The Medieval Mediterranean: Local and Global Perspectives’, Shared Sacred Space – Confronting Narratives of Conversion’
You are warmly invited to join us for the next webinar in our webinar series:
The Medieval Mediterranean: Local and Global Perspectives 2022/23
Sponsored and organised by The Society for the Medieval Mediterranean and the The Woolf Institute, in collaboration with the IMF-CSIC (Barcelona), the Medieval Studies Research Group at the University of Lincoln, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, the Leicester Medieval Research Centre, and HPIMS (Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies) at Ghent University.
22 November 2022, 5-6pm (UK time)
Shared Sacred Space – Confronting Narratives of Conversion
Panellists:
Dr Carmen González Gutiérrez (Universidad de Córdoba)
Dr Hagit Nol (Université libre de Bruxelles)
Dr Alejandro García-Sanjuán (Universidad de Huelva)
Chair: Dr Jan Vandeburie (University of Leicester)
The Mediterranean has been a theatre of both sharing and contesting sacred space between Christianity and Islam. While some shrines appear to feature syncretic devotions, other places see the symbolic conversion of the sacred space. Especially in contested territories between Christianity and Islam, religious power dynamics often cause mosques and churches to transcend their function as mere buildings. The transformations of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque at the time of the Crusades, of Córdoba’s Umayyad Mosque following the Reconquista, and of Istanbul’s Aya Sophia, are famous examples that resonate until today. However, while popular narratives of the conversion of these edifices dominate modern scholarship, the archaeological evidence is often less straight forward. Focusing on aspects of their own research and examples from the Levant and Al-Andalus, this panel will discuss the extent to which these narratives ought to be nuanced, and how both medieval and modern communities have interacted with these sacred spaces.
Via Zoom – To Register:
https://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/whats-on/events/shared-sacred-space-and-the-mosque-in-the-medieval-mediterranean
Story submitted by Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo
aliuzzoscorpo@lincoln.ac.uk