Session1223
TitleBorders in Medieval Islam, I: Social Boundaries in the Islamic West
Date/TimeWednesday 6 July 2022: 14.15-15.45
 
OrganiserAndrew Marsham, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
 
Moderator/ChairCaroline Goodson, Faculty of History / King's College, University of Cambridge
 
Paper 1223-a The Deep Past of the Arab-Byzantine Border in Medieval Arabic Geography
(Language: English)
Edward Zychowicz-Coghill, Department of History, King's College London
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Geography and Settlement Studies; Historiography - Medieval; Islamic and Arabic Studies
Paper 1223-b Communal Boundaries, Boundary Spanners, and Religious Change in Ifrīqiya, 10th-11th Centuries
(Language: English)
Aslisho Qurboniev, Knowledge, Information Technology & the Arabic Book (KITAB) Project, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, London
Index Terms: Genealogy and Prosopography; Islamic and Arabic Studies; Religious Life; Social History
Paper 1223-c Sainthood and Social Boundary Crossing in Medieval North Africa
(Language: English)
Amira K. Bennison, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Historiography - Medieval; Islamic and Arabic Studies; Religious Life; Social History
 
AbstractArabic texts about North Africa and Anatolia in the 10th-12th centuries are both evidence for boundaries and part of the process of their construction and contestation. Zychowicz-Coghill considers how geographers conceptualised the 10th-century Arab-Byzantine frontier by invoking the deep past, associating territories with Noah's children. Qurboniev uses network analysis and theories of social capital to gain insight into social boundaries among the local scholarly elite in 10th-century Qayrawan (Tunisia). Bennison explores how in the 11th and 12th centuries indigenous Maghribis breached the socio-cultural boundary keeping them out of the Arab-Islamic scholarly class, using narratives of charisma and divine communion.