Seventeenth Meeting of the School of Abbasid Studies

Blending literary analysis with social history, this session examines how Abbasid society imagined and enacted forms of livelihood and economic agency. One paper reads Banū Sāsān portrayals as meditations on marginality and social performance; the other reconstructs women’s property management as a field of elite economic power. Together they show how narrative representation and material practice illuminate the structures of Abbasid social life.

Papers by: Matt Keegan and David Marmer

Respondent: Beatrice Gründler

This session examines how elite families navigated political transition between the late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods. Through prosopographical inquiry, the papers trace the strategies by which Hāshimī and Syrian aristocracies preserved influence, leveraged regional power bases, and adapted to new imperial structures. Together they illuminate the persistence, reinvention, and reach of elite networks in an evolving Abbasid world.

Papers by: Natalie Kontny-Wendt

Respondent: Sarah Savant

Focusing on Baghdad’s judicial and policing structures, this session explores the negotiation of authority in both narrative and historical documentation. A literary case reveals vulnerabilities in shurṭa practice, while the analysis of a maẓālim trial shows expanding legal oversight of senior officials. Together, the papers underscore how Abbasid governance balanced discretion, accountability, and public trust.

Papers by: Mohammad Allehbi

Respondent: Joseph Lowry

This session investigates how poetry articulated religious ideas and shaped communal identities in Abbasid and Ḥamdānid contexts. One paper analyzes dīn as political and ethical vocabulary, while the other situates Shiʿi-themed devotional verse within a shared “koine” of piety. Together they reveal poetry as a dynamic medium through which doctrinal positions, ritual imagination, and collective belonging were negotiated.

Papers by: Sona Grigoryan and George Warner

Respondent: Najam Haider

This session explores how legal reasoning and staged disputation articulated authority in the early Abbasid period. A reconstruction of Meccan–Yemeni legal discourse reveals diverse approaches to governance and resource extraction, while a study of al-Maʾmūn’s court shows how imagined debates negotiated doctrinal and political boundaries. Together, the papers highlight law and argumentation as instruments of power and persuasion.

Papers by: Aseel Najib and Yuko Tanaka

Respondent: Nurit Tsafrir

Examining textually mediated moments of presence and performance, this session analyzes how authority was constructed in historiographic and ritual registers. Sickbed scenes emerge as politically charged spaces that legitimize lineage and status, while Hajj leadership appears as a dynastic tool for asserting caliphal authority. Together, the papers illuminate the symbolic and narrative strategies that shaped claims to power.

Papers by: Keren Abbou and Leone Pecorini Goodall

Respondent: Camilla Adang

This session traces Abbasid diplomatic engagement across two major frontiers: the Eurasian steppe and the Iranian plateau. Through close analysis of embassies, poetic testimony, and historiographical traditions, the papers show how Abbasid, Samanid, and Seljuq actors used communication, negotiation, and propaganda to define alliances and assert legitimacy. Together, they map the geopolitical dynamics that shaped the tenth–eleventh-century Islamic world.

Papers by: Marc Czarnuszewicz and Khodadad Rezakhani

Respondent: James Montgomery

Exploring moments of political and religious competition, this session examines how dynasties and communities formulated competing claims to legitimacy. A new reading of the Fatimid occupation of Baghdad highlights symbolic strategies of domination and failure; an analysis of Sāmarrāʾ epistles reconstructs modes of remote Imamic authority. Together, the papers show how ritual, materiality, and textuality shaped rival hierarchies.

Papers by: Vanessa Van Renterghem and Zahra Jiwan

Respondent: Ed Hayes

This session explores how late Abbasid thinkers articulated the relationship between body, intellect, and religious truth through medical and philosophical vocabularies. One paper examines Ibn al-Jawzī’s critique of extreme asceticism as a medically grounded intervention in ethical and religious debate, while the other analyzes Elias of Nisibis’s negotiations of “substance” across Syriac and Arabic traditions. Together, the papers illuminate how Graeco-Arabic medicine and philosophical translation shaped concepts of selfhood, authority, and correct belief across confessional boundaries.

Papers by: Bishara Ebeid and Ignacio Sánchez

Respondent: David Bennett

Addressing both organized rebellion and imperial reassertion, this session explores challenges to Abbasid authority across regions and centuries. A diachronic analysis of Khārijite revolts reveals shifting tribal, social, and confessional formations of opposition, while a study of the reconquest of Ifrīqiya highlights mechanisms of reintegration and imperial reconstruction. Together they illuminate the dynamics through which dissent and authority shaped Abbasid political geography.

Papers by: Hannah Hagemann and Antonia Bosanquet

Respondent: Arezou Azad

Focusing on literary innovation and compilation, this session investigates how Abbasid authors shaped texts as intellectual interventions. One paper interprets al-Maʿarrī’s Dirʿiyyāt as a genre-making response to al-Mutanabbī, while the other examines al-Tanūkhī’s transmission vocabulary to reconstruct his methods as a lifelong compiler. Together, they highlight the creative, organizational, and conceptual labor underlying the production of Abbasid literature.

Papers by: Pamela Klasova and Zina Maleh

Respondent: Antonella Ghersetti

Revisiting the archaeological and historiographical foundations of the Sāmarrāʾ chronology, this session challenges the entrenched view of a brief mid-ninth-century occupation. By reevaluating textual sources, coinage, and survey data, the paper argues for a more extended and complex history of the site cluster. It invites reconsideration of how material-culture chronologies are constructed and how paradigms endure in Abbasid studies.

Paper by: Hagit Nol

Respondent: Alastair Northedge

This session examines the evolving relationship between the Abbasid caliphate and emerging Sunni religious authority in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. By tracing ideological shifts from al-Manṣūr to al-Maʾmūn, the paper situates the Miḥna within broader debates over intellectual hierarchy, governance, and popular piety. It shows how caliphal engagement with kalām, Sasanian models of social order, and tensions with hadith scholars reshaped the contours of Sunnism and caliphal authority in a period of political consolidation and contestation.

Paper by: Ahmed El Shamsy

Respondent: Michael Cook

This session showcases ongoing digital, historical, and methodological projects that advance the study of the Abbasid world. Presentations explore computational approaches to textual data, new models of state formation and spatial organization, and insights gained from recent translation and editorial work. Together, they highlight emerging tools and frameworks that are reshaping research across Islamic studies.

Presentaions by: Maxim Romanov, Stefan Heidemann, and Arezou Azad