Bibliotheca Arabica: The Past and Future of Arabic Bibliography (Lecture by Boris Liebrenz)

Boris Liebrenz, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Leipzig 

Bibliotheca Arabica:  The Past and Future of Arabic Bibliography

In the 17th century, the need for a guide through the vast domains of Arabic literature, a "Bibliotheca Arabica," was voiced repeatedly among Europe’s Republic of Oriental Letters. One who took up the task was Johann Heinrich Hottinger. Based in Zurich, he was hopelessly removed from the necessary sources. Yet what he lacked in information, he made up with a methodology that was strikingly modern. Few dared to follow him down this path into one of the richest of the pre-modern literary traditions. Since great parts of it have remained in manuscript until today, taking stock of Arabic literary heritage and of its physical transmission through specific manuscript witnesses were often two sides of the same coin. Today, new technologies allow us to attempt a new Bibliotheca Arabica in ways that the printed page could not. This comes as scholars start to appreciate manuscripts not as necessary references but as social objects that have fascinating stories to tell. This presentation will show how to make these manuscripts, among them those in Columbia’s libraries, speak to us.


Tuesday, January 22, 6 pm

Butler Library, Room 203


To register, please visit: library.columbia.edu/events

Congratulations to Zeynep Çelik

Our affiliate, Zeynep Çelik was just announced as the recipient of the prestigious Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award, given to outstanding scholars whose work has significantly and lastingly advanced the study of Islamic civilization. 

"As the preeminent architectural historian and museum curator of the Middle East and North Africa, Zeynep Çelik has been selected for her extraordinary teaching and research along with her extensive publication record. The award carries with it a bronze medal and an invitation to present a formal keynote lecture as part of a conference held at UCLA CNES. The recipient of the award chooses the theme of the conference and selects the other participants. The conference proceedings are published in the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Series in Islamic Studies." 

Congratulations to Zeynep

Shari’a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology

Shari’a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
4:15 PM  6:00 PM

Heyman Center for Humanities
2nd Floor Common Room
74 Morningside Drive
New York City, NY 10027

Celebrating new books in the Arts & Sciences at Columbia University, the Heyman Center for the Humanities will host a roundtable discussion on Professor Messick’s book, Shari’a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology.

Speakers:
Brinkley Messick, Columbia University
Intisar Rabb, Harvard Law School
Gil Anidjar, Columbia University
Mashal Saif, Clemson University
Guy Burak, New York University
Islam Dayeh, Freie Universitat Berlin
Mahmood Mamdani, Columbia University

A case study in the textual architecture of the venerable legal and ethical tradition at the center of the Islamic experience, Sharīʿa Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. There—while colonial regimes, late Ottoman reformers, and early nationalists wrought decisive changes to the legal status of the sharīʿa, significantly narrowing its sphere of relevance—the Zaydī school of jurisprudence, rooted in highland Yemen for a millennium, still held sway.

Brinkley Messick uses the richly varied writings of the Yemeni past to offer a uniquely comprehensive view of the sharīʿa as a localized and lived phenomenon. Sharīʿa Scripts reads a wide spectrum of sources in search of a new historical-anthropological perspective on Islamic textual relations. Messick analyzes the sharīʿa as a local system of texts, distinguishing between theoretical or doctrinal juridical texts (or the “library”) and those produced by the sharīʿa courts and notarial writers (termed the “archive”). Attending to textual form, he closely examines representative books of madrasa instruction; formal opinion-giving by muftis and imams; the structure of court judgments; and the drafting of contracts. Messick’s intensive readings of texts are supplemented by retrospective ethnography and oral history based on extensive field research. Further, the book ventures a major methodological contribution by confronting anthropology’s longstanding reliance upon the observational and the colloquial. Presenting a new understanding of Islamic legal history, Sharīʿa Scripts is a groundbreaking examination of the interpretative range and historical insights offered by the anthropologist as reader.

Cosponsored by:
Ifriqiyya Colloquium
The Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
Office of the Divisional Deans in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy
Department of Anthropology
Center for the Study of Muslim Societies