Freitag, 30. Oktober 2015, 16:30 - 18:00 iCal
The Origins and Meanings of Yemeni Identity in Early Islam
Peter WEBB
Institut für Mittelalterforschung
Wohllebengasse 12-14, EG, 1040 Wien
Lecture
South Arabians were major stakeholders in the venture of Islam. The mobilisation of South Arabian manpower enabled Islam’s rapid territorial expansion, and as the Caliphate organised into an empire, the descendants of South Arabian conquerors constituted a powerful faction. But as South Arabians helped build Islam, they were also building a new sense of community and identity for themselves. South Arabians became ‘Yemenis’, the idea of ‘Yemen’ became an asset for political organisation, rich traditions of ‘Yemeni’ genealogy, history, mythology and symbols entered Arabic literature, and, for the first time, Yemenis began to call themselves ‘Arabs’. The cumulative effects of conversion, conquest, migration and elite status of South Arabian communities in Islam’s first century catalysed a novel Yemeni ethnogenesis, and modern Yemeni identity and the status of Yemenis as integral members of the Arab World can be traced to this Muslim-era construction of the Yemeni-Arab community. Marshalling pre-Islamic South Arabian inscriptions, Arabic poetry, hadith and a range of mythic narratives surrounding Yemeni and Muslim origins, this talk critically examines the earliest layers of Yemeni imagined community and explores how South Arabians began to think of themselves as Yemenis, how other groups joined the Yemeni cluster, and how they constructed Yemen’s place in the Arab family tree and the history of Islam. The construction of Yemeni identity will be shown as a vibrant and contested process intimately connected with the political fissures of the early Caliphate and competition amongst Muslim elites for power and priority. When descendants of the pre-Islamic Sabaean and Himyaritic kingdoms embraced Islam, they carved a unique pathway of stories that embedded them and their imagined past into the classic tales of Islam’s origins.
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Kontakt
Dr. Rutger Kramer
SFB 42 VISCOM
43-1-515 81 / 7206
rutger.kramer@oeaw.ac.at
Erstellt am Mittwoch, 21. Oktober 2015, 11:54
Letzte Änderung am Mittwoch, 21. Oktober 2015, 14:15