In Search of the Arkand: Astral Science between India, Sasanian Iran, and the Early Islamicate World

decorated manuscript - writing in the middle, blues decoration around it

The Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford


To register for this event, click here.


27 October 2020: In Search of the Arkand: Astral Science between India, Sasanian Iran, and the Early Islamicate World

Tommy Benfey, ERC-Go.Local Post-doctoral Researcher

Convenor: Dr Arezou Azad, Programme Director, Invisible East, Oriental Institue (https://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/invisible-east-on-the-trails-of-lapis); with Tommy Benfey and Dr Zhan Zhang, ERC-Go.Local Post-doctoral Researchers.

Introduction:

Islamicate culture, in the words of Marshall Hodgson, refers to “the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when found among non-Muslims.” In this colloquium, we will read texts from the Islamicate world, from Nile to Oxus and beyond, written in different languages and scripts of the pre-modern Islamicate world, including Arabic, New Persian, Middle Persian, Pāzand, and Hebrew.

Meetings:

Weekly online sessions every Tuesday of Michaelmas Term 2020 of up to 90 mins, each on a new document or set of documents from one part of the Islamicate world. Each session has 2 parts. 1) Speakers in the first 45 minutes give a historiographical, historical, and/or literary context to the texts. Participants to do not need to know the primary source language (first 45 minutes). 2) The subsequent 45 minutes are devoted to a close, group reading of the text (s) by participants familiar with the source language. Participants need not attend both parts, and can join whichever part they prefer.

To register for this event, click here.

Please also look at our other events on Eventbrite if you wish to attend multiple sessions.

decorated manuscript - writing in the middle, blues decoration around it

Full Programme:

13 October 2020:  Arabic deeds of sale and Islamic law in Christian Sicily

Jeremy Johns, Director of the Khalili Research Centre; Professor of the Art & Archaeology of the Islamic Mediterranean

Nadia Jamil, Senior Researcher in Arabic, ERC-DocuMult project, Khalili Research Centre

 

20 October 2020: Al-Muzani’s al-Mukhtasar: An Arabic legal text from 9th century Egypt   

Christopher Melchert, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies

 

27 October 2020: In Search of the Arkand: Astral Science between India, Sasanian Iran, and the Early Islamicate World

Tommy Benfey, ERC-Go.Local Post-doctoral Researcher

 

3 November 2020: A Zoroastrian Critique of Islam in the Škand Gumānīg Wizār in Pāzand

Christian Sahner, Associate Professor of Islamic History

 

10 November 2020: Embryonic New Persian: two letters by a Jewish Sogdian in eighth-century Khotan

Zhan Zhang, ERC-Go.Local Post-doctoral Researcher

 

17 November 2020: [Jewish Books in the Islamicate World – specific title TBD]

Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, Director of the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies

 

24 November 2020: Book-picking from a Conquered Citadel in the Summer of 1517

Zeynep Yurekli-Gorkay, Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture

 

1 December 2020: Remembering the Barmakids in a Persian Fürstenspiegel

Arezou Azad, Programme Director, Invisible East and Senior Research Fellow

Pejman Firoozbakhsh, AHRC-PersDoc Post-doctoral Researcher