Devotion to the Prophet’s Family in Islamic Thought and Practice

Call for Papers
Date: May 20-22, 2025 
Venue: Online and Aga Khan Centre, 10 Handyside Street, London N1C 4DN, United Kingdom
Organizer: The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS)
Abstract Submission Deadline: December 15, 2024

The conference aims to promote the study of devotion to the Prophet Muhammad and his family (often defined as the Ahl al-Bayt) as a key component of Islamic thought and practice, both in history and as the lived reality of millions of Muslims.

Rather than side-lining such devotions as ‘non-canonical’ or as the prerogative of sectarianized minorities, the goal is to accord them the centrality that they deserve as a pervasive and enduring component of Muslim piety.

Devotion to the Prophet and his family is expressed in an immense variety of Islamic traditions, only a minority of which have received sustained academic attention.

Accordingly, they aspire through this conference towards a more representative scholarly account of Prophet- and Ahl al-Bayt-centered devotion as a field of study, exploring material from historical periods, geographical regions and particular groups that have attracted less attention to date, as well as fostering engagement across disciplinary boundaries.

Shiʿi Islamic traditions, are, of course, a principal locus for devotion to the Prophet and his family, but are by no means the only one, and they welcome papers that focus upon non-Shiʿi traditions also. Furthermore, in pursuing a broader account of these devotions in different contexts, they hope to explore and affirm the integrity of ‘devotion’ to the Prophet and his family as an object of enquiry, in conversation both with contemporary academic theorizations and with the wealth of literature that Muslim authors have produced on the subject since Islam’s early centuries.

The organizers encourage submissions addressing any topic related to the conference’s overall theme of devotion to the Prophet and his family, with no a priori constraints regarding geographical region, historical period or discipline.

The following list, meanwhile, suggests some major themes that applicants may wish to consider:

Thematic and theoretical considerations

• Devotional rites as sites of inter-group encounter
• Relationships between private and public devotional practices
• Relationships between devotion and the (de)construction of identities
• Intersections between text, practice and/or material culture
• Theorizations of devotional ritual, both within Islamic traditions and in conversation with academic ritual theory

Media of devotion

• Devotional poetry
• Musical and artistic traditions of devotion
• Liturgical traditions
• Architectures of devotion
• Devotional narratives and representations of the past

Examples of underrepresented areas for study

• Shiʿi traditions other than Twelver Shiʿism
• The devotional discourses of socially marginalized groups
• Sunni Ahl al-Bayt-centred devotional traditions
• Devotions from the Islamic west, including West Africa

The proceedings of the conference will be published in an edited volume by the Institute of Ismaili Studies with I. B. Tauris, as part of the Shiʿi Heritage Series.

The language of the conference (and published papers) will be English.

Please send your abstract (max. 300 words), accompanied by a short biography (max. 200 words), as a single pdf file to gwarner@iis.ac.uk. The deadline for abstracts is 15th December 2024. A decision regarding accepted papers will be made by mid-January 2025.

The conference will be held in-person at the Aga Khan Centre, London, and funds will be available for presenters’ travel expenses and accommodation. Online participation will be made possible for presenters who are unable to travel. Scholars at all career stages are encouraged to apply.

Source: The Institute of Ismaili Studies