Conference Abstract
International Conference: Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean Narratives
Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna
Department of Modern Languages Literatures and Cultures
14-15 January 2025
Conference Abstract
The primary focus of this conference is to investigate attitudes towards environmental challenges, natural disasters, and calamities and to show how these might be affected by contextual factors related to the socio-political scenario, ideological trajectories, or religious beliefs. In turn, it also explores how the tragic occurrence of disasters and calamities had an impact on modifying religious interpretations, ideologies, and political demeanours. These themes are particularly relevant in the premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean regions, where historical, religious, and literary accounts often report environmental phenomena ‒ and calamities in particular ‒ are seen as omens of glory/chastisements for specific groups of people, predictions related to the Apocalypse or clues to win over the masses or re-orient these differently.
Within the Arabic tradition, these references are found, for instance, in aḥādīth compendia like al-Bukhārī’s (d. 256/870) al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ [The Compendium of Authenticated Traditions], historical chronicles like al-Ṭ abarī’s (d. 694/1295) Taʾrīkh al-rusūl wa l-mulūk [History of Prophets and Kings], travelogues such as Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s (d. 770/1368-9 or 779/1377) Riḥlah [Journey], or in ethical treatises on epidemics, such as the famous Baḏl al-māʿūn fī faḍl al-ṭāʿūn [Offering Benevolence to the Virtue of Plague] composed by Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449). Mentions of this topic can also be found in Persian historiographical and political treatises from the period of Turkish-Mongolian rule, such as Siyāsat-nāma [The Art of Politics] by Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), but also in epic works such as the numerous ‘Books of Kings’ (Shāh-nāma) and ‘Alexandreides’, beginning with the Iskandar-nāma by Niẓāmī of Ganja (d. 605/1209). Here, while reporting news of famines and other natural disasters, authors try to interpret them as a precise signal of the abandonment of the supernatural protection guaranteed to the just-lawful sovereign and provide him with advice on how to regain it. While focusing on the premodern period, the conference aspires to cover the MENA region, the Mediterranean, and Europe in order to provide a comprehensive platform for interdisciplinary investigation. It invites scholars from Europe, the MENA region, and the US to explore a wide range of thematic issues, from the challenges of mapping, reconstructing, and studying diverse sets of epistemic and ideological views used to interpret environmental phenomena, to the different conceptualizations of the relationship between humans and nature across time and place. The conference’s ultimate aim is to facilitate a rich dialogue between classical and modern hermeneutical systems, discussing their endurance, evolution, and limitations.
Possible themes include:
- Environmental challenges in religious sources (e.g., Qur’ān and aḥādīth)
- Calamities as “concrete” evidence to some doctrinal and juridical tenets
- The cosmological, astronomical dimensions of environmental phenomena
- Political authorities’ exploitation of environmental calamities
- Climatic change and its centrality in the premodern socio-political discourses ‒ also read comparatively with modern times.
- Disasters and calamities as a source of literary inspiration
- Environmental challenges in Sufi literature
- Environmental challenges in the philosophical, scientific, and medical literature
- Reshaping the urban after an environmental disaster within anecdotal narratives
- Environmental issues and their relation to demographic change and/or migration
- Environmental issues in travel accounts
- Any other topic of relevance.
The conference will gather a pool of international, top-tier scholars to enact a proactive discussion on environmental challenges in premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean narratives. Participants are kindly requested to submit polished papers and solid contributions three months after the end of the event for the following publication of proceedings (journal special issue—Brill), which will appear one year after the event.