Online event
April, 22 to July 15, 2026
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Zoom Webinar Link
Abstract
Zoom series on the Persistence of Islamic Scholarship in the Early Modern Period
Organizers: Berenike Metzler, Patrick Franke, and Ahmed Gad Makhlouf
Until the 1980s, the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 was considered the beginning of the end of Islamic scholarship, and the polyhistor al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505) one of the last true Islamic scholars. Although historians have begun to distance themselves from this decline thesis, the so-called “Middle Period” remains insufficiently explored. After introductory sessions on Suyūṭī‘s legacy and the historical context, the presenters will shed light on eight figures from the 16th to the 19th century, from the Maghreb to Southeast Asia, who dealt intensively with Suyūṭī’s legal, theological, historical, philological, or mystical oeuvre.
Day 1 - April 22
Historical-cultural portrait of the Mamluk-Ottoman transition
Day 2 - April 29
„Sohn der Bücher“: Gelehrsamkeit und literarisches Erbe von Ǧalāl ad-Dīn as-Suyūtī
Day 3 - May 6
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s Indebtedness to al-Suyūṭī
Day 4 - May 13
Tracing al-Suyūṭī’s Impact on Sixteenth-Century Syrian Scholars: A Quantitative Analysis of Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī’s (d. 1651) Biographical Dictionary al-Kawākib
Day 5 - May 20
The World is Grateful to al-Suyuti, but al-Suyuti is Grateful to Shaykh ʿAli Muttaqi—Sufism and Hadith Studies combined in a South Asian scholarly network
Day 6 - May 27
“The Authority of al-Suyūṭī in West Africa: Reception, Correspondence, Mythology”
Day 7 - June 3
A Ḥanafī version of Suyūṭī? The Meccan scholar Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī (d. 1606)
Day 8 - June 10
The Value of Asking the Right Questions. Al-Suyūṭī’s Influence on the Arabic Linguistic Tradition as Reflected in the Ḥilya by Abū Bakr al-Shanawānī (d. 1610)
Day 9 - June 17
Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505) in the makings of Southeast Asian Islamic scholarship
Day 10 - June 24
Abū al-Mawāhib al-Shinnāwī (d. 1028/1619): The Junction of the Two Seas
Day 11 - July 1
“The ‘Heirs of Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī’ in Yemen”
Day 12 - July 8
“Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī and Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791): Towering scholarly figures in different epochs”
Day 13 - July 15
Ibrahim al-Bajuri’s Selective Inheritance of al-Suyuti’s Theological, Legal, and Mystical Thought