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Archive for May 12th, 2026

Shii News – Academic Items

1. Upcoming Course: The Shahname: Introduction to the Iranian Epic

The new Shahname course is already open for applications, and will start on May 27. Here you can read more about it:

https://ferdowsi.org/the-shahname-introduction-to-the-iranian-epic-spring-2026/

Always feel welcome to write me if you have any questions, course ideas or are considering participating in the Ferdowsi Summer School but are not sure about your plans yet.

All the best,

Ruben

Ferdowsi School of Persian Literature

Yerevan, Armenia

Website: www.ferdowsi.org

2. Monday Majlis Series

Online on Mondays, 2025-2026, Summer Term

Centre for the Study of Islam

Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies

University of Exeter
18^th of May (Monday) 17:00-18:30 (UK time).

András Barati, A Tale of Two Decrees: Dynastic Rivalry and Bureaucratic Continuity in Eighteenth-Century Isfahan

https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/LWnKOTWjTlO_NgNHfL61_g

25^th of May (Monday) 17:00-18:30 (UK time).

Nuha Alshaar, Muslim Sicily: Fāṭimid and Kalbid Policies Towards Their Christians and Muslim Populations

https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/TBJgbYt6Rk2rVXgQvpdvvA

1^st of June (Monday) 17:00-18:30 (UK time).

Tim Greenwood and Leone Pecorini Goodall, Rare Insights into the Late Umayyad Era through a Neglected Armenian Source: The Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołt‘n

8^th of June (Monday) 17:00-18:30 (UK time).

Bilal Orfali, Prophets, Tricksters, and the Yellow Cow: Qurʾānic Echoes in al-Hamadhānī’s al-Maqāma al-Mawṣiliyya

https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/VMC2b0OAShOR4mwBrFIXuA

In the spirit of the label ‘Majlis’ and also to make the talks even more interesting, our speakers present the topic discussed as embedded in their own journey.

You can watch the previous Majlises here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8YRkUahFj_81oJzCSDLTx4kVQQgeHLc-.However, we don’t record the Q&A in order to keep the discussion free. Please come and enjoy the talks and the discussions.

If you’d like to be included in the CSI (Centre for the Study of Islam, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter) mailing list, please write to I.T.Kristo-Nagy@ex.ac.uk.

3. Call for Papers

Balkan Islam and Balkan Muslims

European Perspectives

Diasporic Trajectories, Institutions, Identities

International conference · 5–6 October 2026

Conference Hall, MISHA — 5 allée du Général Rouvillois, 67000 Strasbourg

Since the labour migrations of the 1960s and 1970s, the displacements caused by the post-Yugoslav wars, post-socialist mobilities, and contemporary student and professional circulations, Muslim populations from the Balkans, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Sandžak, have settled durably in France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Benelux, the Nordic countries, and the United Kingdom. They now constitute one of Western Europe’s oldest autochthonous Muslim diasporas, yet they remain comparatively invisible in public and academic debates on European Islam, which tend to be structured around other regional reference points.

This conference proposes to place these communities at the centre of the analysis. It seeks to examine the modalities of their settlement, the organisation of their religious and associative lives, the transnational ties they maintain with their societies of origin, and the ways in which they articulate their European belonging in a context shaped by the securitisation of Islam and the reconfiguration of secularism regimes. The historical legacies of Balkan Islam, its Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Yugoslav layers, provide the necessary backdrop to this reading, without being its main object.

Thematic tracks

The formation and historical development of Islam in the Balkans
Theology and the specificities of the interpretation of Islam in the Balkans
Islamic thought and its contemporary developments
Plural identities: being Muslim, Balkan and European
Migratory trajectories and diasporic reconfigurations: labour, war, post-socialism, contemporary mobilities
Institutions, places of worship and Balkan Muslim associations in Western Europe
Transnational circulations: imams, religious knowledge, ritual practices, diaspora economies
Generations, languages, transmission and religious practice in diasporic contexts
Women and youth in Balkan Muslim communities across Western Europe
Relations with host societies: institutional recognition, secularism, pro- and anti-Muslim discourses
The experience of war, genocide and collective memory

The conference brings together contributions from history, sociology, anthropology, religious studies, political science and law. Both comparative approaches across Western European countries and localised case studies are welcome.

Submission guidelines

Proposals (200–300 words, in English or French), together with a short biographical note, should be sent by 15 June 2026 to: akgonul@unistra.fr and dzsusko@gmail.com. Notification of acceptance: 15 July 2026. Funding (travel and accommodation) may be awarded, with priority given to doctoral candidates and early-career researchers.

Conveners and Scientific Committee

Conveners: Dževada Garić and Samim Akgönül (University of Strasbourg).

Scientific committee: Samim Akgönül, Dževada Garić, Ségolène Plyer, Khalid Rabeh.

4. I am pleased to announce the recent publication of a special issue of the Annales islamologiques. The dossier, entitled “Symbolisms and Representations of the Ka’ba” and edited by Kader Smail, Gregory Vandamme, and myself, is now available in open access at the following link:https://www.ifao.egnet.net/anisl/60

Here is the table of contents of the dossier :

– Fârès Gillon, Kader Smail, Gregory Vandamme, “Introduction”

– Harry Munt, “The Kaʿba in al-Fākihī’s (d. c.279/892–893) History of Mecca: From Local Traditions to Universal History”

– Adam Bursi, “On the Pattern of God’s Throne: The Kaʿba as Paradise in the First Centuries of Islam”

– Jean-Charles Ducène, “Le sanctuaire de la Kaʿba et ses représentations topographiques médiévales”

– Anna Caiozzo, “Présence de la Kaʿba dans la culture visuelle de l’Orient médiéval”

– Luca Patrizi, “The Relics of the Kaʿba and Their Ritual Use Through Islamic Historiographical and Exegetical Sources”

– Simon O’Meara, “House First: The Quranic Figure of the Kaʿba

– Fârès Gillon, “Interprétations ésotériques du sanctuaire mecquois dans le chiisme ismaélien du ive/xe siècle. Entre antinomisme et symbolisme”

– Gregory Vandamme, “Le sanctuaire de la Kaʿba et ses dimensions symboliques dans les Futūḥāt al-makkiyya d’Ibn ʿArabī”

Fârès Gillon

Maître de conférences en Islamologie et langue arabe, Aix-Marseille Université

+33 (0) 6 66 34 28 31

5. I am happy to announce that my book, Transcendent God, Rational World: A Maturidi Theology (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), will be the subject of a forthcoming Book Symposium in TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology, guest edited by myself and Shoaib Ahmed Malik.

For this special issue, scholars are invited to engage with, critique and extend the philosophical and theological ideas within the book. I will also be writing a published response to the papers. There are further details here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HopazieQ02RLyK3Qduq7s95gNUE3Roox/view?usp=drive_link

Dr Ramon Harvey

Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies
Cambridge Muslim College

14 St. Paul’s Road

Cambridge, CB1 2EZ

Posted in: Academic items