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 (6th-9th/12th-15th 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 17th – 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 (14th–15th 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, 14th-15th 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)
Academics from the different Belgian universities have gathered to set up a Belgian network for the study of Islam, Culture and Society.
