Workshop “Islamication / Islamization » organized with Princeton University

Tuesday, May 9, 2023 at 6 pm (German Time) we start with the key note of Michael A. Cook at the Universität Hamburg, AS-Saal, to be continued by a day of talks and debates around concepts and terminology of Isalmication/ Islamization, Wednesday May 10, 2023 with Maribel Fierro, Cyrille Aillet, Michael Ehrlich, Harry Munt, John Nawas and Peter Webb.

The Islamic Empire created a culture based on a divine revelation and its salvation religion; culture and religion seem to be inextricably entangled. In other empires, coming with an imperial religion, the assimilation of regional cultures to the imperial culture, and the conversion to the new religion can be easily separated. In the case of the Roman Empire, we have Romanization and Christianization. A similar distinction can be made regarding the transcultural aspects of the culture of the Kushan empire and the conversion to Buddhism in Central Asia. Can cultural and religious aspects also be detangled in the Islamic case? If so what terms should we adopt to make the distinction? Arabic does not lend us any useful terms. While the term for conversion, aslama, is undisputed, mustaʿriba is always used specifically. In the context of the Arabian Peninsula, it distinguishes the real, original Arabs (al‐ʿArab al‐ʿāriba) and the descendants of Ishmael who acquired what was not their ancestral language (al‐ʿArab al‐mustaʿriba). Later in the 11th century, it defines the acculturated non‐Muslim in al‐Andalus. This term would be utterly misplaced in early Islamic Iran. A similar word formation, istislām, is already used for something different: ‘submission’.

To have a look at the program flyer click here.

In order to attend online or in presence please register by May 2, 2023 with romanislam@uni-hamburg.de

Questions and remarks: respond to Katharina.mewes@uni-hamburg.de (and not to the mailing list)