- Maribel Fierro
- Adday Hernández
- Omayra Herrero
- Estrella Samba
- Diego Solís
- Jesús Téllez
- Amina Naciri
- Ana Tendero
- Rachid El Hour
Activities
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The legal status of dhimmis in the Muslim West in the Middle Ages
Organized by Maribel Fierro (CCHS – CSIC, Madrid) and John Tolan (Université de Nantes)
Sponsored by European Research Council, Advanced Research Grants “The legal status of religious minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean world (5th-15th centuries) (RELMIN)”, directed by John Tolan, and “Knowledge, heresy and political culture in the Islamic West. Eighth-fifteenth centuries (KOHEPOCU)”, directed by Maribel Fierro, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN), Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean (ILC) – Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CCHS-CSIC) and Casa de Velázquez.
This seminar is devoted to the Islamic legal doctrine on the “protected groups” (dhimmis), that is, to the monotheistic religious communities (Jews and Christians) who lived under Muslim rule and to whom a special legal status was granted. That legal status implied a position of inferiority or discrimination in relationship to the Muslims, but it did not involve – at least in theory – persecution. There is no monograph on such status for the Medieval Islamic West. This seminar aims at bringing together renowned specialists on the subject and related issues whose papers will contribute to the publication of such monograph.
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Knowledge under control. Religious and political censorship in Islamic societies.
WOCMES (World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies) Barcelona.
Four panels, of which the first three dealt with the premodern period and were organized by Maribel Fierro (CCHS – CSIC, Madrid). The fourth, dealing with the modern period, was organized by Ana Belén Soage (Granada University).
The first three were financed by ERC ARG KOHEPOCU, together with funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) and the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean (ILC) – Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CCHS-CSIC).
It has recently been shown that Averroes had to change a previous version of his al-Kashf 'an manahij al-adilla - in which he departed from Ibn Tumart’s doctrine - under the pressure of the Almohad purists who wanted to preserve their founder’s views on anthropomorphism. Censorship and pressure to conform in this case resulted in the alteration of a text and probably influenced Averroes’ "disgrace" and banishment. In other cases, it led to more painful consequences. In these panels, other instances of altered texts as a result of censorship or auto-censhorship will be studied with the aim of exploring how religious and political control in the writing domain was carried out in a variety of contexts.
PANEL 1. The pre-modern period (organized by Maribel Fierro, CSIC-Madrid).
Chair: Christopher Melchert (Oxford University)
BALDA-TILLIER, Monica (Oxford University), « La passion interdite : le martyre d’amour en proie à la censure » ?
BRENTJES, Sonja (Universidad de Sevilla), “Establishing boundaries for knowledge - Ayyubid, Mamluk and Timurid rulers, functionaries and scholars”.
EPHRAT, Daphna (The Open University of Israel), “Censuring frivolous imitators and antinomian Sufis in the earlier middle period”
GÜNTHER, Sebastian (Göttingen University), "Boundaries and Horizons of Learning in al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd"
PANEL 2. The pre-modern period (organized by Maribel Fierro, CSIC-Madrid)
Chair: Sebastian Günther (Göttingen University)
FORTE, Francesca (Universitá di Milano), « La censure de l'histoire: Averroès et l'historiographie arabe contemporaine"
KADDOURI, Samir (Leiden University), “Les 'Abbâdides ont-t-ils imposé une dissimulation par Ibn Hazm de ses opinions politiques dans la seconde version de Kitâb al-Fasl? ».
MANDALA, Giuseppe (Göttingen University), “Religious and Political Censorship and Martyrdom in Islamic Sicily (9th-11th century)”
PYROVOLAKI, Marina (Indepent scholar), "Dropping the fetters: pseudo-historical literature and its creative limitations”.
PANEL 3. The pre-modern period (organized by Maribel Fierro, CSIC-Madrid)
Chair: Sonja Brentjes (University of Seville)
ALI-DE-UNZAGA, Omar (The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London), “Public book burnings in 12th-century Baghdad: The struggle for orthodoxy and the ill fate of the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa'”
FIERRO, Maribel (CCHS – CSIC), “The control of knowledge under the Almohads”
FELIPE, Helena de (Universidad de Alcalá), “Dealing with Berber religious attitudes in the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco”.
GOMEZ GARCIA, Luz (Universidad Autónoma), “Rethinking self-censorship on Islamic webs: cross-references between Arabic-English-French”.
PANEL 4. The modern period (organized by Ana Belén Soage, Granada University)
Chair: Ana Belén Soage (Granada University)
AMIN, Yasmin (American University in Cairo), ‘Censorship / Freedom of Expression in Islam’
FELDMAN, Matthew (Northampton University), “Extremism, organisational self-censorship and successful ‘fifth-column discourse’: the cases of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the BNP in England”
FUENTELSAZ, Jorge (Agencia EFE), “The Muslim Brothers and the Egyptian government”
AL-JAWAHIRI, Emad (Qadisiya University, Iraq), “A New Study and Translation of al-Khayyam’s Poetry under Censorship in Iraq”.
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GEAR-DEFIHIS
Yolanda AIXELA (Institució Milà i Fontanals-CSIC), “La presentación social del cuerpo entre los marroquíes”.
15 de abril de 2010 (CCHS)
Este seminario tiene como objetivo aproximarse a la presentación social del cuerpo de los marroquíes, atendiendo a algunas de las claves que lo condicionan, tales como son la relación entre Islam, género y cuerpo; Islam, religión y cuerpo; Islam, derecho y cuerpo; e Islam, espacio y cuerpo. La aproximación se vertebrará desde dos líneas de investigación paralelas planteadas desde una perspectiva histórica como son, por un lado, la relación entre cuerpo y cultura, atendiendo a la relevancia que tomó la presentación social del cuerpo en el período colonial y postcolonial en un afán por distinguirse de los colonizadores y, por otro, la analogía cuerpos femeninos y representación colectiva, analizando el papel de guardianas de la identidad colectiva musulmana de las mujeres a través del uso del hiyab.
Harvey HAMES (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona), “A Jew amongst Christians and Muslims: Introspection in Solomon Ibn Adret's Response to Ibn Hazm”.
14 de junio de 2010 (CCHS)
Solomon ibn Adret, one of the foremost Rabbis of the Jewish community in the Iberian peninsula in the late thirteenth century, wrote a treatise that engaged directly with the claims and arguments of Ibn Hazm, a Muslim scholar who had been dead for some two hundred years. His preoccupation with Ibn Hazm seems strange given his many other concerns such as the spread of Averrroism and Christian attacks on the Jewish post-biblical texts. One of Ibn Adret's Christian interlocutors was the famous Dominican, Ramon Marti, and it is he who provides the key for understanding the treatise written against Ibn Hazm. In this paper, we will explore the importance of Ibn Hazm for Ramon Marti, and see how Ibn Adret's treatise is his way of exploring his own religious beliefs in the face of the Christian attacks against Rabbinical Judaism.
Juan CAMPO (Department of Religious Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara), "Mass Pilgrimage and the Modern State: Heteropraxis and heterodoxy in the Shaping of Sacred Space".
18 de octubre de 2010 (CCHS)
This paper focuses on heteropraxis and heterodoxy as they have become embedded in the annual mass pilgrimage to Sabarimala in South India, which involves a multiplex of Hindu and Muslim sacred places. It will explain how the modern secular state and religious agencies become involved in the negotiation of religious difference and scandal, and the impact this has on the shaping of the pilgrimage landscape. The paper will include a comparative perspective drawn from research on the annual hajj to Mecca.
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Sources for the study of the relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Middle Ages: art, philology, history
Fuentes para el estudio de las relaciones entre cristianos, judíos y musulmanes en la Edad Media: arte, filología, historia, CCHS-CSIC, 2012, 2013, 2014. It has been co-organized with Inés Monteira, UNED.
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Naming to understand. Terms and concepts for the study of Medieval history in the Iberian Peninsula
Nombrar para comprender. Términos y conceptos para el estudio de la historia medieval peninsular, CCHS-CSIC, 2013. It has been co-organized with Carlos Ayala, Universidad Autónoma, Madrid.