The Karaite Sahl b. al-Faḍl al-Tustarī (d. early 12th c. CE) is best known for his writings in Mu'tazilite theology, scriptural exegesis, and law. Recent research by Gregor Schwarb and Sabine Schmidtke in the Firkovitch Collection of the National Library of Russia indicates that he also authored (among other things) a short work on state administration, Mukhtaṣar fī ṣināʿat al-kitāba. This work is extant in a single manuscript (Firk. arab. 124), largely intact and probably written in his own hand. The purpose of this 1.5-day workshop at NYU Abu Dhabi is to bring together experts on the author and on medieval Islamic administration in order to assess the contents and importance of the work. While we will begin by reviewing what is known about author and work, the bulk of the time will be spent reading and discussing the manuscript, which has the potential to augment our knowledge of medieval Islamic administrative and scribal practices and the ways that non-Muslims participated in them.
Participants
Lahcen Daaif is Assistant Researcher at Université Lyon 2/CIHAM (Histoire, archéologie, littératures des mondes chrétiens, et musulmans médiévaux — UMR 5648) and Research Fellow at the Centre Nationale de la recherche scientifique, Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes (Paris). His interests and numerous publications relate primarily to the fields of Islamic history and thought and premodern Arabic literature.
Yossef Rapoport is Reader in Islamic History in the School of History, Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of, among many other studies, Marriage, Money and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), and is preparing a forthcoming edition and translation of a famous work on the taxation of the Fayyūm by ʿUthmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nābulsī (d. 1262).
Gregor Schwarb currently acts as research associate at SOAS, University of London, and editor-in-chief of Index Islamicus. Previously he held the positions of Senior Research Associate at the Research Unit ‘Intellectual History of the Islamicate World’ (FU Berlin) and of Academic Director of the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations in Cambridge. He has published numerous studies on the cross-connections between Islamic, Christian, and Jewish religious thought.
Mathieu Tillier is Professor of Medieval Islamic History at the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne. He is the author of, among many other recent studies, Les cadis d’Iraq et l’État abbasside (132/750-334/945) (Damascus: Institut Français du Proche-Orient, 2009), and translator of Al-Kindî, Histoire des cadis égyptiens (Akhbâr qudât Misr) (Cairo: Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 2012).
Naïm Vanthieghem is a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, and Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He is the author of numerous recent publications in the fields of Greek and Arabic papyrology, including 'Violences et extorsions contre des moines dans la région d'Assiout. Réédition de P. Ryl. Arab. II 11', Journal of Coptic Studies 18 (2016), 185-96.