Visitors
2018-2019
Visitors to the Shii Studies Research Program during the academic year 2018/19 (funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York).
Matthew Melvin-Koushki, University of South Carolina (September 1, 2018-July 31, 2019)
Rodrigo Adem, Harvard University (November 19-December 12, 2018)
Anne Regourd, University of Copenhagen (ToRS), Denmark (December 2-23, 2018)
Rachel Kantz Feder, Tel Aviv University (December 5-20, 2018)
Brinkley Messick, Columbia University (February 3-23, 2019)
Edmund Hayes, Leiden University (March 10-15 and 19-28, 2019)
Etan Kohlberg, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (March 19-29, 2019)
Tahera Qutbuddin, The University of Chicago (April 7-17, 2019)David Hollenberg, University of Oregon (April 29-May 10, 2019)
Valentina Sagaria-Rossi, La Biblioteca dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana (May 6-19, 2019)
Gabriel vom Bruck, School of Oriental and African Studies, London (June 24-July 15, 2019)
Ehud Krinis, Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Michigan (July 8-26, 2019)
2017-2018
Visitors to the Shii Studies Research Program during the academic year 2017/18 (funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York).
Rodrigo Adem, Harvard University (January 8-29, 2018)
Aun Hasan Ali, University of Colorado Boulder (June 3-24, 2018)
Mushegh Asatryan, University of Calgary (April 20-May 10, 2018)
Carmela Baffioni, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London (March 4-17, 2018)
Rainer Brunner, CNRS, Paris (May 13-June 2, 2018)
Godefroid de Callataÿ, Université Catholique de Louvain (July 1-10, 2018)
Robert Gleave, University of Exeter (Februay 18-March 9, 2018)
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, University of Pennsylvania (May 15-22, 2018)
Andrew Newman, The University of Edinburgh (April 5-26, 2018)
Devin Stewart, Emory College (June 1-28, 2018)
Jan Thiele, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones (CSIC), Madrid (October 8-29, 2017)
Samer Traboulsi, University of North Carolina, Asheville (December 1-22, 2017)
Roy Vilozny, University of Haifa (March 18-April 8, 2018)
2017-18 Project Descriptions
Rodrigo Adem will be studying the adoption of Neoplatonism in Ismāʿīlī Shīʿism in the 10th century, with an eye to the intersection of that phenomenon with broader trends in Islamic intellectual history; namely, the problem of "tradition" and the quest for a universally intelligible rationalist discourse. This approach aims to more fully incorporate Ismāʿīlī Shīʿism within our understanding of how rationality and religious tradition were conceived of at a time when Muslim scholarly practices were undergoing a period of dynamic transformation. Not only can 10th century Ismāʿīlī thought be brought to bear on key trends in this aspect of Islamic intellectual history; the significance of this fact is compounded by its chronological precedence over the subsequently more well-known traditions of Avicenna (d. 1037) and al-Ghazālī (d. 1111).
Mushegh Asatryan: Munazarat al-Shaykh al-Nashshabi and the Nusayris in Medieval Syria. The Nusayris are among the several medieval groups classed by scholarship as “Shi’i,” for their devotion to members of the Prophet’s family. Perhaps due to some of their “heretical” teachings (and possibly other reasons still unknown), they were shunned as heretics by Muslim heresiographers, and some medieval jurists even issued legal opinions against them. Study of the medieval Nusayris has preoccupied scholars since the nineteenth century, but most of the works available to date are concerned either with individual Nusayri texts or with the exploration of their theological teachings – little attention has been paid to the community where these texts were produced and circulated (if indeed there was one single community). The very few extant broad syntheses of the history of pre-modern Nusayris leave many of the issues of their social history unexplored. Partly, this is because of the nature of the sources: Nusayri texts tell us little about life in the Nusayri community, mostly focusing on cosmic realities, the nature of the Imams, and divine hierarchies. Non-Nusayri sources, on the other hand, also focus mostly on their (“heretical”) beliefs, giving us little information beyond that. Partly, however, our lack of knowledge about this group is due to the essentializing tendency found in writings about them: thus, scholarship frequently treats Nusayri literature as a homogeneous whole, without paying enough attention to the circumstances of the production and circulation of individual texts.
I will try to fill these gaps by offering a case study of a 13th century theological dispute between a Nusayri author, Yusuf b. al-‘Ajuz al-Halabi al-Nashshabi, with the representatives of various communities in several Syrian villages. The text narrates the content of the arguments between al-Nashshabi and his interlocutors, while presenting rare glimpses of the contexts in which these disputes occurred. Ostensibly, all of the sides in these debates appear to be “Nusayri,” but the disagreements between them on various theological minutiae are presented in very emotional terms, suggesting the existence of factions and groups among them.
My ultimate goal is to produce a monograph which will include, along with the edition of the Arabic text of the Munazara, a study of the circumstances of its composition, set against the backdrop of the history of the Nusayris in medieval Syria. To understand the sectarian, intellectual, and literary context of the Munazara, I will be study all of the extant Nusayri writings – including the ones published between 2006 and 2013 in Silsilat al-turath al-‘Alawi, individual texts published earlier in the 20th century, and Nusayri writings surviving in manuscript in various libraries (mostly in Paris), coupled with information about the Nusayris and medieval Syria found in non-Nusayri sources.
Carmela Baffioni: As is known, since 2008 the Institute of Ismaili Studies (London) has been publishing a new edition and commented translation of the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’. Eleven + 1 introductory volume have been published so far. I have edited the logical epistles (10-14, publ. 2010), the natural epistles (15-21, publ. 2013), Epistles 39 and 40 (publ. 2017), Ep. 50, and Eps. 23 and 25 (forthcoming in two different co-authored volumes). As a completion of the whole enterprise, the IIS has planned a new edition of the Risālat al-Jāmi‘a, the “crown of the Rasā’il”. Two editions of this work are currently available: one, attributed to the Spanish scientist and scholar Maslama al-Majrīṭī (ed. Jamīl Ṣalībā, Dimashq 1949), and one, attributed to the second “veiled” (mastūr) imām, Aḥmad (ed. Muṣṭafā Ghālib, Bayrūt 1984). As I have had recently the occasion to remark with regard to single passages (cf. C. Baffioni, “The Legacy of the Aristotelian Logic in the Risālat al-Ǧāmi‘a”, in E. Coda, C. Martini Bonadeo eds., De l’Antiquité tardive au Moyen Âge. Études de logique aristotélicienne et de philosophie grecque, syriaque, arabe et latine offertes à Henri Hugonnard-Roche, Paris 2014, pp. 213-224; Id., “Esoteric Shī‘ism in the Additions to Ancient Manuscripts of the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’”, in M.A. Amir-Moezzi et al. eds., L’Ésotérisme shi‘ite, ses racines et ses prolongements / Shi‘i Esotericism, its Roots and Developments, Turnhout 2016, pp. 281-326), the two versions often differ even in a significant way. Professor Wilferd Madelung will prepare the new edition of the Risālat al-Jāmi‘a. I was charged with the English translation and commentary of the work. Though the translation has to be based on the new edition, my purpose is to systematically compare it with the two existing editions as well, because different meanings can be likely attributed to the various passages depending on the different readings chosen by the editors. In this project, an examination of the whole bibliography on the Risālat al-Jāmi‘a is mandatory, and the library of the Institute for Advanced Study can easily provide all needed materials. Most importantly, I trust in the help of the research team on Shī‘i Studies to substantially improve my comprehension of some of the themes approached in the Risālat al-Jāmi‘a.
Godefroid de Callataÿ: My research at the IAS is part of the ERC Advanced Grant project ‘The origin and early development of philosophy in tenth-century al-Andalus: the impact of ill-defined materials and channels of transmission’ at the University of Louvain (PhilAnd, 2017-2022). The objective of PhilAnd is to conduct a large-scale exploration of how, and under which form, philosophy appeared for the first time in al-Andalus. This issue is pivotal to understanding the history of sciences and ideas, and the role of the Arab-Muslim world in this transfer to Medieval Europe. Its relevance today also lies in the fact that it addresses questions of cultural and religious identities, since the formative stage of philosophy in al-Andalus proved decisive in shaping the intellectual background of many later authors from the Peninsula, whether Muslims, Jews, or Christians. At the crossroads of several major lines of enquiries in modern scholarship and in line with recent discoveries having important chronological implications, PhilAnd focuses on the 10th century, a period usually disregarded by historians on the assumption that philosophy as such was not cultivated in the Iberian Peninsula before the 11th-12th centuries. Its originality is also to put emphasis on ‘ill-defined’ materials and channels of transmission, a field which remains largely unexplored. This project consists of five topics designed for highly-specialised scholars working in close interaction, and of another three transversal types of exploration conducted in the form of conferences convened with leading experts in the world. The final objectives are to test the hypothesis: 1) that the emergence of philosophy in al-Andalus significantly predates the currently accepted time; and 2) that the impact of this formative stage was considerably wider than commonly acknowledged. This project also seeks to provide a better evaluation of the originality of the first Andalusī philosophers with respect to their Oriental forerunners.
At the core of my research in Princeton is the preparation of the conference on ‘Power, Religion and Wisdom: Bāṭinism between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in tenth-century al-Andalus’, designed to address the three following questions: 1) For which reason did Andalusī Sunnī scholars incorporate bāṭinī doctrines produced in the East by Shī‘ite Ismā‘īlī milieus? 2) Through which channels did this unorthodox material reach the Iberian Peninsula? And 3) What role did the 10th-century rulers in al-Andalus play in the reception of this material? These questions are currently unresolved and need to be addressed together as part of a large-scale and comprehensive exploration.
Jan Thiele: The research project attempts to contribute to a better understanding of the intellectual landscape of seventh/fourteenth-century Yemen: it analyses a theological treatise by Ḥumayd b. Aḥmad al-Muḥallī al-shahīd (d. 652/1254), a member of the country’s Zaydī community. Al-Muḥallī rose as a scholar and theologian in a vibrant intellectual environment. The move of the cultural centre of Zaydism from Northern Iran to the Southern Arabia during the sixth/twelfth brought significant changes: Yemen became the most important hub of the Muʿtazilite school of theology, and several of its sub-branches competed with local religious strands such as the Muṭarrifīs, Ismāʿīlīs or followers of the Ashʿarite school of theology. Al-Muḥallī embraced the theological teaching promoted by the Zaydī Imāms of his time: he followed the teaching of the Bahshamite branch of Muʿtazilism and attacked in several polemical works his intellectual opponents. In addition, he is the author of several systematic theological works. My research project will focus on one of these compendia entitled al-Kawākib al-durriyya fī tafṣīl nafḥāt al-miskiyya. The work has survived in manuscript form, and raises attention because of its unconventional structure and content: rather than discussing the five doctrinal principles of his school—as Muʿtazilite theological summae tend to do—the Kawākib opens with a chapter on logical and epistemological questions, then continues in its second and largest part with ontology, and closes with a chapter on “attributes” (ṣifāt) and “characteristics” (aḥkām). My analysis of this work will address the question to what extent al-Muḥallī’s distinct approach was triggered by discussions of his time and echoes the specific intellectual context of the book’s genesis.