The German-Japanese Bilateral Conference on “Textual Transmission in the Islamic Manuscript Age. On the Variance, Reception, and Usage of Arabic and Persian Works from the Middle East to the Indian Subcontinent” was held at the University of Münster, Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies and TRANSLAPT, 5-7 September 2024. Ines Weinrich was invited to participate and presented a paper on one of the most popular—and most enigmatic—Arabic mawlid texts: “Stability and change in the transmission of Arabic mawlid texts. The case of Mawlid al-ʿArūs.“ See for the full conference programme here.
Ōṭṭaṉ Tuḷḷal performance by the artist Manaloor Gopinath from Thrissur in Central Kerala was hosted on Monday, 2 September 2024, at the Mazumdar-Shaw Advanced Research Centre at the University of Glasgow. The event was organised by the ArtsLab Theme Heritage, Urban Studies, and Development in collaboration with the Scotland Malayalee Cultural Community. M. Gopinath presented the act known as The Story of the Celestial Flower (Kalyāṇasaugandhikam), and Ophira Gamliel prepared a translation to accompany the Malayalam performance with running English subtitles. For more details on the Ōṭṭaṉ Tuḷḷal performance tradition and the story presented, see here.
“The Digitisation of Religion“ reports’ series of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”, winter term 2023/24: Ines Weinrich presented the Digital-Humanities elements of the HiMuJe-project: „SprachRäume. Religiöse Texte als Ressource im kolonialen Kontext“, 23 January 2024.
Interview with Ines Weinrich: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Religion-und-Politik/aktuelles/themenjahr/digitalisierung_der_religion/werkstattbericht_Weinrich_2024.shtml (in German).
Ines Weinrich participated in the International ALEA-Conference on “Arabic Literature in Dialogue with Nature” held at the University of Münster, 7-9 December 2023 and presented a paper on “Divine Intervention: The role of nature in mawlid texts and madīḥ nabawī“. See here for the full programme.
In October 2024, Ophira Gamliel and John Davies organised the International Workshop “South Asian Coastal Heritage: Connections and Disconnections Past and Present” at the University of Glasgow as part of the Arts Lab Theme: Heritage, Urban Studies and Development (12 October 2023). We presented the findings of our first six months work into the project: “The Moon-Splitting Episode in West and East Asian Arabic Sources” (Ines Weinrich) and “The Moon-Splitting Episode in Malayalam Royal Chronicles” (Ophira Gamliel). For the full program, see https://www.gla.ac.uk/events/listings/index.html/event/13167
Our project is suspended from October 2023 to September 2024, as Ines Weinrich is working as Acting Professor of Arabic Literature and Rhetoric at the University of Münster in that period. We, however, do not stop entirely working on themes related to the project and thus continue the activities report.
We were invited to take part in the Onam celebration of the Scotland Malayalee Cultural Community (SMaCC), which happened to take place during our first work meeting in Glasgow. Onam is the national festival of the state of Kerala celebrating the annual visit of the legendary King Bali who was relegated to the underworld by Lord Vishnu because of his commitment to justice and righteousness. On Saturday, 19 August 2023 Ophira Gamliel and Ines Weinrich conveyed greetings and informed about their project in a short welcoming address and enjoyed the speeches, music, and dance.
Ophira Gamliel presented a lecture on “Local Contacts and Transregional Exchange in the Wedding Songs of Kerala Jews”, in the conference “History, Memory, and Identity among Jewish Communities in the Muslim World”, the Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem (19-22 June 2023). For the programme (in English), see here. For the lecture (in Hebrew), see here.
Students ask Ines Weinrich questions on the new project [in German]. https://www.uni-muenster.de/ArabistikIslam/aktuelles/aktuelles.html
Ines Weinrich presented a lecture on “Versteckte Macht. Layout und Funktion von Handschriften arabischer religiöser Texte“ in the Spring School “Manuskriptkulturen. Interdisziplinär. Digital“, University of Münster (27-31 March 2023). https://www.uni-muenster.de/EvTheol/gkm/forschung/fruehlingsschule/
Ophira Gamliel presented a lecture: “Reading Sources against the Grain: Relocating Malabar Jewry 849–1489,” in the international workshop Historical Registers of Cosmopolitanism: Communities in Pre-colonial South India, at the History Department in the University of Hyderabad (21 March 2023).