Call for Papers

Date: September 16-18, 2021

Venue: Paris, France

Deadline for abstracts in French, English or Arabic: March 26, 2021

This colloquium will seek to grasp the itinerant figures: the prophets of the pre-modern Arab world, between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, between sacred model and familiar figure of popular literature, between mythical authority and historical hero. It will welcome proposals devoted to Islamic Studies, literary or historiographical approaches, as well as those that explore the continuities and discontinuities between these different fields.

On the one hand, we will be interested in the transformations of these figures as they spread through periods, places and genres of Islamic culture, and are reshaped according to the new social and political contexts through which they evolve. On the other hand, emphasis will be placed on the application to historical or mythical characters of traits originally 8 associated with the prophets, especially through the use of specific narrative motifs in religious, literary and historical texts. The event will be organised in three complementary parts, according to the sources discussed and the disciplines involved.

While the section of the conference dedicated to Islamic Studies aims to deepen and broaden approaches to the Islamization of the biblical prophets, the literary section will focus on these figures once they have left the field of religious knowledge and been scattered in so-called secular sources. Strongly present in Arab literary writings throughout the pre-modern period, the prophetic figure has rarely been approached as such in these sources.

More information on: hypotheses.org