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IMC 2016: Sessions

Session 1627: Celebrating Excess?: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Court, Consumption, and Authority, II - Celebration, Generosity, and Rhetoric

Thursday 7 July 2016, 11.15-12.45

Organisers:Geoffrey Humble, Department of History, University of Birmingham
Sami Kalliosaari, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Moderator/Chair:Geoffrey Humble, Department of History, University of Birmingham
Paper 1627-aThe Caliphs' Feasts in the Early Abbasid Court
(Language: English)
Yuko Tanaka, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Politics and Diplomacy, Religious Life
Paper 1627-bSultan al-Ghawrī's Salons: Between Pomposity, Theological Positions, and Political Claims
(Language: English)
Christian Mauder, Seminar für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Index terms: Islamic and Arabic Studies, Political Thought, Religious Life, Rhetoric
Paper 1627-cCourt, Consumption, and Authority in the Medieval Middle East: Food Distribution on the Sacred Month of Rajab
(Language: English)
Daniella Talmon-Heller, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva
Index terms: Islamic and Arabic Studies, Lay Piety, Religious Life, Rhetoric
Abstract

Taking the feast as a starting point, these panels interrogate medieval writers’ assessments of rulership and authority via discussions of court consumption and ostentation. This session examines the multiple levels on which court events and celebrations operated in Islamicate polities. Yuko Tanaka interrogates Abbasid caliphs’ integration of worldly sophistication with the practices of the Prophet in order to claim a status in defining future practice. Christian Mauder exposes the complexity of theological and political communication in the notoriously ostentatious salons of the later Mamluk court. Daniella Talmon-Heller untangles disputes over generosity, food and excess in both royal and plebeian Rajab celebrations.