Religious, Ethnic and Professional Groups in the Abbasid Caliphate, 750-1000

British Academy Conferences bring together scholars from around the world to present, discuss and consolidate new research in the humanities and social sciences.

The ways that ethno-religious minorities relate to majorities is a salient feature of twenty-first century politics. However, the challenges and opportunities of states incorporating diverse communities are not new, with both modern and medieval history offering numerous examples where states have managed ethno-religious difference in different ways. Finding innovative approaches to this problem are an urgent and unmet need for contemporary European and Middle Eastern societies. Building on a project funded by the British Academy, Aga Khan University and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, this conference investigates how ethno-religious communities participated in the wider intellectual and social world of the medieval caliphate, and how their leaders drew on the material and intellectual resources of the state and wider society to maintain boundaries and preserve their communal membership from generation to generation. The event focuses on identity discourse and how far this reflected or affected the social praxis of boundary-making in reality.

This conference aims to rethink group identity formation in the Abbasid Caliphate by critically employing and applying models from the social sciences. Focusing on three principal markers of identity—namely, ethnicity, religion, and profession—it attempts to innovate not only in the study of medieval Middle Eastern history, but also in methods and paradigms for the study of identity formation and maintenance. Using the wide range of skills of historians and philologists, it confronts boundary-making mechanisms, paradigms of group formation, the role of classes and guilds in identitarian politics.

Conference convenors

• Philip Wood, Aga Khan University
• Bogdan-Gabriel Draghici, Aga Khan University
• Yasmin Ilkhani, Aga Khan University
• Mehdy Shaddel, Aga Khan University
• Sam Noble, Aga Khan University

Speakers

• Monique Bernards, independent scholar
• Marc Czarnuszewicz, University of St Andrews
• Nathan Gibson, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
• Jennifer Grayson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Ed Hayes, Leiden University
• Hugh Kennedy FBA, UCL
• Nik Matheou, University of Edinburgh
• Sam Noble, Aga Khan University
• Letizia Osti, University of Milan
• Vanessa van Renterghem, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris
• Khodadad Rezakhani, Leiden University
• Rachel Schine, University of Maryland, College Park
• Mehdy Shaddel, Aga Khan University
• Mathieu Tillier, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)
• Philip Wood, Aga Khan University
• Arash Zeini, University of Oxford

Tickets and booking

To make a reservation please contact [email protected] before 14 May. Please be aware that tickets are limited.

Further information

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