Archive for 2019

Afghanistan: Scores killed in Kabul wedding blast

At least 63 people have been killed and scores wounded in an explosion targeting a wedding in the Afghan capital, officials said on Sunday, the deadliest attack in Kabul this year. The suicide blast took place on Saturday evening in the men’s reception area at the Dubai City wedding hall in western Kabul, in a minority Shia neighbourhood, packed with people celebrating a marriage.

See also BBC
See also The New York Times

1.Daghistani Qur’an manuscripts in the British Library

‘Bold script of wildness and beauty’ is Jan Just Witkam’s evocative description of the calligraphy of a manuscript from Daghistan in the collection of Leiden University Library (Cod.Or. 11964), a characterisation which seems supremely well suited for a product of this mountainous and fiercely proud region in the Caucasus mountains. Today, Dagestan is a republic located in the Russian Federation, bounded to the east by the Caspian sea and to the south by Azerbaijan and Georgia, and  home to a rich and distinctive manuscript culture.  The British Library holds a small collection of ten Qur’an manuscripts from Daghistan, and in this blog each manuscript will be pictured to illustrate some of the many distinctive features of this impressive but little-known manuscript tradition.

2. Jobs:

Stanford University – Assistant-Level Faculty Position in Muslim
Societies
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=58864

Durham University – Assistant Professor in History c.950- c.1250 (CE)
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=58820

University of Southern California – Farhang Foundation Junior Chair
in Iranian Studies
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=58865

Yale University – Assistant/Associate/Full Professor, Modern Middle
East History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=58858

3. Call for Applicants

The Study of Islam and Muslim Societies

 School of Social Sciences and Psychology

Western Sydney University

(Campus location to be advised)

2 October 2019

Following the Australian Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (AAIMS) conference (www.aaims.org.au/conference/), the School of Social Sciences and Psychology is organising a PhD master class on the Study of Islam and Muslim Societies with special interest on contemporary Iran and the Persianate Societies. We seek to bring together doctoral students from different disciplines to join this initiative, which will be led by Adjunct Professor Pedram Khosronejad.

Eligibility:

The program is open to doctoral students in any discipline, as long as their dissertation subject, and the proposed talk, are broadly related to the theme of the master class. Even the main topic of the program is regarding Islam, PhDs with other topics specially those who are working on any aspects of contemporary Iran and the Persianate societies are encouraged to apply.

Costs:

The master class will be financed by the School and will be free of cost to the students accepted. Morning and afternoon teas will be provided but participants will need to purchase or provide their own lunches. Participants will need to fund their own travel and accommodation.

Format:

The master class will take place 2^nd October 2019. Doctoral students will each make a 20-minute presentation. Academics from Western Sydney University will also participate in feedback sessions.

Benefits:

This is an opportunity for receiving feedback from experts and peers and for discussion of your PhD work. Use this chance to improve your thesis in furthering your intellectual journey.

Submission guidelines

Proposals for a 20-minute paper may be submitted, by 26^th August, 2019. Proposals should be sent to: M.LajevardiFatemi@westernsydney.edu.au

1. Full name and affiliation of the doctoral student,
2. Title for the proposed presentation,
3. An abstract (200-500 words),
4. A list of 5-10 keywords,
5. An academic C.V.

Approval and confirmation

We will confirm receipt of each proposal and will respond by 3^rd of September 2019. A draft of the paper should be sent by 16^th September 2019 to permit pre-circulation among the participants. As places are limited, there will be a selection process in place.

If you have any queries, please contact Pedram Khosronejad at P.Khosronejad@westernsydney.edu.au

Nigerian Shia leader, wife reject treatment in India, return home

Nigerian Shia leader Ibrahim el-Zakzaky and his wife have made a dramatic return to the country, three days after arriving in India to receive medical treatment, according to aviation officials and his lawyer. The detained leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) and Zeenat Ibrahim on Friday landed in Abuja’s international airport from New Delhi on an Ethiopian Airlines flight, according to supporters and lawyers.

Chapter 29 of The Gnostic World, Edited By Garry W. Trompf, Gunner B. Mikkelsen, Jay Johnston, Routledge, 2018

This chapter focuses on the period between the emergence of a distinct Shii group identity in the early part of the eighth century in the Iraqi town of Kufa, and the period when the line of the living Imams ceased to exist, thus ushering a new period in the history of Shiism. The identity of the Shii community was mainly centered on the notion of the guiding role of the Imams, and was marked by various rituals, such as prayer and pilgrimage. The cosmological and cosmogonic accounts of the Shii hadith corpus are “numerous, disorderly, coming from diverse horizons, and at times contradictory”. With regard to the world of humans, the Shii hadith corpus articulates a starkly dualist worldview, where the believers are pure and luminous, and the unbelievers evil and dark. The dualism found in the early Shii hadith corpus is articulated much more systematically in the Ghulat writings.

Nigerian Shia leader, wife depart for medical treatment in India

Detained Nigerian Shia leader Ibrahim el-Zakzaky and his wife have flown out of the country to get medical treatment in India, according to supporters and lawyers. Held since 2015, el-Zakzaky, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), was last week granted bail by a court in Kaduna state in order to seek treatment abroad.

The latent politicization of Alevism: the affiliation between Alevis and leftist politics (1960-1980)

1 E. J. Zürcher, Turkey A Modern History (New York: I.B. Tauris, 1994), p.266. 2 E. Aydınoğlu, Türkiye Solu 1960-1980 [ Turkish Left 1960-1980] (Istanbul: Versus, 2007), p.46. 3 K. Karpat, The Gecekondu: The Rural Migration and Urbanization (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 59. 4 M. N. Danielson, and R.

1. The British Library

Emanating light: Illumination in Islamic manuscripts

https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2019/08/emanating-light-illumination-in-islamic-manuscripts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+asian-and-african+%28Asia+and+Africa%29

2.  Georgetown University

Non-Core Faculty Position – Arabic Language Instruction

https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=58813

3. Brigham Young University – Pre-Modern Non-Western World History (Open Field & Open Rank)

https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=58831

1.Global Conference on Women and Gender: “Gender, Politics and Everyday Life: Power, Resistance and Representation”, Christopher Newport University, 19-21 March 2020

This interdisciplinary conference brings together participants from all academic fields to engage in wide-ranging conversations on gender and politics around the world. We encourage an expansive understanding of political action and expression, inspired by Carol Hanisch’s essay, “The Personal is Political,” which sees all relationships of power as political and connects women’s experiences, self-expression, and values to their lives as political actors and subjects.Deadline for abstracts: 1 October 2019. Information: http://cnu.edu/gcwg/

2. Conference: “Hermeneutics of Quranic Norm Change”, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, 15-16 April 2020

The conference is structured around the three following themes that seem to be of particular relevance for today: 1) The nature of human being in the Quran 2) The individual and the community (within Islam) 3) Living together in ideologically pluralistic societies. We will not focus on specified precepts or the legal discourses behind them, but rather on how these topics have been negotiated in the fields of (pre-)classical and modern Tafsīr.

Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2019. Information: https://www.dirs.phil.fau.de/files/2019/07/Call-for-papers_Conference-on-the-Hermeneutics-of-Quranic-Norm-Change.pdf

3. Junior Professorship (W1) for Islamic Studies / Turkology Studies, Department of Oriental Studies, University of Freiburg

The successful candidate has an outstanding dissertation and a research profile that combines approaches from Islamic Studies and the social sciences and focusses on 20^th– and 21^st-century Turkey. An additional focus on Turkic societies in Central Asia and/or the Caucasus is an asset.

Deadline for application: 4 October 2019. Information: http://www.uni-freiburg.de/administration/stellenboerse/00000643?set_language=en

4. Rosalynd Franklin Fellowship on Islamic Thought & Culture, Faculty of Theology & Religious Studies, University of Groningen.

This is a position for a female academic in the field of Islamic Thought & Culture. We are specifically interested in scholars whose expertise is on ethics, philosophy, Islamic debates on modernity & secularism.

Deadline for application: 29 August 2019. Information: https://www.rug.nl/about-us/work-with-us/job-opportunities/?details=00347-02S000730P

5. Assistant Professor of Ottoman History (Tenure-Track), Binghamton University, New York

Professorship in early modern Ottoman history (c. 1300-1800), beginning in Fall 2020. We seek applications from candidates whose research is grounded in Ottoman sources and archival materials, and especially encourage applications from scholars who take a trans-regional or transimperial perspective that incorporates the diverse religious groups, ethnicities, and regions that constitute the Ottoman world.

Deadline for applications: 15 October 2019. Information: https://binghamton.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdetails.jsp;jsessionid=2A5FF5656F20F0A3C7EB118B0DBE30D6?JOBID=113830

6. Articles on “Crisis and Conflict in the Muslim World: Localisation of Responses” for Special Issue of “Journal of Peacebuilding & Development”

Papers are particularly welcome on localisation across and between various responses to conflict including humanitarian action, conflict resolution, and long-term reconstruction in the Muslim world.

Deadline for abstracts: 10 September 2019.

Information: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rjpd; Contact: jpd.production@gmail.com

7. The Great Lakes Adiban Society (GLAS) is the sponsor of two events at the upcoming International
Congress for Medieval Studies, to convene on May 7–10, 2020:

1. Seek Knowledge as Far as China: Teaching Literature from the Medieval
Middle East and Beyond (A Roundtable)
2. Love, Fear, Anger, Sorrow: Emotions and Diseases of the Soul in Islamicate
Literature

To submit a paper to either of these events, go to www.wmich.edu/
medievalcongress/submissions, where you can find and fill out the Participant
Information Form. Please send this, along with a one-page abstract of your
paper, to Cameron Cross at kchalipa@umich.edu . The due-date for all
submissions is September 15, 2019. We will inform you of our decision within a
week, and per ICMS guidelines, any papers not accepted will be passed on to
the Medieval Institute to be considered for inclusion in the General Sessions.

Please read below for the full descriptions of these panels; for more
information about our group, and to join our mailing list, visit
http://greatlakesadiban.github.io/.

1. Seek Knowledge as Far as China: Teaching Literature from the Medieval
Middle East and Beyond (A Roundtable)

As medievalists grapple with the urgency of diversifying our field, we find
ourselves shifting our teaching practices to accommodate new students, new
texts, and new fields of critical inquiry. This roundtable will bring together
scholars whose work engages with the medieval Middle East for a discussion of
the pedagogical pitfalls and opportunities provided by teaching a global
Middle Ages. How can medieval texts in Islamicate languages be brought into
conversation with other traditions? How can these texts help teachers confront
difficult but vital topics such as race, religion, and imperialism? We hope
these and other questions will stimulate productive conversation.

We are interested in both focused discussions of classroom practice and
broader reflections on teaching the Middle Ages beyond the boundaries of
Europe. As scholars of the medieval Islamicate world, we welcome approaches
grounded in inclusive pedagogy; comparative and global literatures; critical
race, feminist, and postcolonial theory; post-secular critique; translation
studies; canon-formation studies; and other methodologies that de-center a
hegemonic “Western” perspective on the past and promote a more global and
inclusive view of the premodern world. Particularly, we hope that participants
will explore ways in which these varied approaches can be productively brought
into play in the university classroom.

2. Love, Fear, Anger, Sorrow: Emotions and Diseases of the Soul in Islamicate
Literature

The study of emotions in the pre-modern Islamicate Middle East is beginning to
attract scholarly attention as an emerging field. Since, as in Medieval
Europe, the word ‘emotion’ has no direct correspondence to an Islamicate
concept, we invite scholars to examine how the term akhlāq (ethics, morals,
character traits) can be mapped onto/as a history of emotions. While developed
in medical and philosophical texts as ‘diseases of the soul’, emotions are
portrayed in various ways across a wide spectrum of literary traditions of the
Islamicate Middle East in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish, and thus
provide ample ground for fruitful collaboration.

We especially welcome critical engagement with the concept of ‘emotion’ and
the Islamicate term ‘akhlāq’ so as to determine semantic overlap and
differences between the two categories. Furthermore, we encourage studies that
assess the feasibility of applying theoretical approaches to emotions
developed for Medieval Europe to the Islamicate world. Such studies can focus
on emotion in the Qurʾān, illnesses of the soul in philosophical texts, the
refinement of the self in advice literature, or on the portrayal of emotion in
narrative and lyric poems. We hope that a shared vocabulary will enable future
comparative projects between medievalists of various specializations.

1.Dr Cyrus Ala’i’s Historical Maps of Persia Collection at SOAS Library is now fully digitised and is available online:

https://digital.soas.ac.uk/mapsiran

For an overview, see: https://digital.soas.ac.uk/mapsiran/about/

2. The British Library: 01 August 2019

From Caucasia, not from Southeast Asia: Daghistani Qur’ans with spurious colophons

https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2019/08/from-caucasia-not-from-southeast-asia-daghistani-qurans-with-spurious-colophons.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+asian-and-african+%28Asia+and+Africa%29

3. 3-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in Arabic literature, Ghent Univ. (Belgium)

The Novel Echoes project is a new ERC-funded research project at the UGent (Belgium), which researches the reception of the ancient novel in medieval secular literature. We are delighted to advertise a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Arabic medieval literature as part of the project.

The application deadline is 1st September 2019. Information regarding this post can be found on our website: https://www.novelsaints.ugent.be/vacancies-3 . Please do share with any interested parties. The information can also be shared on social media (facebook and twitter both @NovelSaints).

We are also delighted to announce that Ghent University shall be hosting ICAN VI, the International Conference on the Ancient Novel, in September 2021. You can follow updates on our social media @NovelSaints.

Many thanks,

Koen De Temmerman

—

Prof. dr. Koen De Temmerman

Ghent University | Dept. of Literary Studies | Blandijnberg 2 (office 110.032 – directions) | B-9000 Ghent | Belgium

4. Spring 2019 Islamic Manuscripts Workshop at UCLA:

An Introduction to Islamic Manuscript Culture

Videos and PDFs at: https://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/islamic

5. Bita Daryabari Assistant or Associate Professor of Iranian Studies – Department of Near Eastern Studies

The Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley seeks applications for a position in Iranian Studies at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor, with an expected start date of July 1, 2020.

Applications are encouraged from scholars with rigorous training in the languages and cultures (textual and/or material) of Iran (broadly defined) and with a research specialization within the period from antiquity to the advent of Islam. Preference will be given to individuals whose research has strong philological and/or material cultural foundations.

Basic Qualifications:
PhD or equivalent international degree, or enrolled in a PhD or equivalent international degree-granting program at the time of application.

Preferred qualifications:
*Mastery of relevant primary source languages or material cultures in a field of Iranian Studies.
*Philological and/or material cultural methods as foundation of research. Research in any period period from antiquity to the advent of Islam.

When applying, applicants will be asked to provide contact information for referees. Applicants at the Assistant Professor level must then request letters through the application system. For the applicants at the Associate Professor level letters will be required for the finalists. Additional writing and teaching materials will be solicited for finalists. All letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including when letters are provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service or career center), to the UC Berkeley statement of confidentiality (https://apo.berkeley.edu/ucb-confidentiality-policy) prior to submitting their letters.

Applications must be received by December 15, 2019. Please direct inquiries to: nes@berkeley.edu.

Where to apply: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/apply/JPF02227

Arabic Oration: Art and Function | brill

“This erudite study is a major breakthrough in our understanding of Arabic oratory. Qutbuddin has painstakingly reconstructed this vast tradition in all its diverse guises and contexts, from the battlefield to the pulpit, from political to legislative speeches.

The book includes a large number of sermons attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib, and also several attributed to the Ahl al Bayt (Fatima Zahra, Husain, Zaynab). It also includes the sermon attributed to the Prophet Muhammad appointing Ali as his successor at Ghadir Khumm.