The Mongols’ Baghdad: Knowledge Transmission through Manuscript Cultures Before and After the Conquest

Date / time: 1 December - 3 December, All day

The Mongols' Baghdad: Knowledge Transmission through Manuscript Cultures Before and After the Conquest

 

Call for Papers, deadline – 28 February 2022

Submission of abstracts: Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and sent to: nomansland@oeaw.ac.at by 28th February 2022. Accepted papers will be notified by the 15th of March 2022.

For more information, please visit: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/Institute/IFI/PDF/Veranstaltungen/2022/CFP_MSS_Mongol_Baghdad.pdf

The main concern of the workshop is to explore the production, dissemination and consumption of knowledge in Baghdad from the perspective of manuscript studies. We aim to investigate what the production and circulation of manuscripts can tell us about the cultural life of Baghdad and its environs before, during and after the Mongol conquest. Papers should consider either individual manuscripts or collections of codices that shed light on different aspects of continuity and change in the intellectual life of the region. The workshop is organized jointly by the projects NoMansLand (Austrian Academy of Sciences) and Bibliotheca Arabica (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities).

Papers are invited to discuss aspects covering, but not limited to, the following topics:

  • Agents: authors, copyists, and patrons
  • Localities: places of production, distribution, and consumption
  • Types of knowledge: religious, secular, or scientific
  • Networks: the interaction of Baghdad with other centres of knowledge
  • Characteristics of specific literary genres and their manuscripts

Accommodation for three nights in Vienna will be provided for accepted participants and some financial help will be available to support travel costs for a limited number of participants. Travel support should be requested when submitting the abstract and is especially reserved for graduate students, young or unaffiliated scholars. This workshop will be a hybrid workshop.

Organizing committee: Tanvir Ahmed (Austrian Academy of Sciences); Stefanie Brinkmann (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities); Bruno De Nicola (Austrian Academy of Sciences); Hadel Jarada (Austrian Academy of Sciences); Boris Liebrenz (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities); Nadine Löhr (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities)

 

Image details: Conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258. Double-page illustration of Rashid-ad-Din’s Gami’ at-tawarih – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DiezAlbumsFallOfBaghdad.jpg