“The Aghlabids”, Their Neighbors: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Art & Material Culture in Ninth-Century North Africa”, 23-24 mai 2014, Londres— LIMITE : 15/09/2013

This two-day workshop takes as its focus the history and material culture of the Aghlabid dynasty of Ifrīqiya and their immediate neighbors in the region. We envision the workshop as an opportunity for mutually-interested colleagues to begin a conversation about North Africa in the ninth century.  It is hoped that the workshop will spark an initial conversation and spur an ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue on this crucial dynasty and period.

We invite papers that consider the region not as a peripheral frontier whose artistic production was inferior to or derivative of trends in the ‘Abbasid heartlands of Iraq and Egypt, but as one of the vibrant centers of the early medieval Dar al-Islam.  We hope not only to re-evaluate notions of the region’s peripherality in Islamic art history, but to illuminate processes of acculturation and exchange between ninth-century North Africa, Iberia, Sicily/Italy, and other regions.  Abstracts of 250-300 words in English or French should be sent to aghlabid.workshop@gmail.com by 15 September 2013.

The workshop will be structured around informal, brief (ten to fifteen-minute) presentations focused on any aspect of the art, architecture, archaeology, and material culture; urbanism, landscape,economic, numismatic and social history; or those presenting overviews of relevant museum collections and archives. We particularly welcome participants from the North African countries on which the workshop focuses, and the organizers aim to provide financial assistance to those participants. The workshop’s official languages will be English and French. Collegial discussion, facilitated by a moderator, will follow each group of presentations.