Online Monday Majlis of the Centre for the Study of Islam

We’d like to invite you to the next online Monday Majlis of the Centre for the Study of Islam, Exeter, opening the series in the new academic year.

Monday Majlis on the 2nd of October, 17:00-18:30 (UK time)

Shawkat M. Toorawa, What, Where, and Whither Waqwaq?

Registration is required. Register please on this link:

https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIkf-ytqTIoE9S7n5hE43ZiLJY585vvKKG-

Abstract

What is Waqwaq? A bird? An island? A tree? A woman? A woman-fruit? And where is Waqwaq? Madagascar? Sumatra? Borneo? Japan? Australia?  In this majlis, by asking what roots Waqwaq has planted and what routes it has taken, we journey from the Abbasid court to China, from India to the Philippines, from Japan to the Mascarenes, from Istanbul to the New World.

Bio

Shawkat M. Toorawa (PhD Pennsylvania 1998) is Professor of Arabic and of Comparative Literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale. He has previously taught at Duke, the University of Mauritius, and Cornell. He has also, while working for his family’s import/export companies in Malaysia and Mauritius, plied the trade routes of the Indian Ocean. He is a Director of the School of Abbasid Studies; a series editor of Resources in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Lockwood Press; and since 2010 has been an executive editor of the Library of Arabic Literature.

His books include Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and Arabic Writerly Culture: A ninth-century bookman in Baghdad; the edited collection, The Western Indian Ocean: Essays on Islands and Islanders; and an edition and collaborative translation of of Ibn al-Sa‘i’s Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad; and a co-edited special issue of The Muslim World on ‘Anglophone Muslim Women Writing’. The Devotional Qur’an: Beloved Surahs and Passages will appear in 2024. He is currently editing a collection on the Qur’an’s literary dimensions, and preparing a new edition and translation of the ‘Ajā’ib al-Hind.

https://shawkutis.weebly.com/

In the spirit of the label ‘Majlis’ and also to make the talks even more interesting, our speakers present the topic discussed as embedded in their own journey. You can watch the previous Majlises here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8YRkUahFj_81oJzCSDLTx4kVQQgeHLc-, but we don’t record the Q&A in order to keep the discussion free. Please come and enjoy the talks and the discussions : )

If you’d like to be included in the CSI (Centre for the Study of Islam (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter) mailing list, please contact the CSI Manager: Sarah Wood (s.a.wood2@exeter.ac.uk).

Any questoins then please get in touch