Registration is openHamburg and Lille Workshops on Kairouani Manuscript Cultures

23 May 2022

Photo: Chekib Mahjoub

NLPCPM conservator Samir Gdah shows Kairouan Manuscript Project team members his work.

The Raqqada Collection contains exceptionally valuable early Islamic manuscripts. A two-part workshop will focus on new research into the texts contained in these manuscripts and the scholarly communities that produced and preserved them. Registration for the workshop is now open.

The National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts (NLPCPM) in Raqqada, Kairouan, Tunisia houses an exceptionally valuable collection of early Islamic manuscripts. These manuscripts are the legacy of a prestigious scholarly centre that was an intellectual and cultural magnet for students from North Africa and Andalusia from the eighth to the eleventh centuries and beyond. They were especially crucial to the formation of a school of jurisprudence followed by almost all Muslims in North and West Africa today. Due to its position in the centre of the Mediterranean, the collection contains manuscripts from the entire Muslim world, some written on paper centuries before its use in Europe. Already, scholars have used these manuscripts to rewrite the early history of Muslim scholarly communities.

This two-part workshop will focus on new research into the texts contained in these manuscripts and the scholarly communities that produced and preserved them. The first part, titled 'Legal Texts and Scholarly Communities as Reflected in the Raqqada Collection', will be convened by Professor Dr Jonathan Brockopp at CSMC from 16 to 18 June 2022. The second part, titled ‘Les manuscripts religieux dans la collection de Raqqada et le problème du Genre’, will be convened by Dr Asma Hilali at the University of Lille on 22 June 2022.

The programme for the Hamburg workshop can be viewed here. The programme for the Lille workshop will be available soon.

For the Hamburg workshop, please register for onsite or virtual attendance here. For the Lille workshop, limited onsite attendance is possible. Please email Dr Asma Hilali at asma.helali@univ-lill.fr to reserve a place. Registration for virtual attendance will open at a later date.