 SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law - In "When the Internet Goes Dark: What Medieval Islamic Philosophy Reveals About Legal Personhood" (JURISTnews), AmirAli Maleki, "an international law and philosophy researcher based in Iran, argues that al-Fārābī's medieval concept of the 'stranger'—one who exists within a political order but is denied the capacity for ethical participation—illuminates how contemporary international law transforms human beings into passive 'peoples,' recognized yet systematically excluded from shaping the norms that govern them."
- A recent episode of "Dialogues on Southeast Asia" focuses on the "intersection of Islam, society, and politics in Indonesia, the world's single-largest majority Muslim country and the world's third biggest democracy." The podcast features a discussion with Robert Hefner (Boston University).
On Islam and AI/Data Science - In "The BADR Project (7th–21st c.) – A TEI-Based Approach to Premodern Islamic Texts" (Digital Orientalist), Adrien de Jarmy (University of Strasbourg) and Clarck Junior Membourou Moimecheme (Sorbonne Nouvelle University) discuss the BADR Project, which "examines the genesis, transmission, and sociopolitical uses of narratives about the Battle of Badr (2/624) from their earliest attestations to contemporary reinterpretations. It explores how these narratives were written, reshaped, and mobilized as a repertoire of action and legitimation in religious, legal, and military contexts throughout the history of the Islamic world."
FIELD GUIDE TO ISLAMIC LAW ONLINE: RECENT SOURCES The Field Guide to Islamic Law Online is an ever-growing collection of links to hundreds of primary sources and archival collections around the world, online. We recently added a new resource to this list: - The BADR project database "includes 43 texts (Sīra-maghāzī texts, ṭābaqāt, recollections of hadiths, tafsīr and dalāʾil al-nubuwwa), around 700,000 words, and several tens of thousands of encoded named entities" extracted from al-Maktaba al-Shamela and the OpenITI repository. It "can be freely accessed on the server of the University of Strasbourg." Learn more about BADR here.
UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES PIL & Harvard Events: - Workshop: Middle East Beyond Borders—Cem Turkoz, "An Edifice of Super-Glosses: The Making of an Ottoman Tradition of Natural Philosophy, 1650–1800," March 23, 2026
- Islamic Law Speaker Series: Sherman Jackson (University of Southern California), "The Islamic Secular," April 7, 2026
- Workshop: Manuscripts to Megabytes: Evolving Editorial Practices and Challenges in Arabic Manuscripts from the Premodern to the Digital Age with Sabine Schmidtke, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, April 2, 2026
- Workshop: Arabic TEI (Textual Encoding Initiative), April 2–3, 2026
- Workshop: The BADR Project (7th-21st c.): A TEI-XML Analysis of Premodern Islamic Texts and Beyond with Adrien de Jarmy, April 3, 2026
- Workshop: Middle East Beyond Borders—Amadu Kunateh, "Footnote to Ghazali: Philosophy Without Falsafa in West African Intellectual Archive," April 6, 2026
- Roundtable: Knowledge in the Islamic Court, Program in Islamic Law, Harvard Law School, April 16, 2026
- Workshop: Middle East Beyond Borders—Djelemory Diabate, "Closing the Sufi Age: Authority, Finality, and Political Theology in Umar al-Futi Tal's Kitab Rimah," April 20, 2026
Global Events: - Conference: Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, Amherst, MA, March 19–21, 2026
- Conference: Humanities of AI—Intelligence and Imitation: Mind, Mechanism, Mimesis, Johns Hopkins University, April 24–26, 2026
- Conference: American Society for Premodern Asia Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, April 24–27, 2026
- Conference: Middle East History and Theory Conference (MEHAT), University of Chicago, May 1–2, 2026
- Workshop: The Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, June 8–9, 2026
- Conference: Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities Annual Conference, Chicago, June 17–18, 2026
- Conference: Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, November 21–24, 2026
Global Opportunities: - Call for Papers: Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars Program, American Society for Legal History, April 1, 2026
- Fellowship: 2026 ARIT Fellowships for Research in Turkey, American Research Institute in Turkey, April 1, 2026
- Fellowship: MESA 2026–2027 Global Academy, April 16, 2026
- Language School: Persian Language Summer School, Armenian School of Languages and Cultures, Yerevan, Armenia, May 1, 2026
- Summer School: Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim World, Leiden University, May 4, 2026
- Call for Participation: Digital Medieval Studies Institute, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 13, 2026
- Position Opening: Visiting Assistant Professor of Medieval Middle East, Colby College, July 1, 2026
- Call for Participation: Digital Medieval Studies Institute, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 10, 2026
|
