Archive for 2016
- June 09, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
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Shii News – Academic Items
1.Workshop: “Greek and Arabic in the Middle Ages: Projections and Reflections”, University of Athens, 9 June 2016
The workshop consists of four parts and discussions concerning the workshop’s topic.
Information: http://soscientgr.blogspot.de/2016/06/universite-nationale-et.html
2. Conference: “Arabic Studies and Islamic Civilization”, Quebec, 28-29 July 2016 The conference aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on all aspects of Arabic Studies and Islamic Civilization. Information: https://waset.org/conference/2016/07/quebec/ICASIC
3. Conference: “Islam and Democracy”, Vancouver, 4-5 August 2016
The conference aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on all aspects of Islam and Democracy.
Information: www.waset.org/conference/2016/08/vancouver/ICID
4. Workshop: “Left-Wing Trends in the Arab World (1948-1979): Bringing Transnational Back in”, Orient-Institut, Beirut, 12-13 December 2016
This international workshop aims at shedding light on the transnational dynamics in which Arab left-wing trends have been embedded, especially during the 1960-70s, the glorious period of left-wing revolutionary movements throughout the world, in one word: the Tricontinental moment.
Deadline for abstracts: 26 June 2016. Information: www.orient-institut.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ARAL-CFP.pdf
5. University of Pittsburgh – Assistant Professor, Islamic World History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53008
6. Le département des études iraniennes de la Philipps Universität Marburg (Allemagne) recherche :
un(e) chercheur(e) post-doc (22 mois)
dans le cadre du programme bi-national “Dynamics of Transmission: Families, Authority and Knowledge in the Early Modern Middle East (15th-17th centuries)“ financé par l’ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) et la DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).
[See: https://dyntran.hypotheses.org/ ]
Les candidats sont invités à présenter un projet individuel centré sur l’histoire / l’histoire culturelle du monde iranien sur une période comprise principalement entre le XVe et le XVIIe siècle.
Informations et dépôts de candidature : chwerner@uni-marburg.de
La date limite de dépôt des candidatures est fixée au 1er juillet 2016.
7. Conference – Islamic Art at Cambridge: Lifting the Veil (Cambridge, UK, 20 June 2016)
On Monday 20 June 2016, a conference entitled ‘Islamic Art at Cambridge: Lifting the Veil’ will be held at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, with a visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum. Organised by Jean Michel Massing, Charles Melville, Firuza Melville, and Ünver Rüstem, the conference will highlight Cambridge’s burgeoning contributions to the field of Islamic art history, not only showcasing the University’s rich artistic holdings, but also presenting the latest research of current and former Cambridge-affiliated scholars. Papers will cover topics as diverse as album painting, ceramics conservation, architecture, and Orientalism.
For the full programme and further information, see http://persian.pem.cam.ac.uk/news-and-events/conferences/islamic-art-cambridge-lifting-veil.
The event is free, but space is limited; those wishing to attend are therefore asked to pre-register by emailing islamic.art.cambridge@gmail.com.
8. CFP – Islamic Art & Architecture (Zurich, Schaffhausen, 4-6 May ’17)
Zurich and Schaffhausen, May 4 – 06, 2017
Deadline: Sep 25, 2016
A l’Orientale – Collecting, Displaying and Appropriating Islamic Art
and Architecture in the 19th and early 20th centuries
International conference
Organizers: Prof. Dr. Francine Giese (University of Zurich),
Prof. Dr. Mercedes Volait (CNRS/InVisu),
Dr. Ariane Varela Braga (University of Zurich)
Cooperations: Museum Rietberg Zürich, Moser Familienmuseum
Charlottenfels der Heinrich und Henri Moser Stiftung in Neuhausen bei
Schaffhausen
Keynotes Speakers:
Kjeld v. Folsach (David’s Collection Kopenhagen),
Yannick Lintz (Musée du Louvre), Tim Stanley (V&A London),
Stefan Weber (Museum für Islamische Kunst Berlin)
The Swiss Orient traveler Henri Moser Charlottenfels (1844-1923) is
considered one of the pioneering 19th-century amateurs of Islamic Art,
because of his activity as collector and exhibitor. His continuously
growing collection had made Moser famous from 1876 onwards through
much-noticed traveling exhibitions in and outside of Switzerland. His
collection was later displayed permanently at the widely known private
museum he established in 1906 at the Charlottenfels Castle near
Schaffhausen. Through his 1914 donation to the Bern Historical Museum,
Moser assured that after his disappearance the Orientalische Sammlung
Henri Moser Charlottenfels (Oriental collection Henri Moser
Charlottenfels) of over 4000 objects would remain available to the
public in an exhibition hall specially built for that purpose.
The conference wants to present Henri Moser and his collection in an
international context. Does Moser’s activity of collecting and
exhibiting Islamic art reflect a widespread tendency of his period? How
have strategies of presentation, re-contextualisation and didactics
changed since the 19th century? To what extent have private collections
influenced the making of Islamic departments in national museums? And
which role did private collectors such as Moser play in transmitting
and appropriating Islamic art and architecture in the West during the
19th and early 20th century?
The conference will open on Thursday, 4th May 2017, with a first
section on „Displaying Islamic Art“ at the Museum Rietberg, with a
roundtable discussion with representatives of the most important
European collections of Islamic Art. The second day will take place at
the University of Zurich and will be dedicated to the section
„Appropriating Islamic Art and Architecture“. Finally, a third section
regarding „Collecting Islamic Art“, taking place on Saturday, 6th May
2017, will bring the topic to a close in Charlottenfels Castle.
We invite you to propose papers on the following topics:
– Moser and his collection
– Islamic art in European private collections in the 19th and early 20th centuries
– Mapping and classifying Islamic art through collections
– From Wunderkammer to modern exhibition – ways of presenting Islamic art
– Transmission of Islamic aesthetics through art exhibitions
– Strategies of appropriation in the West
– Neo-Islamic declinations of Islamic art and architecture
Each presentation will be of 20 minutes, and may be given in French,
English or German. Please submit a proposal of maximum 300 words and a
brief curriculum vitae by the 25th of September 2016 to the following
e-mail address: conference@transculturalstudies.ch
9. Announcement – Museum With No Frontiers project MWNF Galleries now online
The new Museum With No Frontiers project MWNF Galleries is now online.
MWNF Galleries invite exploration of the universal language of cultural heritage as the key for understanding and respect. A continuously growing Database feeds a constantly updated set of Galleries.
Artefacts contributed by partners from different countries and representing different civilisations are gathered in thematic collections, witnessing a great variety of artistic expressions and a multitude of perceptions.
Visitors are able to sort the artefacts on display according to different criteria and to carry out searches in the database of a specific Gallery or in the overall Galleries Database. Results will be listed chronologically.
I you wish to view the objects of a specific museums, go to ‘Partners All Galleries’, select the museum you are interested in and then click the ‘View Objects’ link. Links to relevant Galleries have been added to each database entry.
Also the MWNF Portal has been given a new look, with direct access to our Virtual Museums and to MWNF Galleries.
Background
MWNF Galleries build on and develop the Database of the MWNF Virtual Museums:
Discover Islamic Art & Explore Islamic Art Collections
The Discover Islamic Art Virtual Museum and Virtual Exhibitions present the Islamic heritage of the Mediterranean basin, alongside collections of Islamic art hosted by the participating museums. New partners continue to enrich the Discover Islamic Art Database by adding new items within the follow-up project Explore Islamic Art Collections.
Discover Baroque Art
The Discover Baroque Art Virtual Museum and Virtual Exhibitions explore the cultural environment of European Baroque, putting the spotlight on less familiar highlights of Baroque art and architecture, alongside universally known masterpieces.
Sharing History
The Sharing History Virtual Museum and Virtual Exhibitions address Arab–Ottoman–European relations in the 19th century from the specific perspectives of all parties, offering the first Database to document this period of common history.
We hope you will enjoy exploring MWNF Galleries and look forward to your feedback.
Eva Schubert
Chair and Chief Executive
Museum With No Frontiers (MWNF)
Non profit organisation
Email: management@museumwnf.net
- June 09, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
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Shii News – CASS (London) Ramadan weekly discussion event
The Centre for Academic Shia Studies (CASS) is pleased to announce a weekly discussion event during the month of Ramadan. The discussions will be held at the Al-Khoei Foundation every weekend at 8.00 pm and will be followed by the breaking of the fast (iftar).
Saturday 11 June 2016: Arab Shi’as: Nationalism, Citizenship and Loyalty
Ranj Alaaldin, LSE
Jane Kinninmont, Chatham House
Ali Allawi, National University of Singapore
Saturday 18 June 2016: ISIS and the End of Times
Ayatollah Fadhil Milani, Imam Khoei Islamic Centre
Charles Tripp, School of Oriental and African Studies
Mina Al-Oraibi, Yale University
Saturday 25 June 2016: What is Shi’ism?
Ayatollah Fadhil Milani, Imam Khoei Islamic Centre
Amina Inloes, The Islamic College
Sajjad Rizvi, University of Exeter
Friday 1 July 2016: Militancy in Post-2003 Iraq
Luay Al-Khatteeb, Columbia University
Michael Stephens, Royal United Services Institute
Hayder Al-Khoei, Chatham House, CASS.
Kindly RSVP to events@shiaresearch.com
- June 08, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- June 08, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – ‘Judicial competence in 19th century Iran’
Zahir Bhalloo, “Judging the judge: Judicial competence in 19th century Iran”, Bulletin d’études orientales, 63 (2014), pp.275-293.
Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of the dominant Imāmī Šīʻī Uṣūlī doctrinal model in nineteenth century Iran of the jurist (muǧtahid) as arbiter (qāḍī al‑taḥkīm) on judicial practice. By drawing on a “litigant archive” from this period, I discuss one problem that emerged from the dominant doctrinal model. It became possible for litigants to challenge the binding force of a ḥukm by claiming they did not recognize the scholar who issued the ḥukm to be a muǧtahid and hence judicially competent. This ultimately forced Uṣūlī writers to come up with a juridical framework where one recognized muǧtahid would have to confirm the emergence of another one in cases where a scholar’s juristic qualifications (iǧtihād) were challenged. In practice, as I demonstrate, even if a scholar’s judicial competence as a muǧtahid was confirmed by another recognized muǧtahid, it was still no guarantee that the scholar’s ḥukm would be enforced.
Keywords
decentralization, judicial competence, qaḍāʼ, Uṣūlī, muǧtahid, judgement, Qājār, Iran.
- June 08, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
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- June 07, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- June 06, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
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Shii News – Seminar to Commemorate the Martyrdom of Imam Ali (London, 19.6.16)
Seminar to Commemorate the Martyrdom of Imam Ali
SUNDAY 19th JUNE 2016 – 2:00 PM
VENUE – RUDOLF STEINER HOUSE
35 PARK ROAD, LONDON NW1 6XT
Opposite Mumtaz Restaurant
Tube station: Baker Street
Chair: Dr Gurdofarid Miskinzoda
Dr Gurdofarid Miskinzoda is Head of the Shiʿi Studies Unit in the Department of Academic Research and Publications at the Institute of Ismaili Studies. Gurdofarid is an Alumna of the Institute’s Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities and the recipient of the Institute’s Doctoral Scholarship Programme. She received her BA in Oriental and African Studies (1998) and her MA in Arabic Studies (2000) from the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Gurdofarid completed her studies with a PhD in the History of the Near and Middle East and Islam from SOAS, University of London (2007). Her thesis, entitled On the Margins of Sīra: Mughulta’i (689–762/1290–1361) and His Place in the Development of Sīra Literature focused on a work of Mughulta’i on the biography of the Prophet Muhammad. It also examined new trends in the understanding of sīra literature and some current issues of studying sīra as a genre of Muslim literary and historical tradition.
Dr. Reza Shah-Kazemi
Imam Ali’s Discourses to Kumayl
Dr. Reza Shah-Kazemi studied International Relations and Politics at Sussex and Exeter Universities before obtaining his PhD in Comparative Religion from the University of Kent in 1994. Formerly a Consultant to the Institute for Policy Research in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Dr Shah-Kazemi is at present a Research Fellow with the Department of Academic Research and Publications at the Institute of Ismaili Studies where he is Managing Editor of Encyclopaedia Islamica, the English translation and edition of the on-going multi-volume Persian Great Islamic Encyclopaedia (Da’irat al-Ma’arif-i Buzurg-i Islami). He has authored several works, including most recently The Spirit of Tolerance in Islam (IIS/IB Tauris, 2012); Spiritual Quest: Reflections on Qur’anic Prayer according to the teachings of Imam ‘Ali (IIS/IB Tauris, 2011); and Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism (Fons Vitae, 2010).
Gulamabbas Lakha
Insights into the ʾakhlāq of Imam Ali (a.s.) from Psychology and Neuroscience
Gulamabbas Murtaza Lakha is undertaking postgraduate study approved by the British Psychological Society, focussing on mental health effects from dhikr practices and corresponding neural activity of the brain. His interests in the psychology of Islam have included research on al-Ṣaḥīfa al-Sajjādiyya at Oxford University, analysing ʾakhlāq traditions at the Islamic College in London, and lecturing for eight years on personal development from the Qurʾān, ḥadīth and Islamic history. He is an economist by profession, having been awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, and manages a practice he founded twelve years ago.
AN OPEN INVITATION
PLEASE BE SEATED BY 2:00 PM
ORGANISER & SPONSOR: THE AHMED FAMILY – C/O MUHAMMADI TRUST (020 8452 1739)
- June 06, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- June 04, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.CFP-The Globalization of Science in the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-20th Centuries
The Center for Religion, Ethics, and Culture and the Middle Eastern Studies Concentration at the College of the Holy Cross (http://www.holycross.edu) invite abstract submissions (300-400 words) for a conference to be held March 24-25, 2017 entitled, the Globalization of Science in the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-20th Centuries (see abstract below). Keynote speaker: Dr. Carla Nappi, the University of British Columbia.
Abstracts are due by June 15, 2016. Send abstracts to Sahar Bazzaz and Jane Murphey at globalizationofscience@gmail.com. Participants will be notified of their participation by July 1, 2016.
Conference participants will receive airfare/travel, ground transportation costs, and accommodation for the duration of the conference. In preparing their abstracts, potential participants should plan to produce a 8000-10,000 word paper for pre-circulation before the conference takes place. Participants are expected to contribute their papers to an edited volume, which will be the final outcome of the conference.
ABSTRACT:
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries mark the period in which science became globalized and institutionalized as a dominant epistemology trumping all others. The scientific study of the natural world (Botany, Taxonomy, Systematics, Geology, Comparative zoology), of human behavior and society (Psychology and Sociology), and of the past (History and Archeology) emerged and developed their own disciplinary methodologies and notions of expertise and professionalism. As a way of understanding the globalization of science in non-European contexts such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), scholars have turned to the field sciences such as natural history, geology, and cartographic surveying, highlighting these disciplines’ intimate connection to imperial conquest and global trade networks. Drawing on germinal works of Michel Foucault and Edward Said, some have argued that the ‘sciences’ served as a powerful tool in the hands of European conquerors. According to this view, disciplines including mapping, statistical census gathering, natural history, archaeology, and the taxonomy of peoples, languages, and religious traditions allowed Europeans to define, categorize and order—to “know”—colonized territories and peoples and hence to dominate and rule them.
But as critics have pointed out, this perspective problematically attributes the spread of the taxonomical revolution beyond Europe to “the often violent imposition of ‘rationality’ on cultures originally endowed with ‘another reason’.” Furthermore, science as an epistemology is now firmly entrenched in and embraced by Middle Eastern societies suggesting that its advent was something more than simply imposition. In order to challenge the ‘science as imposition’ narrative and to develop a more nuanced understanding of the globalization of science in the region—its perceived promises and perils and the role of local epistemologies in the development of modern science—this panel considers the reception/assimilation/rejection/translation of scientific theories and practices by the peoples of the region through examples from a variety of scientific disciplines. While the politics of knowledge production occurred in the context of state modernization (as in Ottoman Egypt and the central lands of the Ottoman empire), on one hand, and the extension of European power into these regions, on the other, the panel considers other social, economic, and intellectual developments, which shaped (and were shaped by) this process.
This conference brings together scholars from the Middle East, Europe, the United States, and Canada, and will explore important issues related to the history of science in the MENA region during the 18th-20th centuries—a critical period of change and modernization when Middle Easterners were concerned about the rising power of European states and societies and the weakness of Islamic ones in relation to them. Conference participants will present papers, which consider the nature of encounters between Islamic societies and the west as the balance of power between these regions shifted in the favor of Europe, including the role of science in modernization and development in the MENA region, the relationship between modern science and religion (Islam), the effects of European imperialism on the spread of modern science in the MENA (and the Global South more generally), and the use of science and technology by MENA states and societies to combat foreign domination in the region.
Contact Email:
globalizationofscience@gmail.com
2. Workshop: “Time(s) in Comparison: Transregional Approaches to Contemporary Philosophical Thought in the Middle East and South Asia”, Berlin, 3-4 June 2016
The workshop is organized by Roman Seidel and Nils Riecken at the Berlin Graduate School for Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin / Zentrum Moderner Orient.
Information and program: www.bgsmcs.fu-berlin.de/dates/workshop_2016_times_in_comparison.html
3. Conference: “Medicine, Environment and Health in the Eastern Mediterranean World, 1400-1750”, University of Cambridge, 3-4 April 2017
Taking as our focus the politically heterogeneous southern Europe and eastern Mediterranean, the Mamluk Kingdom, and the Ottoman Empire, we aim to reconstruct the healthscape of this region in the early modern period, exploring its medical unity and disunity and the human and environmental factors that played a part in it.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2016. Information: http://us9.campaign-archive2.com/?u=e1ae5bef9757e58afec01a89a&id=4eba999427&e=82aeb6c61d
4. Submissions for Brill’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Early-Career Paper Prize 2016
The author of the winning article will receive a € 750,- cash prize and the article will be published in one of Brill’s leading journals. The Prize is open to students who are currently registered for doctoral research at a higher education institution, or have obtained their doctoral degree after 1 September 2013.
Deadline for submissions: 1 September 2016. Information: www.brill.com/paperprize
5. The international peer-reviewed open access journal Middle East – Topics and Arguments (http://meta-journal.net/) is seeking contributions for a special-themed issue on “ICONOGRAPHY”.
For more detailed information see:
http://meta-journal.net/announcement/view/14
6. Lapis and Gold, The Story of the Ruzbihan Qur’an
until 28 August 2016
The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle, Ireland
In the late 1920s, Chester Beatty purchased a large and magnificent Qur’an. Its beautifully executed script is the work of the renowned Shiraz calligrapher Ruzbihan Muhammad al-Tab‘i al-Shirazi, although its breath-taking illumination is the work of a team of anonymous of artists. The combined quality, extent, diversity and complexity of the manuscript’s decorative programme sets it apart from almost all other 16th-century Persian Qur’ans.
In 2012, the manuscript was disbound in order to allow badly needed conservation of its 445 folios to take place. Following certain intriguing discoveries during the course of conservation, it was decided to keep the manuscript temporarily unbound to allow the Library’s curatorial and conservation staff to conduct further research on it. Through the display of more than 30 single folios and double-page openings, as well as another 20-some folios partially displayed to facilitate the discussion of pigments, the exhibition presents many of the results of that research. Three other 16th-century Qur’ans and a manual on recitation from the Library’s Islamic Collections are also included in the exhibition.
The manuscript will be rebound in its 19th-century, Ottoman binding following the close of the exhibition.
An accompanying book will be published shortly.
7. ‘Culture and Cultural Production in Iran: Past and Present’
School of Modern Languages and Institute of Iranian Studies
(17th, 18th and 19th June 2016)
Convener: Saeed Talajooy <st83@st-andrews.ac.uk>
For the programme and registration, see:
8. Call for Papers Deadline approaching
The “Dangerous Classes” in the Middle East and North Africa
Conference: 26 January 2017
Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Call for Papers
The concept of the “dangerous classes” was born in mid-nineteenth century Europe and became famous after the publication in 1872 in New York of a book with the same title by the American social reformer Charles Loring Brace. The “dangerous classes,” the lumpenproletariat of Marx and Engels, described all those who had fallen out of the working classes into the lower depths of the new industrial and urban social environments, and survived there by their wits and by various amoral, disreputable or criminal strategies. They included beggars and vagrants, gypsies, pickpockets and burglars, prostitutes and courtesans, discharged soldiers, ex-prisoners, tricksters, drug-dealers; the unemployed or unemployable, indeed every type of the criminal and marginal, and were drawn from among women as well as men, and juveniles as well as adults. Such representatives of the “dangerous classes” were well-represented in literature, notably by Zola, Dickens and Victor Hugo in the nineteenth century and Brecht in the twentieth, and in popular culture of all kinds.
The “dangerous classes,” sometimes barely distinguishable from the new working class recently concentrated in the urban industrial centres, were a constant preoccupation of the emerging bourgeoisie. Fear of both permeated social policy, including among reformers, and was central to the establishment of new methods of control, policing and judicial, and even medical and psychiatric systems. Although the term fell into disuse in the twentieth century West, it is often argued that the concept remains embedded in elite discourses of connections between propertylessness, poverty, immorality, criminality and the “underclass.”
This conference takes as its central theme this notion of the “dangerous classes” and invites abstracts examining its explanatory power when applied to the Middle East and North Africa in the period from around 1800 to the present. Topics include but are not limited to: narratives of the lives of members of the “dangerous classes”; the social conditions in which they emerged; their relationship with “respectable” society and especially with the police; their political inclinations and potential; the attitudes towards them of elites; their role in shaping elite formulations of systems and institutions of discipline and control, legal/judicial, prison/asylum, medical; notions of the biological basis of criminality; their representation in literature and in popular culture. Abstracts which examine both collectivities (eg lutis or baltagiya) as well as individual strategies, and colonial/imperial as well as indigenous discourses and policies are welcome.
Abstracts of papers of no more than two hundred and fifty words are invited for consideration for inclusion in the conference.
Deadline for submission of abstracts is 30 June 2016.
Abstracts and enquiries should be addressed to Stephanie Cronin Stephanie.cronin@orinst.ox.ac.uk
9. The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania announces the availability of a position as full-time Lecturer in Arabic Language for the academic year 2016-2017.
The appointment will be for one year with the possibility of annual renewal for up to an additional two years based on satisfactory performance and approval of the Dean.
Applicants should have native or near-native competence in modern standard Arabic, knowledge of an Arabic dialect, and an advanced degree in Arabic language pedagogy and/or another relevant subject with a primary focus on Arabic language and culture. Preference will be given to candidates who have experience in teaching Arabic language at all levels at the university or college level, in language pedagogy, and in administering the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). The teaching load for this position is five courses per year (3/2 or 2/3), which includes one section of the elementary-level Arabic language. Additional responsibilities include regular attendance at meetings of the Arabic language program, and working with the Director of the language program and Arabic faculty on materials development.
Candidates should apply online at http://facultysearches.provost.upenn.edu/postings/880. Submit a cover letter, CV, and statement of teaching philosophy. Also submit the names and contact information of two individuals who have agreed to provide a letter of recommendation. The University will contact the referees with instructions on how to submit their letters.
10. An 18th Century North African Travelling Physician’s Handbook
While cataloguing the British Library’s collection of Arabic manuscripts from West Africa (see BL blog passim) I came across a very strange item. This manuscript, Or.6557, was given to the British Museum Library (the forerunner of the British Library) by a Muhammad Shami on the 10th of October 1903 and catalogued the following year. According to a slip of paper pasted on the blank recto of the first folio in the handwriting the donor, this work is a “book on Reml [Arabic: ʻIlm al-Raml, meaning divination by sand] and magic and some of austronomy by Saidi Saeed Abdoul Naim” with the date of composition given as 1202AH (1788 AD). The text block is loose-leaf, as is often the case in North and West Africa, and protected at either end by squares of animal hide.
11. The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, opening October 15, 2016 at Freer|Sackler in Washington, D.C.
From October 15, 2016 until February 20, 2017, the Freer|Sackler will host the first major international loan exhibition on Qur’ans in the United States. It highlights more than fifty of the most important manuscripts from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts (Türk ve Islam Eserleri Müzesi) in Istanbul, Turkey, complemented by twenty works from the Freer|Sackler collections. Representing Qur’ans from early eighth-century Damascus to late sixteenth-century Herat and Istanbul, the exhibition will trace the evolution from an orally transmitted message to a written text and its transformation into sumptuous volumes by celebrated calligraphers, illuminators, and bookbinders.
The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts will also consider the carefully recorded “biography” of many of the Qur’anic manuscripts. Commissioned by some of the most powerful rulers of the Islamic world, the volumes were sought out and cherished by the Ottoman ruling elite as prized possessions and were offered as gifts to public and religious institutions to express personal piety, to secure political power and prestige, and to ensure the continuity of the divine blessings (baraka) which these precious manuscripts were believed to carry.
Please see the exhibition website here, and check back for more information as it is posted.
Symposium: The Word Illuminated: Form and Function of Qur’anic Manuscripts
In conjunction with the exhibition The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, the Freer|Sackler will hold an international symposium from December 1 to December 3, 2016. The focus will be on production of luxury Qur’an manuscripts in the Islamic world as well as their usage from the late seventh to the seventeenth century. Speakers will also address issues of patronage and the later lives of these remarkable works of art.
The full conference program will be posted on the Freer|Sackler website in September.
12. Les Arts de l’Islam en France: collections, trésors et découvertes archéologiques
6 June 2016
9:30am–6pm
Auditorium du Louvre, Paris
La présence des arts de l’Islam dans les collections publiques françaises interroge l’histoire et la nature du patrimoine national défini comme art islamique. Ce patrimoine a déjà fait l’objet de deux expositions : « Arts de l’Islam des origines à 1700 dans les collections publiques françaises » en 1971 à l’Orangerie des Tuileries, puis « L’Islam dans les collections nationales » en 1977 au Grand-Palais.
http://www.louvre.fr/les-arts-de-l-islam-en-france-collections-tresors-et-decouvertes-archeologiques
13. Columbia University – Professor / Associate Professor of Islamic History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=52998
Freie Universitaet Berlin – Lecturer, Medieval Middle Eastern History (3 years)
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=52982
- June 04, 2016
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment