What's Going On at MEMS?
Dear Friends,
MEMS continues to sponsor the Premodern Colloquium (meets Sunday afternoons once a month) as well as occasional MEMS Lectures.
We hope you will join us, and watch the website calendar of events for upcoming lectures and other activities of interest!
Fragments Workshop. A CONQUEST KOINE: The Oral and Written Transmission of Reports on the Islamic Conquest of Duin
Alison Vacca, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Commentators: Manan Ahmed (Columbia U) and Matt Mosca (U Washington).
The earliest extant Arabic histories describing the rise of Islam and the Caliphate date to the ninth century, some two centuries after the events they purport to describe. This has prompted a strong tendency towards skepticism among historians of early Islam who suggest that perhaps these histories reveal more about ʿAbbasid-era realities than about conquest- or Umayyad-era events. Accordingly, a number of scholars have turned to non-Arabic sources to corroborate or challenge the data culled from Arabic histories.
This paper questions the use of non-Arabic sources as independent checks on the Arabic. In particular, it examines the accounts of the seventh-century Arab conquest of Armenia and specifically Dabīl/Duin, the Sasanian and caliphal capital of Armenia, to forward suggestions about how we might trace oral transmission of historical reports in multilingual communities of the medieval Near East.
The earliest extant Arabic histories describing the rise of Islam and the Caliphate date to the ninth century, some two centuries after the events they purport to describe. This has prompted a strong tendency towards skepticism among historians of early Islam who suggest that perhaps these histories reveal more about ʿAbbasid-era realities than about conquest- or Umayyad-era events. Accordingly, a number of scholars have turned to non-Arabic sources to corroborate or challenge the data culled from Arabic histories.
This paper questions the use of non-Arabic sources as independent checks on the Arabic. In particular, it examines the accounts of the seventh-century Arab conquest of Armenia and specifically Dabīl/Duin, the Sasanian and caliphal capital of Armenia, to forward suggestions about how we might trace oral transmission of historical reports in multilingual communities of the medieval Near East.
| Building: | 202 S. Thayer |
|---|---|
| Event Type: | Workshop / Seminar |
| Tags: | History, Literature, Middle East Studies, Research |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS), Department of Middle East Studies, Department of History |
