Workshops
Group Formation and Maintenance in the Abbasid Caliphate, 750-1000: Zoroastrians, Manichees and Polytheists
13th October, Queen Mary, University of London. Graduate Centre Room 603
0930-1000 Introduction 
1000-1030 Jaako Hameen-Antilla (Edinburgh) Nabateans- a pagan community in first milennium Iraq?
1030-1100 Istvan Kristo-Nagy (Exeter) Re-casting golden ages: in the humanities, in Islam and in Ibn al-Muqaffa's writing
1100-1130 Tea
1130-1200 Nazanin Lak (Leiden), The Sasanian institution of sturih: A legal continuity in early Islamic centuries
1200-1230 Kayla Dang (St. Louis), The Zoroastrian priesthood in the ninth and tenth centuries and the construction of Ādurbād ī Mahrspandān
1230-1330 Lunch
1330-1400 Arash Zeini (Oxford), Can an identity discourse be read into the Zand?
1400-1430 Kianoosh Rezania (Bochum), The Zoroastrian Priestly Tradition in early Islamic and Sasanian Literature
1430-1500 Tea
1500-1530 Christian Sahner (Oxford), The Definitive Zoroastrian Critique of Islam
1530-1600 Nima Jamali (Toronto), Death and Debate. Inheritance Law, Personal Property and Communal Identity among Zoroastrians and East Syriac Christians from the Late Sasanian to the early Islamic periods.
1600-1630 Conclusions
1830 Dinner at Ariana
Attendees: Nima Jamali, Christian Sahner, Kianoosh Rezania, Arash Zeini, Kayla Dang, Nazanin Lak, Istvan Kristo-Nagy, Jaako Hameen-Antilla, Aslisho Qurboniev, Ed Hayes, Yasmin Ilkhani, Sam Noble, Bogdan Draghici, Philip Wood, May Shaddel, Anna Chrysostomides, Sofie Leathers
Group Formation and Maintenance among Jews and Samaritans in the Abbasid Period, c.750-1000.
22nd February 2023. Online.
13.30 Introduction 
14.00 Uri Simonsohn (Haifa) "A few remarks on medieval rabbinic notions of apostasy."
14.30 Moshe Yagur (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) 'Jewish Presence in Islamic Jerusalem: A Jewish-Muslim-Christian debate'
15.00 Break
15.30 Philip Lieberman (Vanderbilt) 'Permeable intercommunal barriers in Abbasid Iraq'
16.00 Jennifer Grayson (UNC Chapel Hill) 'From Autonomy by Default to Autonomy by Design'
16.30 Break
17.00 Philip Wood (AKU-ISMC) 'The Samaritan community in the ninth and tenth centuries'
17.30 Marc Herman (York University, Toronto) 'The Textual Community of Samuel ben Hofni's Sacred Histories'
18.00 Break
18.30 Eve Krakowski (Princeton) “What did it mean to be a 'Rabbanite' Jew in the tenth century?"
19.00 Fred Astren (San Francisco state)'Caesura, Entrainment, and Resistance: Abbasid Jews and Muslim Time'
19.30 Conclusions
Programme: Christian Group Formation and Maintenance in the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1000)
Woolf Institute, Cambridge. 28th September, 2022.
9.00-9.30 Welcome
9.30-10.00 Introduction
10.00-11.00 Session 1
Anna Chrysostomides (Queen Mary, University of London), 'There is no god but God': Islamization and Religious Code Switching'
Marianna Mazzola (Ghent), 'Syriac Orthodox Narratives on Kingship and their historicization in the new social context of the Abbasid empire'
11.00-11.30 Coffee
11.30-1300 Session 2
Dan Reynolds (Birmingham), 'The Melkites and the West, c.800-1099'
Mathilde Boudier (Paris I) TBA
Philip Wood (AKU-ISMC, London), 'Violence by Christians under the early Abbasids'
1300-1400 Lunch
1400-1500 Session 3
Ashoor Yousif (Tyndale college, Toronto), 'Inter-Community Concerns: Religious Conversion and Communal Identity in the Early Abbasid Caliphate'
Giovanni Gomiero (Padua) '“A strong Christian community" in 8th century Iraq? Clashes between religions and institutions in the History of Rabban Cyprian and Rabban Gabriel of Thomas of Marga (9th century)'
1500-1530 Tea
1530-1630 Session 4
Sam Noble (Leiden), 'The Melkites of Byzantine Antioch. Navigating Identity between institutions and cultures'
Bogdan Draghici (Oxford), 'How can a rustic nourish the urban ones? Community building amongst the Syrian Orthodox at the turn of the first millennium'
