Author: Maya Termonia

Call for applications: Summer program with the AlUla Inscriptions Corpus Analysis Project (AICAP) in June 2026

We are pleased to announce that AICAP is offering a summer program for four Saudi students to work on the epigraphic material from AlUla County at Ghent University. The two-week program will take place in Ghent, Belgium, from 22 June until 3 July, 2026.

The program

During these two weeks the students will be offered an introduction to the epigraphic material that AICAP is working on. Depending on the students’ individual skills and interests they will contribute to the project’s database under the supervision of the project’s researchers. Specific assignments can range from creating site descriptions based on the project’s documentation to creating inscription entries for the database. This way the students will gain hands-on experience working with the epigraphic data from AlUla County and with the database that AICAP is developing. All their contributions to records will be credited in the online database.

Who we are?

The AlUla Inscriptions Corpus Analysis Project (AICAP) is a four-year collaboration between Ghent University and the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), which runs until May 2028. The project will develop an online, accessible, long-term database of the inscriptions documented in the AlUla County, in Saudi Arabia, by the RCU. The inscriptions include texts from as early as the 6^th century BC up to modern Arabic graffiti.

Conditions:

• Accommodation and travel to Ghent, Belgium will be provided
• Cost of meals will be covered by the project
• For the duration of the program, students will be housed in a hotel in Ghent with max. 2 students per room (strictly gender segregated).

Requirements:

• Applicants must have at least a BA or undergraduate degree in History, Archaeology, linguistics or a related field.
• Sufficient English to work in an academic context is highly recommended, as this is the main working language of the team

How to apply:

Please send an email with the following information to: aicap@ugent.be

• Your CV
• A letter of motivation

Application deadline: 20 April 2026

For more on the project and team members see:

https://research.flw.ugent.be/en/projects/aicap-alula-inscriptions-corpus-analysis-project

Find us on social media:

• on X: @AicapUgent
• on Instagram: @aicap2025

 

 

ERC KNOW International Workshop: Polymathy and Problem-Solving in the History of Islamic Knowledge, 2-4 June 2026, Ghent University

The workshop Polymathy and Problem-Solving in the History of Islamic Knowledge brings together scholars working on the history of Islamic knowledge, with a particular focus on how scholars engaged with concrete intellectual problems across disciplinary boundaries. Rather than approaching disciplines as fixed and isolated domains, the workshop explores the dynamic ways in which scholarly practices, methods, and concepts travelled across different fields of knowledge. Through a series of pre-circulated papers and discussion-based sessions, participants will reflect on polymathy, problem-solving, and the practical organisation of knowledge in Islamic intellectual history.

This is an in-person event. Registration is required.

Program and registration: https://erc-know.ugent.be/en/problem-areas

 

Organising committee: Prof. Jo Van Steenbergen (Ghent University), Prof. Malika Dekkiche (Antwerp University), Dr. Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont (Ghent University)

Venue: Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, 6th floor, room 6.60

Date: 17 and 18 December 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rethinking Rural Communities and Tribalism in Islamic Lands (6th –10th / 12th –16th Centuries)

Rural communities and tribal formations have long been integral to the social and economic fabric of the premodern Islamic world. Yet, despite their significance, the complexities of their histories and internal dynamics have received comparatively limited scholarly attention relative to urban settings. The workshop, Rethinking Rural Communities and Tribalism in Islamic Lands (6^th-9^th/12^th-15^th centuries) seeks to address this imbalance by critically examining not only the lived realities, adaptive strategies, and agency of rural populations and tribal groups within Islamic societies, but also the ways in which their histories have been written, represented, and conceptualized.

Recent academic studies have highlighted the village as a focal point for identity construction and collective memory, as well as the entangled relationships that developed among rural populations, their elites, and governing authorities. Tribalism, frequently characterized as a static or divisive phenomenon, is instead approached here as a dynamic and persistent social phenomenon that deserves to be better understood and analyzed. In the context of the premodern Islamic world, tribal affiliations have shaped systems of authority, economic interaction, and social cohesion from the early Islamic period through the medieval era and beyond. Rather than representing vestiges of a bygone era, both tribes and rural communities have demonstrated considerable adaptability in response to shifting political and economic conditions, negotiating degrees of autonomy, resisting various forms of exploitation, and functioning as essential intermediaries between state power and local society.

This workshop seeks to foster a reassessment of the roles played by rural and tribal actors, encouraging new analytical perspectives and methodological approaches within the broader field of premodern Islamic studies.

program

Day 1 Wednesday 17^th – Conceptualising Tribalism and Rural Communities

 08:50 | Welcome

09:10–09:20 | Opening Remarks – Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont (Ghent University)

Session I – Concepts and Frameworks of Tribal and Rural Societies
Chair: Christopher Markiewicz (Ghent University)

09:20–10:10 | Yossef Rapoport (Queen Mary University of London)
Should we still speak about tribes? Arabic terms for families, clans, and tribes in medieval Islamic sources

10:10–11:00 | Amira Bennison (University of Cambridge)
The Reconfiguration of Rural Communities and Tribes in the Thirteenth-Century Western Maghrib

11:00–11:15 | Break

11:15–12:05 | Boris James (Montpellier-3 University)
Tribal Cast or Military Aristocracy: What are Medieval Kurdish Groups Made Of?

12:05–13:30 | Lunch

Session II – Rural–Urban networks, state formation and political authority

Chair: Malika Dekkiche (Antwerp University)

13:30–14:20 | Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont (Ghent University)
“The ‘tribal enclave’ of Bayt Husayn: rural communities, tribes and authority in Rasūlid Yemen”

14:20–15:10 | Elise Voguet (CNRS)
“Nomads and Settlers in the Touat: Local Authority and Taxation in the Sahara (14^th–15^th Centuries)”

15:10–15:25 | Break

15:25–16:15 | Michael Hope (Yonsei University)
Rural elites and the State under the Ilkhanids: negotiating power on the Mongol imperial western frontier (title to be confirmed)

16:15-16:20 | End of day 1, concluding remarks – Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont (Ghent University)

 

Day 2 – Case studies & comparative perspectives

08:50 | Welcome

Session III – Tribes, Rural Societies, and Imperial Strategies

Chair: John Latham Sprinkle (Vrije University Brussel)

09:00 | Georg Leube (University of Bayreuth)
“Petrified Social Infrastructure? Monumental Epigraphy as an Interface Structuring Urban–Rural Entanglements in the Qaraquyunlu and Aqquyunlu ‘Turkmen’ Realms of the Fifteenth Century CE”

09:50 | Yoan Parrot (Aix-Marseille University)
“A nomadic landscape: Turkmen’s domination over rural areas (Syria, Anatolia and Caucasus, 14^th-15^th century)”

10:40–10:55 | Break

10:55–11:45 | Nicolas Michel (Aix-Marseille University)
“Bedouin/ʿUrbān in Sixteenth-Century Egypt: What We Know, What We Don’t”

11:45-12:00 | Closing Remarks – Jan Dumolyn (Ghent University)

Session IV – Comparative and connected perspective: toward a new conceptual and practical framework?

14:00-16:00: Round Table

16:00-16:10 | Final Remarks – Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont (Ghent University)