“The Islamicate World Facing its Past: History, Heritage, and Archeology”

English event page.

About the Conference

Endangerment and destruction of monuments, archaeological sites and objects, whether antique, medieval or modern, in the present Islamicate World, notably in Syria and Iraq, have received a wide – though unequal – media coverage and have deeply affected the international community. Many debates, conferences and publications have focused on these threats and have sometimes attempted to delineate a hypothetic genealogy for an “ideology of destruction” in the Islamicate World. This conference would like to address, in a more global and constructive perspective, the relation of the Islamicate world with its past, both antique and medieval, in its cultural and material dimensions. The first part of this conference will focus on the pre-modern period, before the introduction of the European notion of Heritage and of archaeological and museums undertakings. These modern developments will be addressed in a second part, notably through the issue of interactions between Europe and the Islamicate world around heritage ideas and policies.

Schedule and list of speakers

• 10.00 Yannick Lintz – Carine Juvin (Louvre Museum) – Introduction
• 10.15 Elodie Vigouroux (IFPO, Beirut) – « Les monuments antiques de Damas au Moyen-Âge : interprétations, évolutions et usages »
• 10.45 Patrice Cressier (CNRS, IHAM-UMR 5648, Lyon) – « Remplois et références à l’Antique dans l’architecture des califats d’Occident »
• 11.15 Julien Loiseau (Paul-Valéry University, Montpellier-3/ CRFJ, Jérusalem) – « La rénovation des mosquées du Caire à la fin du Moyen Age : une patrimonialisation avant l’heure ? »
• 11.45 Christopher Braun (University of London, The Warburg Institute) – « Les monuments pharaoniques menacés de destruction? La magie arabe et la chasse aux trésors dans l’Égypte médiévale »
• 12.15 Discussion – Lunch break
• 14.30 Finbarr Barry Flood (Institute of Fine Arts & Department of Art History, New York University) – “Appropriations, Replications, and Revivals: Usable Pasts in Islamic History”
• 15.00 Nabila Oulebsir (Poitiers University) – “L’Invention patrimoniale de l’Occident musulman médiéval : Espagne, Sicile et Maghreb”
• 15.30 Zeynep Celik (Columbia University, New York) – “Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire”
• 16.00 Nasser Rabbat ( MIT, Boston) – “Politics of Heritage in the Modern Arab World”
• 16.30 Discussion – Conclusion

Website (in French).