Categories : Field-specific (academic)

Workshop organized by Aila Santi and Sinem Casale

Supported by the ERC Horizon Starting Grant Project “Embodied Imamate: Mapping the Development of the Early Shi i Community 700-900 CE”, grant n. 101077946 and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut

As Oleg Grabar noted, “one of the most characteristic buildings of Islamic architecture is, without doubt, the monumental tomb.” Marking graves, building tombs, and performing funeral rites are nevertheless disapproved of—or outright forbidden—by certain segments of Islamic law, with the strictest interpretations labelling these practices as anti-Islamic innovations (bidaʿ).

This notwithstanding, a substantial body of material and textual evidence attests that by at least the 10th century CE, the marking, construction, and visitation of tombs had already become firmly established as one of the most distinctive features of Islamic culture and practice, challenging the common notion that a prohibitive Islamic orthodoxy was simply followed by a later deviant innovation.

Commemorative practices and prohibitive stances around ziyāra—the visitation of holy places associated with revered figures and their legends—emerged in fact at an early stage, as coexisting and interdependent phenomena. But how, when, and where did ziyāra originate, and what are the earliest material records of it? Whereas an earlier generation of scholars have associated the origins of ziyāra to the rise of Shīʿism (Grabar 1966), others have highlighted both the inter-communal nature of these visits, and the Sunni patronage and protection of major Imami shrines during the medieval period and beyond (Bernheimer 2013; Taylor 1992). Meanwhile, patronage of and governance over tombs held considerable significance for many rulers, both Sunni or Shīʿi. In fact, interactions with tombs and their material settings played a pivotal role in shaping sectarian identities, fostering communal meaning, promoting group cohesion, and at times inciting unruly behaviours.

This workshop suggests that in addition to sectarian history and politics, the rise of ziyāra practices in the early Islamic period needs to be considered within the broader, cross-religious framework of memorialisation in Late Antique Western Asia and the Mediterranean. Although our knowledge on the topic remains fragmented, new evidence calls for interdisciplinary engagement. In this event—organised jointly by the ERC Horizon Starting Grant Project “Embodied Imamate: Mapping the Development of the Early Shiʿi Community 700-900 CE” at Leiden University and the Kunsthistorische Institut in Florenz—organisers seek to foster dialogue among art and architectural historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, philologists, and historians who engage with the built environment, materiality, space, epigraphy, and ritual to explore the early crystallisation of ziyāra practices and the broader socio-political transformations reflected in evolving topographies of cemeteries and sacred landmarks in early Islam realm.

Monday, 27 October 2025

14:30-14:45 Opening Remarks by Gerhard Wolf (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz), Aila Santi (Leiden University) and Sinem Casale (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz)

Panel 1 – The Materiality of Ziyāra in the Shiʿī World

Chair: Edmund Hayes (Leiden University)

14:45-15:15 Zahra M. Jiwan (Columbia University) The Early Ziyara of Twelfth Imam’s Envoys in Baghdad: A Ritual-Architectural Process of Canonizing Authority

15:15-15:45 Reza Daftarian (Courtauld Institute of Art – University of London) The Radiance of Resilience: Ziyarat and the Shrine of Imam Reza in Mongol-Ilkhanid Iran

16:30-18:30 Visit to Bargello Museum with Giovanni Curatola (for speakers only)

19:00 Reception (for speakers only)

Tuesday, 28 October 2025

Panel 2 – Building Remembrance (I): Concepts, Forms, and Materiality in Islamic Commemorative and Funerary Practice

Chair: Sinem Casale (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz)

10:30-11:00 Amelia Blundo (Sapienza University of Rome) Rules and Models of Commemorative Buildings in the Dar al-Islam in the Early Centuries: A Reflection from the Case Study of the Aswan Necropolis

11:00-11:30 Simon O’Meara (SOAS University of London) The Prophet’s Grave and the Question of Sub-floor Domestic Burial in Early Islam

11:00-11:30 Jahfar Shareef Pokkanali (University of Bonn) Early Islamic Funerary Sites Along the Southern Indian Littorals: Materialities, Forms, and Ornaments

11:30 Coffee Break

Panel 3 – Building Remembrance (II): Epigraphy, Ornaments, and Visuality in Islamic Commemorative and Funerary Practice

Chair: Aila Santi (Leiden University)

12:00-12:30 Teresa Bernheimer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich) Building Blocks of Memory: Early Islamic Tombstones and the Material Practice of Ziyara

12:30-13:00 Alka Patel (The University of California & Aix-Marseille Université/La3M) Carving Monuments: Funerary Innovations in the Eastern Persianate Worlds, XI-XIII Centuries

13:00 Break

Panel 4 – The Materiality of Death and Commemoration in Islamic Archaeology: Reinterpreted Evidence and New Finds

Chair: Aila Santi (Leiden University)

14:30-15:00 Thomas Leisten (Strata Heritage Consulting) On the Road of Pain and Sorrow: Excavating the Mashhad al-Tirh in Balis, Syria

15:00-15:30 Andrea L. Corsi (Orient Abteilung, DAI Berlin) & Richard P. McClary (University of York) Approaches to Early Islamic Funerary Practices: the Siraf Necropolis and Beyond

15:30-16:00 Amanda Antonelli (Independent) Rediscovering Rasulid Funerary Culture: the Study of the Cemetery of al-Ribat (Dhofar, Sultanate of Oman)

Wednesday, 29 October 2025

Panel 5 – Landscapes of Memory (I): Inherited Sacred Geographies and the Emergence of Islamic Ziyāra

Chair: Leone Pecorini (Leiden University)

10:00-10:30 Kyle Longworth (Leiden University) Caliphs ad Sanctos?: Pre-Islamic Christian Saints and the Gravesites of the Umayyad Caliphs ‘Umar II (d. 101/720) and Hisham (d. 125/743)

10:30-11:00 Simon Pierre (Ifpo Beirut and Orient et Méditerranée, Paris) Before Muslim Saints. Arab Visitation and Almsgiving to Christian Holy Shrines (1st-2nd Century AH)

11:00 Coffee Break

Panel 6 – Landscapes of Memory (II): Spiritual Topography, Place Making and Death in the Early Islamic world

Chair: Adam Ramadhan (Leiden University)

11:30-12:00 Finn Lindo-Dunn (Leiden University) Entombing Identity: Landscape, Memory, and the Tomb of ‘Uqba ibn Nafi in Medieval North Africa

12:00-12:30 Adam Bursi (Cornell University) “Do Not Skip Going to the Tombs of the Martyrs”: Early Pilgrimage to Uhud and Its Discontents

12:30-13:00 Petra Sijpesteijn (Leiden University) Landmarks of Change: Tombs and Ritual in Early Islamic Egyptian Papyri

13:00 Break

Panel 7 – Landscapes of Memory (III): Politics of Burial in the Medieval Islamic West

Chair: Zahra Azhar (Leiden University)

14:30-15:00 Bilal Sarr (University of Granada) Sanctity and Rawdas in Southeastern al-Andalus: Rituals, Visits, and Materiality

15:00-15:30 Peter Tamas Nagy (Qatar Museums Authority) Dynastic Forefathers in Medieval Morocco: Establishing Tombs, Commemoration, and Ziyara

15:30 Coffee Break

16:00-17:00 Closing remarks by Avinoam Shalem (Columbia University) and Hugh Kennedy (SOAS University of London) and Round Table Discussion

Chair: Aila Santi (Leiden University)

This will be a hybrid event.

VENUE

Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai

Via dei Servi 51

50122 Firenze, Italia

To participate online please register in advance via Zoom:

https://eu02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/bMENDyMLQwu9wpEpe_bTDw#/registration

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

The Eighth International Hybrid Conference on Islamic Civilisation
Sects, Sectarianism, and Sectarian Identities in Islam

Date: November 1–2, 2025
Place: National Chengchi University, Taipei, Republic of China (Hybrid: Onsite & Online)

Organizers:
Department of Arabic Language and Culture, National Chengchi University (NCCU)
Institut Islam Hadhari, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)

Description:
This two-day program brings together leading scholars from Asia, Europe, and beyond to examine the intellectual, historical, and socio-political dimensions of sectarian formation across time and place.

Program & Keynotes: The handbook and agenda are available via the link below.

Registration:
Deadline: October 21, 2025
Registration is required
For more information and to register, click here.
For inquiries: isu@nccu.edu.tw

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/jj.27775799.13?seq=1

in Analytic Islamic Epistemology: Critical Debates, Edited by Safaruk Chowdhury, Ramon Harvey, Edinburgh, 2025, pp. 173-194 (22 pages)

WORKSHOP — CALL FOR PAPERS

The Social Dynamics of Communal Affiliation in Early Islam

Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands

11–12 June 2026

RATIONALE

In much existing scholarship, our understanding of Muslim groups in early Islam has been gauged through a reliance on later works of heresiography and doxography. These fourth/tenth century works portray a diverse range of groups (including the Imami, Zaydi, and Ismaili Shiʿa, Kharijis, Muʿtazilis, Murjiʾis, and various others who eventually came under the banner of ‘Sunnism’) emerging in the first three centuries of Islam, often over issues surrounding the rightful political leadership of the Muslim community and later coalescing around other theological beliefs which facilitated more coherent, structured systems for members of these groups to adhere to. Studies engaging with such works have greatly enriched our understanding of the doctrines and beliefs ascribed to these groups, their evolution over time, and what images the sources construct of them.

In studies on the social dynamics of this period, however, more attention has been paid to relations between Muslim and non-Muslim groups through processes such as conversion and cross-communal engagement with alternative legal systems than has been between the various Muslim groups. There is arguably a lacuna in thinking about how individuals belonging to divergent Muslim groups interacted, and how the interactions between them were practically structured. Research on interactions between Muslims belonging to divergent groups has tended to focus on theological polemics or political violence, rather than day-to-day interactions. We therefore lack a deeper understanding of what it meant to belong to a Muslim group during this early period of the first/seventh to third/ninth centuries on a more practical level. With the aim of addressing this, in this workshop, organised under the auspices of the ERC Horizon Starting Grant project ‘Embodied Imamate: Mapping the Development of the Early Shiʿi Community 700-900 CE’, we encourage participants to think about interactions between Muslim groups, and the institutions and mechanisms which facilitated these interactions during the first three centuries of Islam. To this end, three key concerns are identified as central to this workshop:

The Fluidity/Ambiguity of Communal Affiliation

The question of how fixed the boundaries between the various groups were during this period should not necessarily be taken for granted. This is not to say that such boundaries did not exist, but rather that they may not accurately reflect the historical realities of what these boundaries implied as a result of the tendency to back-project later heresiographical categories onto these groups. We are interested in exploring new ways of thinking about these groups beyond the constraints of heresiographical categories. The use of categories such as ‘Khariji’ or ‘ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa’, for example, have been problematised in recent scholarship and should act as an impetus for reconsidering our terminology and the categories we apply to figures of this period. Some potential themes for participants to consider include:

• Critical reflections on the terms and categories used in the study of Muslim groups
• Ritual actions as shared/exclusive identity markers
• Cases of multiple communal affiliations
• Conversion between Muslim groups

Means of Demarcating and Enforcing Communal Boundaries

What mechanisms were utilised to demarcate and enforce communal boundaries? Building upon recent important work on ritual actions such as prayer, for example, as a means of communal boundary-making, we encourage participants to think about other cases — legal and otherwise — which demonstrate the ways in which Muslim groups established themselves apart from each other. Some potential themes for participants to consider include:

• Legal mechanisms of social exclusion
• Restricting relations to certain groups (e.g. marriage, patronate relationships)
• Restricting and withholding of capital
• Cases of disassociation and excommunication
• The use of space in enforcing physical boundaries
• Codewords of exclusion
• Initiatory practices (e.g. oaths of allegiance)

Cases of Interactions across Communal Boundaries

What the adherents of such groups believed aside, how did one’s communal affiliation impact relations with those of other persuasions and what implications did adherence to one of these groups have on how one negotiated daily life in a communally diverse society? Most cases we have access to in this regard are inevitably centred around elite individuals, research on which nevertheless still requires further attention; for example, scholarly debate and exchange, court politics, attempts at state control of religious authorities etc. Innovative readings of the sources with this concern in mind can also, however, provide us with some insight into the lived experiences of non-elite individuals with regards to interactions across communal boundaries. Some potential themes for participants to consider include:

• Legal questions posed to authorities on inter-communal interactions
• Literary accounts of inter-communal interactions as a reflection of historical realities
• Cases of interactions across social hierarchies, including with and between non-elites
• Prosopographical insights into the formation of inter-communal relations and bonds
• Documentary and material evidence for thinking about inter-communal interactions (e.g. papyri, inscriptions, archaeology and architecture)
• Organisational structures for facilitating interactions (e.g. agents, courtiers, government officials)

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

Please submit an abstract of no more than 400 words along with a brief biography of no more than 100 words as a single PDF document to Adam Ramadhan (contact details below). Submissions from established as well as junior scholars, including PhD students and independent researchers, are welcomed. The deadline for abstract submission is 14 November 2025. You are encouraged to outline in your abstract the sources you will use in your paper and the scholarly interventions you intend to make. Accepted participants will be notified by 5 December 2025.

WORKSHOP FORMAT

The workshop will be held in-person at Universiteit Leiden between 11–12 June 2026; there will be no scope for online participation. Participants will have 20 minutes to present their paper followed by 30 minutes of discussion for each paper. The language of the workshop is English.

PUBLICATION OF WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS

The aim of this workshop is to produce a special issue in a peer reviewed journal, and participants’ contributions will therefore be considered for publication. Participants are asked to indicate their interest in contributing to this publication when submitting their abstract.

LOGISTICS

Reasonable travel and accommodation costs will be covered for participants. Those with access to institutional support to cover these costs are asked to inform the organisers when submitting their abstract so as to be able to direct more support towards junior scholars.

CONTACT DETAILS

The main point of contact for this workshop is Adam Ramadhan who can be reached at a.a.a.h.ramadhan@hum.leidenuniv.nl.

ORGANISATION

This workshop is organised by Adam Ramadhan and Edmund Hayes under the auspices of the ERC Horizon Starting Grant project ‘Embodied Imamate: Mapping the Development of the Early Shiʿi Community 700-900 CE’ (grant no. 101077946) based at Universiteit Leiden.