IMES Research Seminar Series
University of Edinburgh, Spring 2022
“De-centring (the study of) Shiʿism”

This Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies (IMES) Research Seminar Series builds on recent calls to “de-centre Shiʿism” (M. Künkler and M. Clarke, 2018). It brings together a range of perspectives on historical and contemporary topics that move beyond the cores and hierarchies within Shi‘ism – whether temporal, geographical, textual or sociological – which have long been assumed and given prominence in the field of Shiʿi studies. The Series also explores avenues to open up the field beyond its Shiʿi-centric confines and encourage more dialogue with the fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies more broadly.

The Monday seminars take place at 5.15pm UK time on Zoom. All welcome. To register, https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYlcuyvqjgvHdaSodYsuXt5D9W4T3lim0DW.

7 February Edmund Hayes (Radboud University)
Decentring the Imamate: Did the Imams Create Shiʿism, or Did the Shiʿa Create the Imams?

21 February Lucy Deacon (UoE)
Karbala from Canvas to Stage: The Influence of Traditional Storytelling on the Iranian Taʿziyeh
Carlos Mendez (UoE)
Exploring the Intra-Shiʿi Moral Panic behind the Controversial Film “The Lady of Heaven”

7 March Siti Sarah Muwahidah (UoE)
Carving an Inclusive Online Learning Space Under Constraints: A Study of Minority Shiʿi Women’s Digital Da’wa_in Indonesia

21 March Jeroen Gunning (Aarhus University/London School of Economics) & Morten Valbjørn (Aarhus University)
Where Have All the (Sunni) Islamists Gone? Bridging Studies of Sunni and Shia Islamism

4 April Songül Mecit (UoE)
Transnational Lives and Transnational Politics: The Alevis in Germany

For enquiries, please contact the convenor of the Series, Elvire Corboz (elvire.corboz@ed.ac.uk)

The Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre invites scholars and postgraduate students to participate in the upcoming seminar series: Approaching Safavid Majmū‘a(s) and Jung(s): History, Philology, Palaeography, and Arts of the Book. The seminar series will take place in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oriental Institute, on a fortnightly basis starting from January 2022.

The seminar series are convened by Dr Mahroo Moosavi and Gennady Kurin and coordinated by the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford.

Seminar Series Outline and Aims: The archives of Persian manuscripts in libraries across the world are filled with the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Safavid Majmū‘a(s) and Jung(s); these collections of texts cover a wide range of genres and themes and compile them in ways which have hardly been explored. These themes and genres include chancellery inshā, personal epistles, royal decrees, seals, contracts, occult texts, poetry, non-chancellery prose, tales, riddles, treatises on art, medical texts, cooking recipes, dream interpretations and much more. The Oxford Nizami Ganjavi seminar series: Approaching Safavid Majmū‘a(s) and Jung(s): History, Philology, Palaeography, and Arts of the Book will focus on several such collections, and a handful of texts contained within them, while probing these on the historical, art-historical, urban, philological and literary aspects.

The seminar series will be particularly concerned with identifying and discussing potential methodologies through which this corpus may be approached, analysed, and studied. How and why were these texts collected, curated and assembled in such majmū‘a(s) and Jung(s)? What do these mechanisms of assembly and production reveal about the psychological, cultural, religious, and political currents within the Safavid society? Where in memory and through what collective networks do these diverse, seemingly unrelated, and at times fragmentary texts may intersect? And finally, is it possible that the Safavid archive, allegedly destroyed by the Afghans during their occupation of Isfahan, may in fact be contained within these thousands of collections? Through reading and translation of a selection of texts, drawn from several collections, and elaborating on questions outlined above, the seminar conveners hope to initiate scholarly discussion on the Safavid majmū‘a(s) and Jung(s) and move it beyond the normative discourse.

Format: The meetings will take place every two weeks, starting from Thursday January 20, 2022, 5-6:30 pm (GMT), at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford.

Scholars and postgraduate students with upper-intermediate and/or advanced proficiency in classical Persian are welcome to join the seminar series.

For every session, a participant will volunteer to prepare a text, or an extract, from the pre-selected set of texts. The volunteers will be expected to read, transcribe, and translate the respective texts – to the extent they are able to – which will be followed by a group reading, analysis and discussion from historical, art-historical, literary, or any other potential perspectives. A week prior to the session, the participants will be provided with a PDF copy of the text and a limited number of key English and Persian articles relevant to the topic (These sources are recommended but not mandatory to read).

Registration: Participants are required to email mahroo.moosavi@balliol.ox.ac.uk or gennady.kurin@orinst.ox.ac.uk with a brief information on the level of their classical Persian language proficiency.

About the conveners:
Mahroo Moosavi is Bahari Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book at University of Oxford, Oliver Smithies Lecturer at Balliol College at University of Oxford, and Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Sydney. Her research is concerned with the intertext of architecture/art and poetry/prose, with a focus on the early modern Safavid Iran, through an interdisciplinary study of architectural/art history, literature, and post-structuralist philosophy. Her current project analyses the interpretations of form and structure of rhetorical devices in the chancellery writings of sixteenth and seventeenth century Iran to identify possible resonances within the artistic and urban system of the new city of Isfahan.
Gennady Kurin is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. His research interests lie at the intersection of manuscript studies, history, and philology with a particular focus on West Asia.

‘Afghanistan: How Iran and its allies are relying on Soleimani’s deals with the Taliban
The Afghan militants promised Tehran the Shia will be protected. If they break that promise, Iraqi paramilitaries vow to defend their fellow Shia.’

Middle East Eye, 20 August, 2021

Houthi hysteria breaks out at the Wall Street Journal

La première séance du séminaire « Medieval Kâshi Online » aura lieu ce mardi 30 novembre à 15h00-17h00.

Yves Porter (Aix Marseille Université/CNRS-LA3M/Institut Universitaire de France) y donnera une conférence intitulée :

Pour s’inscrire à la séance en ligne : Agenda de l’INHA : https://agenda.inha.fr/events/les-potiers-de-kashan-et-la-chiite-connexion-reseaux-dapprovisionnement-et-de-distribution?nc=eyJpbmRleCI6NiwidG90YWwiOjIzfQ%3D%3D

Patterns of Wisdom in Safavid Iran
The Philosophical School of Isfahan and the Gnostic of Shiraz
J. Esots
Bloomsbury, 2021

The department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh is delighted to invite you to an online conversation with Dr Lloyd Ridgeon on Thu, 18 November 2021, 17:00 – 18:00 GMT. We will discuss his new book, Hijab: Three Modern Iranian Seminarian Perspectives.
The event is free but you need to register via the link below:
https://hijabbooklaunch.eventbrite.co.uk
Dr Lloyd Ridgeon’s book addresses the differences of opinion among seminarians on the hijab in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It focuses on three representative thinkers: Murtaza Mutahhari who held veiling to be compulsory, Ahmad Qabil who argued for the desirability of the hijab, and Muhsin Kadivar who considers it neither necessary nor desirable.
Join Lloyd in conversation with Professor Nacim Pak Shiraz, Personal Chair of Cinema and Iran at the University of Edinburgh, to discuss the book and its themes.

‘The Qizilbāsh and their Shah: The Preservation of Royal Prerogative during the Early Reign of Shah Ṭahmāsp’
G. Aldous
JRAS, 2021