Michael E. Marmura Lectures in Arabic Studies 2024-25: Zulfiqar Hirji
When and Where
Speakers
Description
The Calligraphic Coast: Arabic Manuscripts from East Africa
Abstract:
This talk discusses an extraordinary corpus of illuminated Qur’ans from East Africa’s Lamu archipelago. Produced between the 18th and 19th centuries, these little-known manuscripts represent a high point in coastal East Africa’s histories of Swahili Muslim manuscript production and Arabic writing. They have distinctive visual features, and add an important component to the history of Islamic manuscript production in Africa.
Bio:
Zulfiqar Hirji is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at York University and York Massey Fellow. His current research focusses on Muslim materialities of coastal East Africa and the Indian Ocean. His published works include Approaches to the Qur’an in sub-Saharan Africa (2019), “A Corpus of Illuminated Qur’ans from Coastal East Africa,” in the Journal of Islamic Manuscripts (2023), and “Dispersal, Decolonization, and Dominance: African Muslim Objects from the Sultanate of Witu (1858-1923),” in Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa: New Approaches to Muslim Expressive Cultures (2024).
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2024-25.8.marmura.hirji_.pdf