IMC 2022: Sessions
Session 1223: Borders in Medieval Islam, I: Social Boundaries in the Islamic West
Wednesday 6 July 2022, 14.15-15.45
| Organiser: | Andrew Marsham, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Caroline Goodson, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge |
| Paper 1223-a | The Deep Past of the Arab-Byzantine Border in Medieval Arabic Geography (Language: English) 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) 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) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Religious Life, Social History |
| Abstract | Arabic 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. |