1. CfP: seminar for ACLA, this year in Houston, TX, May 20-23, 2027 ACLA seminar, “The Best Companion: The Aesthetics of Book Love in Arabic Literature,” is now available on the ACLA website: https://www.acla.org/seminar/05c7d866-cd74-46a7-8813-1779a18fd04e The ACLA deadline for paper proposals is Sept 22, 2026. 2. Call
Posted in: Academic itemsIsmailis of China: history, culture and tradition
In China’s Xinjiang region, a small Ismaili community sustains its faith through ritual and story. IIS hosts a lecture on the Ismaili Tajiks of this community. The hybrid event takes place on Wednesday 16 September at the Aga Khan Centre, London, and online. Dr Amier Saidula will explore how rituals, oral traditions and vernacular knowledge sustain religious heritage and identity.
Register to attend
Annual Graduate Conference 2026
IIS will host its Annual Graduate Conference on Monday 28 September at the Aga Khan Centre in London and online. This year’s theme, “Muslim Lives in Transition: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Times”, explores how Muslim lives are shaped by both continuity and change.
Register now
Fatimid Sicily: History, Memory, and Legacy
How is the Islamic past imagined in contemporary Palermo, Sicily?
The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) hosts a two-day conference on Fatimid rule in Sicily. The event runs Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 October at the Aga Khan Centre, London, and online. A parallel exhibition, Islamic Traces, follows Palermo residents of different faiths and none as they search for the city’s Islamic past. Through architecture, landscape, language and the arts, they bring their imagined pasts to life in the present.
Register to attend
New Issue on “Alevi Pasts Contested: Neglected Narratives and New Methodologies” Edited by Markus Dressler & Hege Markussen, European Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 42, 2026, 98 Pages
This special issue aims to address persistent gaps in the historical record of Anatolian Alevi communities and to rethink how such gaps can be studied. The contributions engage diverse sources, including archival documents, oral traditions, poetic texts, and ritual practices, highlighting the productive inter-play between written and embodied forms of knowledge. The analyse the cultural memory in Alevi poetry, the ritual production of historical consciousness, and ethnohistorical reconstructions of community formation.
View: https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/10683
1. The Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago invites applications for a tenure-track position, at the rank of Assistant Professor, in the Pre-Modern History of the Islamicate Middle East or Central Asia, with an expected start date of July 1, 2027, or as soon as possible
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1. The non-human mystics of Islam: animals as pious worshippers in early Sufism’ A Salamah-Qudsi BSOAS, June 2026 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bulletin-of-the-school-of-oriental-and-african-studies/article/nonhuman-mystics-of-islam-animals-as-pious-worshippers-in-early-sufism/6977329CE75FCCDA5BC2D5E063CE4DF2?utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Article&utm_campaign=New%20Cambridge%20Alert%20-%20Issues&WT.mc_id=New%20Cambridge%20Alert%20-%20Issues 2. RGQ 2026 (Review of Global Qur’anic Studies of the Year): 2end meeting Sponsored by Ind. Int. Quranic Parliament (IQP) Aug 18-19, 2026 Review of IQSA Vienna
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