Lecture: Maghribis and Manuscripts in Ottoman Cairo- Silsila, March 4

Submitted by Barry Flood

Lecture –Paul Love, “Maghribis and Manuscripts in Ottoman Cairo,” Silsila: Center for Material Histories (New York University), Wednesday, March 4th.

Part of the Silsila spring 2020 Lecture Series, Maghrib: Arts of the Islamic West

Date: Wednesday, March 4th

Time: 6:30-8:30pm

Location: 4 Washington Square North, 2nd floor

From the 17th-20th centuries, Ibadi Muslims from the Maghrib traveled to Ottoman Cairo to seek financial, spiritual, or intellectual gain. At the center of their community lay a trade agency, school, residence, and library known as the “Buffalo Agency” (Wikālat al-jāmūs), located just around the corner from the famous Ibn Tulun Mosque. Using the Agency’s manuscript library as its material and geographic anchor, this project sketches the lives of Ibadi merchants, students, and scholars to show how Maghribi Ibadis participated in the legal, intellectual, and commercial worlds of Ottoman Cairo.

Paul Love is Assistant Professor of North African, Middle Eastern, and Islamic History at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. His first book, Ibadi Muslims of North Africa: Manuscripts, Mobilization, and the Making of a Written Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2018) used manuscript evidence and tools from the digital humanities to trace the construction and maintenance of an Ibadi tradition in the Maghrib. His research and publications, which have appeared in the Journal of Islamic Manuscripts, the Journal of African History, and the Journal of North African Studies, cover a wide range of topics on the history of North Africa and the Sahara, the Arabic manuscript tradition, and colonial knowledge production on Islam in the Maghrib.

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