Colloque : “9th Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies”, Brown University (USA), 8-10/06/2023

SMS 2023

The Ninth Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies will be held at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island (USA), June 8-10, 2023. The conference will be conducted in two parts and will be preceded by a three-day intensive course on the history of the Arabic language during the Mamluk period.

To register for the conference, please visit the registration page.

Thursday, June 8, 2023
Themed Day: The Languages of the Mamluk Sultanate

10:00-11:00 Registration, coffee and pastries (Petteruti Lounge)

11:00-11:15 Welcome remarks from SMS organizing committee

11:15-12:30 Papers 1 and 2

• Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew as Competing Languages in the Late Mamluk Period
  Dotan Arad
• “Knowledge of the Three Shone in One”: Unravelling al-Sakhawi’s perceptions of Arabic, Persian, and Turkic multilingualism in the Daw’ al-Lami’
  Mustafa Banister

12:30-2:00 Lunch break

2:00-3:15 Papers 3 and 4

• Arabic language’s Status and Merits in Ibn Taymiyya
  Mehdi Berriah
• Conquest and Career: The Versified Turkic Translation of al-Wāqidī’s Futūḥ al Shām by Ibn Ajā
  Georg Leube

3:15-3:45 Coffee Break

3:45-5:00 Papers 5 and 6

• The Instrumentalization of Language in a Christian Mamluk Province: Arabic, Syriac, and the Interconfessional Strife in 15th-century Mount Lebanon
  Ghassan Osmat
• Learning to Read Coptic: The Coptic Grammars of the 13th/14th Centuries
  Ramona Teepe

5:00 Welcome reception in Leung Family Gallery

Friday, June 9, 2023: Panels

9:00-11:00 Panel 1: African Diasporas in Mamluk Egypt and Syria
Panel Chair and organizer: Julien Loiseau

• Ethiopian Monastic communities in Cairo (15th-16th centuries)
  Martina Ambu
• King David and his sisters: Nubian Royal Captives and Mamluk policy in the Middle Nile Valley (13th-14th cent.)
  Robin Seignobos
• Black Skins White Hearts: On ‘Ethiopian’ Slaves Turned Into Sufi Saints in Mamluk Egypt
  Giuseppe Cecere
• Greetings from the Najāshī’s people: Free Ethiopian Muslims in Mamluk Egypt and Syria
  Julien Loiseau

11:00-11:30 Coffee Break

11:30-1:00 Panel 2: Textual Encounters: Contesting Literary and Ideological Boundaries under the Mamluks
Panel Chair and Organizer: Omer Ilgezdi

• The Image of Ottoman Patronage in the Works of the Mamluk Scholar ʿAbd al Bāsiṭ al-Malaṭī
  Omer Ilgezdi
• The Sacred Power of Obedience: The Ramifications of Taymiyyan Thought on Baraka
  Sara Mokh
• Medieval Liars in the Arab World: The Censorship of Hasan al Bakri
  Faiza Masood

1:00-2:30 Lunch break

Panel 3: From Cairo to Jerusalem and Beyond: Interdisciplinary Readings of Mamluk Society and Scholarship
Panel Chair and Organizer: Mustafa Banister

• Medical Discussions on Lovesickness (ʿIshq) during the Post-Classical Period
  Nahyan Fancy
• Al-Maqrīzī, Ibn Ḥajar and the Man Who Pretended to Be the Sufyānī: An Insight into Source Criticism in the Late Mamluk Period
  Frédéric Bauden
• A Muḥaddith-Calligrapher of Fourteenth-Century Cairo: Ṣadr al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad al-Maydūmī and the Arts of the Book
  Noha Abou-Khatwa
• The Bimaristan al-Salahi in Jerusalem
  Yehoshua Frenkel
• A Custody Dispute between a Ḥabashī Slave and her Jewish Owner, reported by the Chronicler of the Late Mamlūk Period and early Ottoman Occupation, Ibn Iyās in 928/1522
  Carl Petry

5:00 End of Friday panels

Saturday, June 10, 2023: Panels

Panel 4: Mamluks and Ethnicity in the Circassian Period
Panel Organizer: Hannah Barker
Panel Chair: Koby Yosef

• Mamlūks of Christian Origin in the Mamluk Sultanate: Perhaps European Travelers did not Exaggerate That Much
  Koby Yosef
• Tribal Genealogy, Ethnic Nobility: al-ʿAyni and the Glorious Circassian Ancestry of Sultan al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh
  Julien Loiseau
• The Quraysh of the Unbelievers: Constructing Circassian Ethnicity in the Court of Sultan Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī
  Christian Mauder
• The Tatars of the Sudan: New Uses of an Old Stereotype
  Hannah Barker

11:00-11:30 Coffee Break

Panel 5: Nahda/Mamluk Entanglements
Panel Organizer: Betty Rosen
Panel Chair: Maha Abdelmegeed

• “Inna li-kul zamān badī‘an”: Al-Shidyāq reads Ibn Ḥijja
  Betty Rosen
• “Tarwih al-Nufus”: A Late 19th Century Re-Write of Ibn Sudun’s “Nuzhat al-Nufus”?
  Maha Abdelmegeed
• The Inheritance of Takhyīl, from al-’Askarī to al-Bārūdī
  Adam Koutajyani

1:00-2:00 Lunch Break

2:30-4:00 Panel 6: Miscellaneous topics
Panel Chair: Miriam Frenkel

• Self Expression through Mamluk Autobiographies
  Maha Shawki
• Weights and Measures in the Red Sea/Indian Ocean Trade Network in the early Mamluk Era
  Daniel Varisco
• Engaging al-Ghazali, Countering Ibn Taymiyya: Ibn al-Akfani and Tashkoprizade on True Knowledge
  Ahmed Tahir Nur

4:00 Concluding Remarks

4:15 End of conference

6:00 Farewell Dinner at Mill’s Tavern<