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This international symposium, organized by three academic institutions, aims to shed a critical light on the idea of inhitat that prevails in different discourses up to the present day.
As numerous studies have shown, the European colonial model of writing Arab history, whereby a golden age of greatness was followed, in the post-Abbasid era, by an epoch of stagnation, or even decline, was internalized by the emerging intelligentsia of the nahda to become an integral part of Arab historiography, public discourse, and historical imagination more largely. Although the motives, subjects and specific arguments may vary, a general thematic of decline continues to pervade the literature to this very day. Neither the few dissenting voices, nor the recent enthusiasm for some works from the period have been able to disrupt the stalwart idea of ‘asr al-inhitat. And yet, there is growing awareness that the adherence to the teleological paradigm of greatness-decline-rebirth-modernity stifles creative reflection on the past. It also constrains public debates about self-representation and the writing of one’s own history in the contemporary Arab world. Talk of decadence and decline (oftentimes evoked without recourse to those particular terms) also persists in Western academic discourse, as exemplified in the recent volume on “the post-classical period” of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, not to mention the political plane, where the “what went wrong”-rhetoric continues to dominate.
While cognizant of the above state of affairs, the organizers are not necessarily setting up an agenda to argue against the idea of inhitat. They simply believe it is high time, to address this problematic anew, casting critical, analytical and scholarly light on its various aspects. The proposed symposium will focus on literature and culture, broadly defined, in the Arab Lands in the age of the sultanate(s). It will focus on three periods: Mamluk and Ottoman literature and culture and the 19th century discourse of inhitat and nahda.
The organizers:
Abdul Rahim Abu Husayn (History Department, American University of Beirut),
Thomas Bauer (Arabic Department, University of Münster),
Syrinx von Hees (Orient-Institut Beirut).
List of participants with their (provisional) titles
Prof. Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn
Professor, Department of History and Archaeology, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Prof. Engin Akarli
Professor, History Department, Brown University, Providence, U.S.A.
Paradigmatic Implications of the ‘inhitat’/’decline’ discourse in Ottoman historiography
Prof. Thomas Bauer
Professor, Institut für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany
The Aesthetics of Mamluk Literature
Prof. Abdurrahim Benhadda
Professor, Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Université Mohammed V, Rabat, Marocco
The concept of Inhitat between Moroccan and Ottoman intellectuals during the 18th and 19th centuries
Nadia Bou Ali, M.A.
Ph.D. Candidate, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, Great Britain
Progress/Taqaddum as a history of decline in the works of Butrus al Bustani
Taylor Brand, M.A.
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History and Archaeology, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Selling Themselves Short: The Illusion of Decline in Arab Nationalist Discourse
Prof. Sonja Brentjes
Professor, Departamento de Filosofía y Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia, University of Sevilla, Spain; currently Visiting Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany
'Decline' as an unsuitable historiographical concept for the study of the intellectual life under the Ayyubids, Mamluks and Ottomans
Prof. Ahmad Dallal
Provost, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
The Islamic Enlightenment Thesis during the long 18th century and the Persistence of the Paradigm of Decline
Prof. Marek Dziekan
Professor, Department of Middle East and North Africa, University of Lodz, Poland
Al-Inhitat as a Historical Period in Arabic Culture: Traditional Partitions, New Problems
Prof. Ralf Elger
Professor, Seminar für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft, Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
Rather “18th century enlightenment in intercultural perspective” than “inhitat”
Prof. Geert Jan van Gelder
Laudian Professor of Arabic, the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, Great Britain
Good Times, Bad Times: Opinions on fasād al-zamān, “the Corruption of Time”
Dahlia Gubara, M.A.
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Columbia University, New York, U.S.A.
The Spaces of Modern Time: al-Azhar and its Environs in the “Age of Decline”?
Dr. Syrinx Hees
Research Associate, Orient-Institut Beirut, Lebanon
Meaning and function of ´aja’ib in Mamluk historiographical writing
Prof. Christoph Herzog
Professor, Institut für Sprachen und Kulturen des Vorderen Orients, Otto-Friedrich-Universität, Bamberg, Germany
Ottoman visions of decline: Do we need a revision of the revision?
Prof. Cemal Kafadar
Professor, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, U.S.A.
Ottoman declinism and European orientalism: a happy marriage?
Prof. Abdallah Kahil
Professor, Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon
Late Mamluk Architecture
Dr. Suzanne Kassab
Currently DAAD-Visiting-Scholar at the Lehrstuhl für Westasiatische Geschichte, Universität Erfurt, Germany
Nahda and Inhitat in Contemporary Arab Thought
Prof. Tarif Khalidi
Professor Emeritus, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Ibn Khaldun
Prof. John Meloy
Professor, Department of History and Archaeology, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Local History Writing in Mecca in the Mamluk and early Ottoman Periods
Elias Muhanna, M.A.
Ph.D. Candidate, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, U.S.A.
Mamluk Encyclopaedias as Tokens of Decadence and Renaissance
Prof. Ertugrul Okten
Professor, Department of History, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
The creation of cultural icons and intellectual icons and their persistence
Prof. Khaled Rouayheb
Assistant Professor of Islamic Intellectual History, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, U.S.A.
The Logical Writings of Ahmad b. ‘Abdulfattâh al-Mallawî (d.1767)
Prof. Dana Sajdi
Assistant Professor, History Department, Boston College, U.S.A.
New Voices from the Street: The Levantine-Eighteenth Century Reconsidered
Prof. Samir Seikaly
Professor, Department of History and Archaeology, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Khayr al-Din al-Ramli and his Fatawas – A jurist’s perception of inhitat in the 17th century
Dr. Malek Sharif
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History and Archaeology, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Faris ash-Shidyaq on inhitat
Dr. Manfred Sing
Research Associate, Orient-Institut Beirut, Lebanon
Mapping the discursive field of decay in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Prof. Jo Van Steenbergen
Professor, Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Ghent University, Belgium
Urbanisation – Ritual and Shifts of Meaning
Dr. Ines Weinrich
Research Associate, Orient-Institut Beirut, Lebanon
Writing Arab Musical History (in Egypt) - Contradictions between Theory and Practice
Contact, Questions, Remarks
For more information please contact:
Dr. Syrinx von Hees
OIB Research Associate
hees@oidmg.org
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