (93-98/711-716) with a system of two denominations in Byzantine tradition, a gold solidus and its divisions, as well as copper coins (fals / fulūs). This system had much in common with the monetary conditions of Ifrīqiya (present-day Tunisia), Miṣr (Egypt), and Syria. Literary documents, such as treaty of Tudmir in 713, help to explain the situation. Second phase, since 102/720, the reformed epigraphic coins appeared in al-Andalus, first the gold dīnār followed by the silver dirham, albeit both not in high volumes. At that time the fals lost its importance within the monetary system. Finally, between 138/755 (the arrival of the Umayyad scion ʿAbd al-Raḥmān in al-Andalus), and 145/762, one metal dominated, silver dirhams with the occasional production of fulūs. This system lasted until the end of the 9th century. The growing practice of fragmentation of dirhams left the fals unnecessary to serve as small change; a situation similar to the Islamic east. The archaeological record for the monetary situation is far more complex: sites such as the palace complex of Cercadillas (Cordoba), the al-rabad of Saqunda (Córdoba), or the city of Madinat Ily (Tolmo de Minateda, Albacete), suggest a slightly different course of events. The record confirms the disappearance of the Visigothic tremissis. The emergence of the new imperial Islamic money, dirhams, in circulation was much slower. The rare presence of the dirham in circulation coincided with the survival and circulation of Late-Roman bronze coins in large quantities, especially in urban areas.
Abstract: Konstantin Kravtsov (Hermitage, Russian Federation)
Political and Monetary Integration of Ṭabaristān into the Early Islamic Empire as Reflected in Written and Numismatic Sources
The process of Ṭabaristān’s political and monetary integration into the Islamic Empire is reflected in narrative and numismatic sources. After the Arab conquest of Iran, Ṭabaristān (modern Māzandarān, south of the Caspian Sea) remained under its own autonomous rulers, the Ispahbāds, for more than a century. The focus of this talk lies on the events before and after the 760s C.E. when Ṭabaristān lost its autonomy and provincial governors were appointed by the ʿAbbāsids. A chronology will be suggested for the transition period from the Ispahbāds to the first ʿAbbāsid governors.
Abstract: Matthias Naue ( Universität Hamburg)
Estimation of the Level of Monetarization in the Early ʿAbbāsid Empire
Based on the accumulative information about Middle Eastern and Eastern European hoards, Thomas Noonan estimated the mint output and the degree of monetarization in the early ʿAbbāsid empire in his seminal article of 1986. Several questions about monetarization of the empire remain unsolved yet: What influenced or regulated the output of each individual mint? How was the mint organized? And how many dirhams were struck? Since literary sources did not address this issues, a detailed study of hoards might provide data that might answer some of these questions. The presentation will focus on one such hoard that includes about 500 dirhams which was documented at Universität Hamburg. All coins were minted in Madīnat Jayy (sister city of Iṣfahān in Jibāl, Iran), in the same year of 162/778-9 under the governor Yaḥyā al-Harashī. It is the largest number of dirhams from a single mint and year ever studied die by die, in turn allowing us to better estimate the number of coins struck. The result suggests an immense output of dirhams in that particular year, something which was already predicted in Noonan’s article. His study helps us to set the results into an empire wide perspective. For three decades before and seven years after the issue of 162/778-9 (and a small run in 163 h.), no coin production is known so far. These mint-state coins never circulated and allow us to also make assumptions on the legal dirham weight and its regulation at the mint. This study shows that that despite the predominance of the mints of Madīnat al-Salām (Baghdad) and al-Muḥammadiyya (Rayy) in the middle of the 2nd/8th century, minting operation in the provinces could be erratic but significant.
Conference Participation 2016
Power and Government – Transcultural Approaches (University of Bonn), Dec. 15-17, 2016
Kick Off Conference of the newly established SFB 1167 „Macht und Herrschaft – Vormoderne Konfigurationen in transkultureller Perspektive“ (Power and Government – Premodern Configuartions in Transcultural Perspective)
Macht and Herrschaft – Premodern Configurations in a Transcultural Perspective
Under the impression of a growing complexity and interconnectedness regarding almost all areas of life, many historical and cultural assessments have focussed on so-called modernity. Yet the processes subsumed unter the keyword of ‘globalisation‘ cannot be adequately understood without analysing past forms of political and social organisation. In this context categories of analysis which can be characterised as both transcultural and transtemporal such as Macht and Herrschaft, gain eminent importance. Since July 1st 2016, the DFG-Collaborative Research Centre 1167 therefore explicitly addresses premodern phenomena and configurations of Macht and Herrschaft in Asia, Europe and Northern Africa in a transcultural perspective. It is an integral part of the phenomenological description intended to reveal the interdependancy between an order that is factually established and its perception, depiction or annotation. In doing so, we aim to overcome or at least to mitigate the ubiquitous eurocentric approach to Macht and Herrschaft, questioning the boundaries set up by essentially European research disciplines. Thus the Collaborative Research Centre’s main objective is to attain to a comprehensive phenomenology of premodern Macht and Herrschaft.
Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) - The Apex of Late Antiquity - What sets the Islamic Empire Apart? Territory, Capitals, and Elites
The ERC Project “The Early Islamic Empire at Work, The View From the Regions Toward the Center” in Hamburg looks at an intra-imperial comparison of one of the most diverse regions of the world, in the most extensively settled strip of the Western Eurasian and North African dry belt, from the Atlantic to the Hindukush, and asks how such a large empire could be rules successfully for about 300 years, and then falling apart into different regions, but living state for another 300 years until 1256 as an umbrella state. The caliphate remained a point of reference during the Mamlūk period, having tremendous political impact as a political model, from the Ottomans to the ill-fated Islamic State with its capital al-Raqqa, and the legitimate kingdom of Morocco ruled by an Amīr al-Muʿminīn. Also the Roman state survived as umbrella until 1806, but it had a lasting political impact as a model empire until May 8th, 1945, when the third German emanation collapsed.
Looking at pre-modern empires and its working, as a western scholar, the Roman empire implicitly always serves as a model, because we know very little about the Persian Sasanian empire.
The main issues the Hamburg Projekt is going to study are:
- Some features of the Hellenistic legacy to call it Apex of late Antiquity, which includes the Hindukush.
- The function of the province, or better the idea of the province as we know it from the Roman model will be challenged, to be more precise in being equally more vague the geographical space for maintaining power.
- Does the Islamic Empire have a Capital?
- The function of imperially entitled elites connecting the different parts of the empire
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Environmental Approaches in Pre-Modern Middle Eastern Studies (Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, University of Bonn), Dec. 5-7, 2016
Abstract: Stefan Heidemann & Jan Wehberg (Universität Hamburg)
The Bukhārā Oasis Between Antiquity and the Middle Ages
An Historical, Geomorphological and Archaeological Study About the Entanglement of Irrigation, Political Developments, Geomorphology and Climate (A Project by ISAW/NYU and Hamburg University in the Application Process)
The “Bukhārā Oasis” project in application is inspired by recent studies emphazising ecological and climatic events as a predominant factor in history such as Richard Bulliet (2009) on the rise of the ʿAbbāsid empire, the apex of the cotton economy (9th and 10th centuries CE) and its fall, and Ronnie Ellenblum’s study (2012) on the demise of the Eastern Mediterranean at the end of the ʿAbbāsid period (10th and 11th centuries CE). As stimulating as both studies are, they fail to fully utilize the potential of geography and archaeology in the first case, and history in the second. Consequently, both studies – the first one written by a historian, and the second one by a geographer – use climatic events in monocausal models to explain historic phenomena. The “Bukhārā Oasis Project” aims to do this in a well-defined micro-region allowing for an exemplary study of the interplay of the physical environment and its human induced changes. Like in many arid regions in the Old world dry belt, irrigation is key to farming in the delta area of the Zerafshan river and, therefore, to the economic potential of the rural hinterland of Bukhara. Consequently, the evolution of the irrigation system impacted heavily nomad-sedentary relations in the context of the changing political, legal, and social systems. Geo-sciences and history are connected on the ground with archaeological fieldwork. Each of these geographic, climatic, social and economic factors has its own dynamics and impacts on the others. The three projects are designed to operate independently and to complement each other.
Abstract: Ahmad Khan (Universität Hamburg)
The Rural Estate Economy in the Early Islamic Empire: A View from the Province
The resources of the rural estate economy were integral not only to local economies and communities but also to the early Islamic empire at large. ʿAbd Allāh b. Ṭāhir (d. 230/845) understood this as well as anybody else. In a letter to governors and state officials, he issued the following instructions: “treat the cultivators of the province well and support the tillers of the land who have become weak. So, reinstate them in their positions, for God, Mighty and Exalted, causes us to be fed by their hands (bābarzgarān-i vilāyat madār kunīd. Va kashāvarzī keh ḍaʿīf gardad, ū rā quvvat dahīd. Va bi jāy-i khwīsh bāz ārīdh keh khudā ʿazza va jalla az dasthā-yi īshān ṭaʿām kardehast).”
Despite the centrality of the rural estate economy to the functioning of early Islamicate societies, we know depressingly little about the organisation, control, and distribution of its resources (food, water, crops, land, and labour). Using documentary sources, legal works, and local histories in Arabic and Persian, this paper offers a microhistory of the rural estate economy in the province of Khurāsān in the eighth century. I will address issues relating to the purchase of estates; their multifarious functions in rural, agricultural societies (land tenure and use); the organisation of rural estates; the regulation and management of estates; farming contracts; labour; and disputes over water and borders in the rural estate economy. This paper forms part of one chapter of a book I am currently preparing on the social, economic, and political history of medieval Khurāsān between the seventh-tenth centuries in my position as postdoctoral researcher under the auspices of the ERCProject, Universität Hamburg: The Early Islamic Empire at Work - The View from the Regions Toward the Center. I hope that this innovative conference will provide new perspectives on how social historians can incorporate emerging methods, approaches, and sources to write rural and environmental history. It would be an ideal platform for me to discuss and share my work, as well to absorb different historical and methodological approaches presented by colleagues studying different regions and historical periods.
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The Early Islamic Empire: The View from the Province, Nov. 30, 2016, Saxo-Institute, University of Copenhagen
In cooperation with Peter Bang (Associate Prof. at the SAXO-Institute - Archaeology, Ethnology, Greek & Latin, History University of Copenhagen) Ahmad Khan will give a lecture on The Early Islamic Empire: The View from the Province at the University of Copenhagen.
Abstract Ahmad Khan (Universität Hamburg) - The Early Islamic Empire: The View from the Province
The immense scale and ambition of the early Islamic empire necessitated the cultivation of a complex system to administer the imperial provinces. That this succeeded for two centuries was due in no small part to the ability of thousands of nameless officials, landowning élites, peasants, and slaves to meet the expectations demanded of them (voluntarily or involuntarily). This study documents the banality of the early Islamic empire in the remotest regions of the empire’s imperial provinces: the execution of simple functions; clear and concise records of state official corresponding with local landowning élites; extracting tribute in the form of different taxes; officials conducting land surveys; and local élites managing their own disputes and conducting economic and civil transactions independent of provincial state institutions and officials. It argues that this very banality, and the ability to execute mundane functions, ensured that the system (of empire) worked; and when it did, it connected the village, to the district, to the provincial district, to the provincial capital, to the governor’s seat, all the way to the imperial centre.
Syria: From Severus to Saladin, The University of Edinburgh, Sep. 17,2016
Syria: From Severus to Saladin
The School of History, Classics and Archaeology, in association with Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, is holding a day conference, open to students, staff and members of the public alike, organised by Dr Lucy Grig (Classics) and Dr Andrew Marsham (IMES).
The conference will include papers from a range of international, focusing on diverse aspects of the history, material and visual culture of Roman, Byzantine and Islamic Syria, as well as the current challenges to the preservation of Syria's archaeological heritage.
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Simon Gundelfinger (Hamburg): '9th and 10th Century Concepts of al-Sham: a Geographical Survey’
Reuse or New Development: sustainability of resources and tools for multi-facetted historical data and languages (Universität Hamburg) Sep. 14, 2016
On 14 September 2016, the TraCES: From Translation to Creation: Changes in Ethiopic Style and Lexicon from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages project with the ERC-funded projects COBHUNI: Contemporary Bioethics and the History of the Unborn in Islam and The Early Islamic Empire at Work: The View from the Regions Toward the Center organized a workshop on "Reuse or New Development: sustainability of resources and tools for multi-facetted historical data and languages".
Data in humanities, especially historical data, is characterized by a strong presence of vague information and uncertainty. The available Content Management Systems and annotation tools have often disregarded the requirements of research projects dealing with fuzzy data, languages with non-concatenative morphologies and scripts of non-Latin writing systems. Additionally, data encoding standards often overstress the importance of mere standardization at the expense of human readability and efficiency in terms of storage and parsing performance. Similarly, morphological tag sets and natural language processing frameworks primarily based on Indo-European languages are presented as universal solutions, but fail to meet some of the linguistic phenomena characteristic of other languages.
This workshop will bring together scholars using annotation tools for non-Western languages with people involved in the development of such tools and content management systems, in order to exchange experiences, discuss problems, and search for ways to overcome these barriers.
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Abstracts
Alicia Gonzáles, Tillmann Feige, University of Hamburg - “Reuse: A symbiosis between developers and researchers” (Herausforderungen in der Nutzung vorhandener Tools für arabische Daten)
Wir beschreiben den Ansatz, ein arabisches Textkorpus mit computerlinguistischen und semantischen Verfahren analysierbar zu machen. Der Ansatz war es, auf bereits vorhandene Software für die Hauptpunkte Annotation und Analyse zu setzen. Wir haben dazu ein Pflichtenheft erstellt, dass mit der vorhandenen Softwarelandschaft abgeglichen wurde.
Die Anforderungen
Da wir mit arabischen Daten arbeiten, ist die größte Herausforderung die Schrift an sich. Es ist eine linksläufige verbundene Schrift, die durch Konsonanten und lange Vokale repräsentiert wird. Kurze Vokale sind Diakritika, die optional gesetzt werden. Die größte Hürde ist eine vollständige UTF-8 Unterstützung und die saubere (verbundene) Darstellung der Schrift. Dies reduziert die Auswahl erheblich. Hinzu kommt, dass wir auf flexible Import- und Exportmöglichkeiten angewiesen sind. Durch unsere Herangehensweise gibt es weitere Einschränkungen wie Mehrebenen-, Multitoken- aber auch Subtoken-Annotation.
Die Auswahl
Die Auswahl für die Annotation fiel auf WebAnno, das durch die Nutzung von UIMA XMI die Verwendung von DKPro-Core erlaubt, einem Framework, mit dem die Daten vernünftig kontrolliert und aufbereitet werden können. Dies ist auch mit Arabisch möglich. Weiterhin wurde der RTL-Support durch Zusammenarbeit mit den Entwicklern stetig ausgebaut, so dass die die linksläufige, verbundene Schrift kein Hindernis mehr ist.
Als Visualisierungstool wurde Annis ausgewählt, das ebenfalls Arabisch unterstützt, einen konfigurierbaren Converter mitbringt und Mehrebenenkorpora erlaubt., so dass auch hier die Hauptkriterien erfüllt wurden.
Zusammenfassung: Nutzung vorhandener Software
In unserem Fall ist festzuhalten, dass das größte Hindernis tatsächlich die Charakteristika der arabischen Schrift sind, die die zur Verfügung stehende Auswahl an Software erheblich reduzieren. Durch sehr guten Support der Anwendung konnte auf eine Eigenentwicklung verzichtet werden, was – für das Projekt – die Frage nach langfristiger Bereitstellung, Support und Weiterentwicklung der Tools erübrigt. Die Daten werden durch die Nutzung von Annis als ein geschlossener Korpus zur Verfügung gestellt werden können. Somit ist die Nachnutzung auch gesichert.
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Johannes Daxenberger, Technical University Darmstadt -“How to computationally approach extinct languages: A case Study on Hittite”
Extinct ancient languages from the middle east contain valuable cultural, historical and linguistic information. However, sustainable access to these languages is threatened by both political conflict as well as a lack of experts with the necessary knowledge to process them.
As consequence, their fast digitalization and automatic processing is a desirable goal. State-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) methodology is mostly tuned towards modern languages and can only be adapted to extinct languages with substantial effort, due to the lack of digitized data that is available. Thus, in this study, we explore a novel way to enhance digital access to a cuneiform language spoken in ancient Asia Minor, Hittite.
To make the existing transliteration and translations more accessible to non-experts, we implement a set of methods to allow semantic search on a small set of parallel texts. In particular, we explore the use of lexical-semantic methods to semantically enrich the translations for search. Some of the problems we were facing include the very specialized vocabulary, fragmentary texts, or divergent markup conventions by the multiple translators. The evaluation of the developed search tool in a user study showed that our strategy is a promising first step to computationally approach extinct languages.
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Christian Prager, University of Bonn - “Of Codes and Kings: Approaches in the Encoding of Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions”
So far, no existing digital work environment can sufficiently represent the traditional epigraphic workflow ‘documentation, analysis, interpretation, and publication’ for texts written in complex writing systems; such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform writing, or Classic Maya.
The project “Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan” will transpose this workflow to a digital epigraphy, by the reuse and development of digital methods and tools in the Virtual Research Environment. Maya writing is a semi-deciphered logographic-syllabic system with approximately 10,000 text carriers discovered in sites throughout Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras (300 B.C. to A.D. 1500).
When designing the digital epigraphic work environment, the documentation of the current state of decipherment of the script and language must to be considered. The digital decoding of undeciphered scripts requires a machine readable corpus with annotated textual data which meet technical requirements for applying corpus and computational linguistic methods. To digitally encode texts or markup linguistic information, the annotation guidelines of the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) have become a standard.
The project will therefore investigate the usability of TEI, rather designed for marking up transcriptions of fully readable texts originally written linearly and in alphabetic writing systems. A linear transcription of Maya inscriptions alone cannot represent the original spelling or primary source in its entirety, as many potentially significant details remain undocumented. Marking up the original text and its structure is therefore of great importance, particularly for partially deciphered or undeciphered scripts. We identify this issue as a significant desideratum in TEI epigraphic research by estimating the limits as well as restating requirements for encoding standards like TEI.
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Heiko Werwick, University of Jena - “Technische Hintergründe der Erstellung eines Wörterbuchs für das Sabäische” (Talk in German)
In dem Vortrag werden die einzelnen Bearbeitungsschritte von der Texterfassung bis hin zur fertigen Übersetzung dargestellt. Es soll dabei gezeigt werden, wie sich die die Datenstrukturen den jeweiligen Arbeitsschritten anpasst.
Die einzelnen Arbeitsschritte sind
- Textaufnahme über ein externes Tool
- Textnachbearbeitung
- Grammatikalische Analyse
- Bearbeitung eines Lemma
- Erstellung des Mastertextes
- Übersetzung
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Cristina Vertan, University of Hamburg - „GeTa: a multi-level semi-automatic annotation tool for Classical Ethiopic“
Although classical Ethiopic plays an essential role in the research on early Christian literature, up to now no digital tools and resources (e.g. corpora, dictionaries) are available. In contrast, manuscripts in classical Greek, Hebrew and Arabic are already digitized and annotated with linguistic and philological information, thus diachrone analysis of language development, linkage of multilingual versions and cross-language comparisons are possible.
The project TraCES (From Translation to Creation: Changes in Ethiopic Style and Lexicon from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages), funded through an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, aims to fill this gap for classical Ethiopic and :
- on the one hand to build the necessary electronic resources for bringing Ge'ez in the digital age and
- on the other hand to use these new information technology tools in order to get new insights in Ge'ez literature and language.
The complexity of the language and the number of linguistic features to be marked, together with the lack of electronic corpora, makes impossible a completely automatic annotation process. No annotation tool available for the moment could offer all functionality necessary for a deep linguistic annotation. In this contribution we will present a semi-automatic annotation tool which allows corrections of the text during the annotation process, and enables annotation at multiple levels. Automatic processes are marked so that the user can check and correct. The tool can manage different scripts and synchronizes original script and transliteration. We will show, that also an adaptation to other languages is possible.
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Seid Muhie Yiman, University of Darmstadt - “WebAnno for less resourced and historical data annotation”
WebAnno is a generic, web-based, and distributed annotation tool. WebAnno supports the annotation of different linguistic types and structures, such as token spans (e.g. part of speech), sub-tokens (e.g. morphology markers), relations (e.g. dependency grammar), chains (e.g. co-reference), and complex slotbased (e.g. semantic role labelling) annotations.
Unlike many annotation tools, it supports the annotations of different languages, including low-resourced and historical languages, as far as the writing systems use valid Unicode representations. In addition to left-to-right writing systems of the European languages, the latest WebAnno release also supports annotations for right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew. To facilitate rapid annotations for less resourced languages, the tool also includes an integrated automation component, which suggests annotations automatically and incrementally so that annotators can easily correct the suggestions.
This automation component led to an increase of annotation speed of 21% in an annotation study for Amharic. There is ample support for the annotation flow, including user management, agreement computation, adjudication of multiply-annotated material, as well as various import and export formats. WebAnno has been developed over the past 3 years as part of the CLARIN-D infrastructure, and is available as open source, enabling others to customize it according to specific needs.
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Thomas Krause, Humboldt University Berlin - “Utilising ANNIS for search and analysis of historical data”
Tools for the analysis of historical data, especially from non-Indo-European languages, have to solve specific challenges pertaining to, e.g., the synchronised representation of original script and transliterations, deep search over non-Latin script, data models to allow for customised tokenisations, etc. While the implementation of new software solutions for a specific research question and specific data in this context is a plausible solution, it is perfectly unsustainable. We present ANNIS, a browser-based, re-usable search and analysis tool for multi-layer linguistic corpora. ANNIS can be, and has been, used to searches and analyses over a number of historical corpora as well as corpora with non-Latin script. It is driven by a graph-based data model that is able to take up potentially unlimited types of annotation, and can therefore be used to represent data coming from various different sources and formats. The possibility of conversion from several different formats via the compatible conversion framework Pepper makes ANNIS highly re-usable in a wide variety of research contexts. It also features different, pluggable, visualisation options so that the different corpus strata can be presented in optimal form. We exemplarily present a use case for search in the Coptic SCRIPTORIUM, a multi-layer corpus of Coptic.
Conference of the School of Abbasid Studies Leiden, July 11-16, 2016
Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) and Simon Gundelfinger (Univeristät Hamburg) gave a talk during the Thirteenth Conference of the School of Abbasid Studies (SAS) held in Leiden. The panel Administration was chaired by Petra Sijpestein. Maaike van Berkel was a discussant.
Abstract Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) - Administration of the Empire – The Integration of the Empire under the Ṭāhirids
The Tāhirids are sometime portrayed as the first autonomous or even independent dynasty of the Islamic Empire. The paper argued that despite the prominence of Ṭāhirids in the imperial administration and their apparently autonomous decision making in Khurāsān, they are not only well integrated into the empire, but for the Khurāsān even a larger integration of the eastern realms of the empire into the tax administration is visible. Quite the opposite of Ṭāhirid policies becomes apparent, instead of setting up an autonomous Ṭāhirid regnum, they fostered a close integration of the eastern part of the empire to its caliphal centers in Iraq, namely Baghdād and Sāmarrāʾ. In this regard the Ṭāhirids can be seen as continuing the efforts of the Barmakids.
Abstract Simon Gundelfinger (Universität Hamburg) - Geographical and Administrative Structures in Abbasid al-Shām: A Historical Conceptualization
Even though we are provided with numerous accounts on the futūḥ al-Shām, the majority of which were written during the ʿAbbāsid period, these reports remain highly problematic in several regards: in how far do these subsequent reports reflect actual geographical and administrative structures of the region? Is it reasonable to assume that the distribution of administrative zones largely followed Roman-Byzantine standards? Even for the Umayyad period, in which al-Shām became the center of caliphal authority, our knowledge of the arrangement of al-Shām’s subdivisions, mainly referred to as junds, is still very limited. Finally, the ʿAbbāsid period produced a number of literary sources that can be read as geographical depictions, in contrast to the “pure” futūh-genre. While previous research on the “ʿAbbāsid geographers” has tended to draw a rather harmonized picture of the concepts provided by several authors from different phases of ʿAbbāsid rule, a close reading and comparison of these literary descriptions of al-Shām and the frontier region to Byzantium reveals varying degrees of projection of central authority in the ʿAbbāsid province.
International Medieval Congress Leeds, July 4-7, 2016
International Medieval Congress 2016 - Food, Feast & Famine
Part of the ERC Team organized a panel session at the IMC 2016.
Session 520: Title Elite Investments in Agriculture and Irrigation in the Early Islamic Empire
Date/Time Tuesday 5 July 2016: 09.00-10.30
Sponsor European Research Council Project 'The Early Islamic Empire at Work: The View From the Regions Toward the Center', Universität Hamburg
Organiser Hannah-Lena Hagemann, European Research Council Project 'The Early Islamic Empire at Work', Universität Hamburg
Moderator/Chair Stefan Heidemann, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg
Abstract: The interplay of social, political, economic, military, administrative, and climatic aspects influenced and determined the cultivation of land, production of foodstuffs, and proliferation of new crops in the early Islamic Empire. These factors are also reflected in diverse settlement patterns, conflicts over land use, and forms of levying taxes. Investments in agriculture and irrigation in the fertile regions of the Islamic Empire determined the economic standing of regional and imperial elites, and with this their negotiations over social and political power, during the various phases of the empire’s early history in the 7th-10th centuries.
Paper 520-a Estates, Agricultural Development, and Elites in Early Islamic Khurāsān
Ahmad Khan, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg
Index Terms: Economics - General; Islamic and Arabic Studies; Social History
Paper 520-b Investments in Irrigation by Local and Regional Elites in Early Islamic Fārs
Peter Verkinderen, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg
Index Terms: Administration; Economics - Rural; Islamic and Arabic Studies; Social History
Paper 520-c Agriculture and Elites in the Early Islamic Jazīra
Hannah-Lena Hagemann, European Research Council Project 'The Early Islamic Empire at Work', Universität Hamburg
Index Terms: Administration; Economics - General; Islamic and Arabic Studies; Social History
A Visit at Mes Aynak (a Site in Afghanistan under Taliban Control) at Hofstra Universty - March 13, 2016
Abstract: S. Heidemann (Universität Hamburg)
Mes Aynak is one of the most spectacular Buddhist landscapes with monasteries, stupas, and pilgrimage lodgings, among other features. Its artistic importance and beauty rival those of the 'Valley of the Kings' in Egypt. It was discovered about 15 years ago during geological prospections about 25 miles southeast of Kabul. At the same time, the valley where it is situated is one of the largest surface copper deposits on this planet, and doomed to be removed in the course of its exploitation. Located in a high-security zone in a Taliban-controlled area, a visit is a privilege. The speaker had the opportunity to visit Mes Aynak in 2012 and 2013. The lecture gives first-hand experience of the trip to Mes Aynak, explains its history in the larger context of the Kushan and Hephtalite empires (1st to 8th century), its current state, and possible futures.
Eighth Seminar on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Numismatics in Memoriam Boris Kochnev (1940-2002), Hofstra University, March 12, 2016
Boris Kochnev Memorial Seminar on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Numismatics at Hofstra University - March 12, 2016
For more information contact: aleksandr.naymark"AT"hofstra.edu
Abstract: S. Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) - Islamic Law and the Creation and Breaking-up of the Monetary Union of the Early Islamic Empire
The Islamic Empire was probably the apex of the monetarization of Late Antique economies. It differs in many respects from the Late Roman Empire in the Mediterranean and presumably also from the Sasanian Empire, about whose monetary organization we know little. Islamic law was one of the guiding principles of monetarization: first, the concept of thaman mutlaq, or ‘absolute equivalent’, a trait only inherent in gold and silver within the monetary sphere; and second, riba, the prohibition of illegitimate gain in the exchange of equivalents. Also in difference to the Roman and Sasanian Empire, the authority of minting lay at the provincial level of the governor and not at the imperial or caliphal court. This changed with al-Ma’mun. The caliph centralized the organization of coin production to a top-down system. In the early period, different regional currencies prevailed and continued below the thaman mutlaq, the gold dinar and the silver dirham. These alloyed silver currencies disappeared in the time of al-Ma’mun. Copper coins vanish almost completely in the middle decades of the 9th century CE. One identifiable reason is the thaman mutlaq principle, which discouraged contracts with alloyed silver and copper. This system collapsed increasingly rapidly after the fall of the caliphate in the 940s CE. Many regional, mutually exclusive currency zones came into existence when the regional amirs struggled to upkeep the economy and the flow of tax revenues. These systems came under harsh criticism by legal scholars because they were open to riba. Only two transregional coinages prevailed, the dinar of the Fatimids and the dinar of Nishapur.
Conference Participation 2015
The Geography and Infrastructure of Trade in Early Islam (800-1000 CE), SOAS London, Dec. 3-5, 2015
Abstract: S. Heidemann (Universität Hamburg) - Creation and Breakup of the Monetary
Union of the Abbasid Empire
The Islamic Empire was probably the apex of the monetarization of Late Antique economies. It differs in many respects from the Late Roman Empire in the Mediterranean and presumably also from the Sasanian Empire, about whose monetary organization we know little. Islamic law was one of the guiding principles of monetarization: first, the concept of thaman mutlaq, or ‘absolute equivalent’, a trait only inherent in gold and silver within the monetary sphere; and second, riba, the prohibition of illegitimate gain in the exchange of equivalents. Also in difference to the Roman and Sasanian Empire, the authority of minting lay at the provincial level of the governor and not at the imperial or caliphal court. This changed with al-Ma’mun. The caliph centralized the organization of coin production to a top-down system. In the early period, different regional currencies prevailed and continued below the thaman mutlaq, the gold dinar and the silver dirham. These alloyed silver currencies disappeared in the time of al-Ma’mun. Copper coins vanish almost completely in the middle decades of the 9th century CE. One identifiable reason is the thaman mutlaq principle, which discouraged contracts with alloyed silver and copper. This system collapsed increasingly rapidly after the fall of the caliphate in the 940s CE. Many regional, mutually exclusive currency zones came into existence when the regional amirs struggled to upkeep the economy and the flow of tax revenues. These systems came under harsh criticism by legal scholars because they were open to riba. Only two transregional coinages prevailed, the dinar of the Fatimids and the dinar of Nishapur.
Abstract: P. Verkinderen (Universität Hamburg) - Water-Ways in Iraq: Early Islamic River Transport
Most of the research on rivers and canal systems in Iraq has focused on the vital role they played for irrigation. Much less has been written about their other major function, transport of goods and persons. This lecture will present an overview of the information on the river transportation in early Islamic Iraq based on a broad corpus of texts from early Islamic times, with reference to material from earlier and later periods for comparative purposes. Aspects to be covered include the different uses of river transportation in Iraq, types of boats and rafts in use, types of navigation (towing, sailing, downstream floating), tolls and taxes, regulations, dredging, river harbours and other infrastructure.