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The colophon of the Kitāb al-Dalīl featuring decoration common through the manuscript grouping. (Kitāb al-Dalīl. Oman, 17 Shawwāl 1312 AH/12 April 1895 CE). (Or 6564, f 177r). In early 2024, preparing for a visit by an Omani guest, I set out to find what Omani manuscripts we might hold. Not...

This research presents a preliminary study on qiyas (analogy) in the Ibadi School, focusing on the second century A. H. in which Abū ʿUbaydah Muslim bin Abī Karīmah and his students were present. It has shown that the school paid early attention to analogy. Abū ʿUbaydah, al-Rabīʿ, and Ibn ʿAbd al- ʿAzīz used it to varying degrees, and the latter one comes in the forefront of those who used it abundantly. Abū ʿUbaydah initially expressed reservations, due to the absence of standardized values, and the fear of adopting whims as a hidden premise for analogy, especially if the matter was related to dimāʾ (killing life) and furūj (private parts). However, the applied practices of what later became known to the uṣūlī scholars as the qiyas al-ʿillah wa al-dalālah (analogy of cause and indication) were evident in Abū ʿUbaydah’s masāʾil (issues) and inspired in his later students. Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz considered Abū ʿUbaydah as skilled and precise in his applications of analogy. This research traces these applications through the Mudawwanah (writings) of Abū Ghānim Al-Khurāsānī (d. 200 A. H.).

المخطوطات عند الإباضية في شمال إفريقيا والمبادرات الدولية الحديثة للحفاظ عليها

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the collective portrait of the Banū Birzāl, a Berber nukkārite group that was exiled from the Maghrib to al-Andalus during the caliphate of al-Ḥakam II. The objective of this reconstruction is to highlight the effects that the changes in geographical, socio-political and religious contexts provoked in their collective biographical portrait, which, in certain periods, is transferred from the collectivity to certain individualities. The collective displacement of Banū Birzāl and the details of their historical trajectory allow us to draw some conclusions about their textual representation as a group, changes in both their leadership and their beliefs and, finally, about their mobility in the Mediterranean area.

This study focuses on the physicochemical characterization and biological activities of some traditional date vinegars from the indigenous knowledge populations of the M’Zab valley (north-eastern Algerian Sahara). These are four types of vinegar made from different varieties of dates, including TemdjohoretTafezwine-Ghars (TTG), Ghars-Tafezwine-Azerza (GAT), H’Chef Deglet Noor (D1), and Ghars-Tafezwine-Azerza-Deglet Noor (ND). The analysis results show that the date vinegar samples studied are characterized by an acidic pH (3.15±0.02-3.62±0.00), high dry matter contents (3.98±0.17-8.47±0.06%), insoluble solids rate (8.1±0.06-15.05±0.03), in electrical conductivity (3.36±0.01-6.11±0.01ms/cm), and total acidity contents ranging from 14.17±2.40 for GAT to 39.8±0.92 g/l for TTG. The residual alcohol rates are 1±0.00% for the TTG sample to 4.9±0.00% for GAT. However, total sugar contents (0.88±0.1%7.36±0.57%) are more or less high in samples of traditional date vinegar, which gives a sweetness to some date vinegar samples. The protein contents (0.43±0.007-0.79±0.002) of the various date vinegar samples are low. Statistical analyses show that each type of traditional date vinegar has a distinct profile, influenced by the chemical characteristics of the cultivars used. The antioxidant activities of traditional date vinegar samples show their high antioxidant capacity for all types of radicals. Each sample of vinegar has significant antioxidant activities, although their activities are always lower than those of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) or Trolox. For each type of traditional date vinegar sample, it should be noted that the radical inhibition rates (FRAP, DPPH, and ABTS) are dosedependent. The sample with the highest antioxidant power remains GharsTafezwine-Azerza (GAT), with IC50 = 0.0538 mg product/ml distilled water for the DPPH test and IC50 = 0.0125 mg product/ml distilled water for the ABTS test. For a high reduction capacity by the FRAP test, it is 484.16±8.66 µM/ml equivalant Trolox.

While historians have never written about it, in May 1846 the Sultan of Muscat arrived in Weathersfield, Vermont for his first voyage to the United States. This article uses the Sultan’s arrival in Vermont as a platform for augmenting a growing chorus of historians challenging the geographic and disciplinary boundaries that continue to define Middle East Studies. Using archival sources from the US, UK, Zanzibar, and a range of secondary sources, this article addresses a complex centuries-long process of Omani expansion and expropriation that culminated in Zanzibar in the nineteenth century and the height of the Omani Empire as an active participant in shaping the modern world economy. The writing of world history and of Middle East history generally continues to commence from the presupposition of an inevitably ascendant Western-created and led modern world. This article challenges the latter assumption.

Une Eco-résidence artistique sera aménagée à la maison de culture d’Ajim dans la délégation de Djerba-Ajim (gouvernorat de Médenine) moyennant une enveloppe de 400 mille dinars. Ce projet, dont la fin des travaux est prévue pour octobre 2025, est réalisé dans le cadre de la convention sign…

Ce séminaire s’insère dans le projet « Faire société : modèles normatifs et hétéronomie dans les islams minoritaires », soutenu par l’Institut français ’islamologie et porté par une équipeinternationale. Combinant les méthodes et les sources de l’islamologie avec une approche d’histoire socio-politique, le séminaire s’intéresse aux islams chiites et ibadite. Trop souvent tenus pour périphériques, ils éclairent pourtant aussi, par leurs lectures alternatives des traditions, les modalités même de la constitution du sunnisme. L’enquête de cette année explore les formes de coexistence et de contact de ces minorités avec l’islam majoritaire (qu’il soit sunnite, le plus souvent, ou chiite dans le cas de l’Empire fatimide). Nous examinerons l’attitude et la politique du pouvoir à l’égard de ces minorités, et les évolutions structurelles des communautés concernées par cette cohabitation. Nous nous intéresserons aussi aux accommodements proposés par les élites religieuses (les oulémas) sous la forme d’une théorie de la dissimulation tactique (appelée kitmān ou taqiyya), et d’un droit qui en accompagne la pratique. Enfin, nous réfléchirons aux convergences et aux interactions doctrinales et juridiques avec l’orthodoxie dominante.

Ce séminaire s’insère dans le projet « Faire société : modèles normatifs et hétéronomie dans les islams minoritaires », soutenu par l’Institut français ’islamologie et porté par une équipeinternationale. Combinant les méthodes et les sources de l’islamologie avec une approche d’histoire socio-politique, le séminaire s’intéresse aux islams chiites et ibadite. Trop souvent tenus pour périphériques, ils éclairent pourtant aussi, par leurs lectures alternatives des traditions, les modalités même de la constitution du sunnisme. L’enquête de cette année explore les formes de coexistence et de contact de ces minorités avec l’islam majoritaire (qu’il soit sunnite, le plus souvent, ou chiite dans le cas de l’Empire fatimide). Nous examinerons l’attitude et la politique du pouvoir à l’égard de ces minorités, et les évolutions structurelles des communautés concernées par cette cohabitation. Nous nous intéresserons aussi aux accommodements proposés par les élites religieuses (les oulémas) sous la forme d’une théorie de la dissimulation tactique (appelée kitmān ou taqiyya), et d’un droit qui en accompagne la pratique. Enfin, nous réfléchirons aux convergences et aux interactions doctrinales et juridiques avec l’orthodoxie dominante.

This book provides an up-to-date account of the archaeology, history, economy, urbanism, art, and architecture of the North African region of Tripolitania during antiquity. The essays by international scholars outline current research and the most recent developments in the archaeology of this territory. The strong interdisciplinary character of the texts reflects the expertise of the different authors – from studies of the landscape and urban development, to funerary practices, architecture, military operations and food supply. This timely publication provides a much-needed new assessment of the evolution of this region throughout the Roman and Late Antique period.

This book provides an up-to-date account of the archaeology, history, economy, urbanism, art, and architecture of the North African region of Tripolitania during antiquity. The essays by international scholars outline current research and the most recent developments in the archaeology of this territory. The strong interdisciplinary character of the texts reflects the expertise of the different authors – from studies of the landscape and urban development, to funerary practices, architecture, military operations and food supply. This timely publication provides a much-needed new assessment of the evolution of this region throughout the Roman and Late Antique period.

The authors designed and developed this field guidebook and associated posters for field seminars they organised and led in Jabal Nafusa from 2005 to 2009. The aim was to introduce geoscientists working for the petroleum industry to the Mesozoic geology of Jabal Nafusa, of the Jifarah arch, NW Libya.

In the work of Fernand Braudel, Henri Pirenne, and many who have since built upon their scholarship, the Mediterranean narrative has long been shaped by sources that represent a single point of view, that the Sea and its environs were a European creation. As a corrective my recent book, Creating the Mediterranean (Brill, 2018), discusses the often overlooked contributions of Islamic sources in shaping our perception of the Mediterranean. In particular, during both the medieval era and early modernity, the words of North African authors provide a unique insight into the cultural interactions that took place within this region of the Mediterranean. These interactions, notably with the Iberian Peninsula, were growing towards the end of the sixteenth century as Andalusians started reaching North African coasts.

This paper describes several episodes relative to the Rustamid dynasty (9th Century C.E.) where diplomacy, inter-group negotiation and mobility in Africa and towards the central Islamic lands was conducted with the help of Amazigh collaborators. By comparing these with later diplomatic exchanges (13th-14th Centuries C.E.) examples having in common the connection West-East, the ḥajj and/or the question of intra-Islamic leadership, this research examines such journeys’ broader implications for stablishing a Maghrebi distinctiveness in the practice of diplomacy in its broad sense, as both a chance for individuals’ mobility and a political tool within medieval North African dynastic governance. This research argues that some elements of the exchanges’ motivations and results between Maghrebi and Eastern dynasties are consistent during the medieval period, but the early ones are marked by the absence of an intra-Islamic system of mutual leadership recognition, while this isn’t the case in the later ones. It also highlights the composition of the diplomatic corps and the significant role of the Amazigh social network in facilitating diplomatic exchanges and other kinds of negotiation, as well as general mobility as a service rendered to the dynastic interests, though the North African space. These exchanges reveal the dynastic usage of flexible social networks of “diplomats”, mediators and enablers of mobility extracted from non-urban populations for several purposes, such as maintaining communication with other dynasties while asserting legitimacy in an intra-Islamic milieu, negotiating power within internal groups and even as interpreters of African languages. The findings underscore the distinctiveness of Maghrebi diplomacy, marked by both its integration of local tribal systems and participation in a broader intra-Islamic system, crucial for sustaining dynastic mobility and diplomatic activity in a West-East axis and within its African context.

Wednesday 16 October 2024 (18.00 CET and 18.00 Libya Time), we’ll have the pleasure to host the first session of our monthly webinar Revisiting the History of Medieval Libya, 7th-16th centuries (year 2024-2025)