In view of current international developments, there is an insatiable quest for knowledge about the medieval roots of Islam. The Islamic World features widely on the programme.

1. The Early Islamic World

Historians and Arabists currently exploring Early islamic History are more and more convinced that the significant breaks with the past were not so much the mission of Muhammad (d. 632) and the 7th-century foundation of the Muslim Empire as the transformation of that empire after 750. With this recognition new approaches have been fostered with which to think about the nature of the earliest Muslim empire – often in a comparative world historical perspective – as well as to think about the development of the religion of Islam itself.

This year six sessions have been organized to create a forum for mutual exchange and debates about the different shifts inside law, land, religion, writing etc, in the Islamic heartlands.

The sessions are sponsored by CASAW – The Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World which sponsors the network: The Early Islamic World. The network investigates current research into the origins of both Arab ethnic identity and the religion of Islam, c.500-c. 750 CE. The are organized by Ann R. Christys, Independent Scholar, Leeds and Andrew Marsham, School of Literatures, Languages & Cultures, University of Edinburgh.

READ BEFORE TAKING PART:

Rituals of Islamic Monarchy. Accession and Succession in the First Muslim Empire
By Andrew Marsham
Edinburgh University Press 2009
ISBN-10: 0748625127
ISBN-13: 978-0748625123

II. Power & Institutions in Medieval Islam & Christendom

• examine the political, social, and cultural use of history writing and the active role of authors in constructing narratives and transforming the past to renew the present. By focusing on examples of history writing from Ottonian Saxony, 12th-century Damascus and the Carolingian world, the three papers explore different expressions of institutional memory, construction of community identities and representation and renegotiation of the past across the medieval world. Power & Institutions in Medieval Islam & Christendom (PIMIC), I: (Re)Writing the Past – Memory and Political Culture in East and West [Session No: 525]
• explore historiography across the Islamic and Anglo-Norman worlds. Morris argues that political and doctrinal pressures on early Islamic historiography have distorted our picture of the Umayyad royal court, obscuring its Arabian roots. Hitt will examine the transmission of social norms and ideals within L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, a 13th-century biography of William Marshal, an exemplar knight and courtier. Kennedy will ask whether the sultan could be considered an Islamic political institution in the 10th century. These papers will consider the conclusions that can be drawn from comparatively examining historiographical sources across Islam and Christendom. Power & Institutions in Medieval Islam & Christendom (PIMIC), II: Comparative Approaches to Historiography in Medieval Christendom and Islam [Session No: 625]
• examine a variety of power concepts in Medieval Europe and the Middle East and their flexibility in theory and practice. They explore different ways in which the power held by the sultans, kings, chieftains and lords was negotiated. By examining such diverse phenomena as spatiality and the power of memory in 12th- and 13th-century Castile, the principles of constructing ‘hierarchies among equals’ in 13th-century Christendom and the appropriation of sacred objects and spaces in 13th- and 14th-century Islamic protests, they inquire how far we can go in comparing power across cultures in the medieval world. Power & Institutions in Medieval Islam & Christendom (PIMIC), III: Power in Practice – Reproducing and Negotiating Medieval Rulership [Session No: 725]
• focuses on the building, negotiations and uses of diverse forms of canon law in different institutional, cultural, and historical contexts. The aim is to analyse the relationship between different instances of authority and power in both the Byzantine and the Medieval World. Following a chronological order, the first paper analyses the institutional identity of the Papacy during the Lateran Council of 649, the second paper studies the canonical questions of Byzantine bishops in the 12th century, and the third paper examines marriage dispensations in the diocese of Quattrocento Florence from a socio-legal perspective. Power & Institutions in Medieval Islam & Christendom (PIMIC), IV: Power, Institutions, and Canon Law in Byzantine and Medieval Contexts [Session No: 825]
• assess to which extent the making of law was (or not) embedded in the practices themselves which it tried to regulate or from which it took origin. Furthermore, it takes into account the influence of lawyers, their cultural milieu and professional activity, and their attitude towards pre-existing laws and customs. The contributors will present different perspectives on law making in different socio-cultural frameworks by tackling the broad themes of warfare and the control of violence in specific examples from Feudal, Roman and Islamic law. Power & Institutions in Medieval Islam & Christendom (PIMIC), V: Controlling Violence in the Middle Ages [Session No: 1025]

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