Abstract

Dr. Amin’s lecture gives an overview of OIB/COSIMENA’s Research Colloquium IV that deals with the different sciences of the Islamic civilization, covering a vast geographical area, from the Middle East and North Africa to South Asia and China, as well as the different sciences developed in different parts of the Islamic Empire, such as such as pharmacology, medicine, astronomy, geography, Optics, calligraphy and much more.
Dr. Hanssen’s lecture examines the Orientalist discursive structure of the relationship between Islam and science as it was exposed by the Renan-Afghani debate of 1883. This exchange has had a lasting impact on—and undermined—research on “Islam and Science” in Europe as well as in the Middle East. The second part of the lecture reads closely a 1952 article by Hussein Muruwwah on Ibn Sina, to focus on how scholars like him have managed to find a way out of the constraints of both liberal and Islamic discourse.

Bio

Dr. Yasmin Amin is an Egyptian-German who received her PhD in Islamic studies in 2021 from Exeter University’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies researching ‘Humour and Laughter in the Ḥadīth’. Her research covers various aspects of gender issues, early Muslim society and culture as well as the original heritage texts. Since 2022, she is the OIB’s representative in Cairo.

Prof. Dr. Jens Hanssen is a German-Canadian who received his PhD in Middle East History in 2001 from Oxford University for a thesis on late Ottoman Beirut. Hanssen has taught at the University of Toronto since 2002. In 2023, he became the 13. Director of the Orient-Institut Beirut. His research covers social, cultural and intellectual history of the Ottoman-Arab world and its interactions with other world regions such as Europe from Late Antiquity till the present.