1-3 December 2022: Workshop "The Mongols' Baghdad"

The city of Baghdad occupies a central role in the history of the Islamic world as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and a hub for the production of knowledge since its foundation in the 2nd/8th century. In the 7th/13th century, the city was famously conquered by Mongol troops under the command of Hülegü and the Abbasid caliph was executed. This event is often seen as a catastrophic watershed for the Islamic world in general and has spurred different, at times contradictory, interpretations about the history of Baghdad before and after the Mongol conquest. This is particularly contentious with regard to the role of books and knowledge transmission. Some scholars argue that the Mongols destroyed the city’s fabled libraries and completely disrupted cultural activity in the region. More recently, others have suggested that despite the impact that the conquest certainly had in the region, the city remained one of the prominent cultural centres of the Islamic world.  
The main concern of the workshop is to explore the production, dissemination and consumption of knowledge in Baghdad from the perspective of manuscript studies. We aim to investigate what the production and circulation of manuscripts can tell us about the cultural life of Baghdad and its environs before, during and after the Mongol conquest.

Programme

Inaugural lecture

1 December 2022, 5 pm
Managing Iraq’s Cultural Heritage in the 20th Century: Foreign Occupations, Wars and Dictatorships
Dr. Saad Eskander | Cultural Heritage Advisor, Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Antiquities, Iraq; Former Director, Iraq National Library

Online registration: https://oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FG9Fl3x0RxmQFfbj5

Workshop

2 December 2022, 9.00 - 17.30
Online registration: https://oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_M2L-Kit-SX2K3PmV62B_RA

3 December 2022, 10.00 - 17.00
Online registration: https://oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_np7gCAUqTj6at12WmeIijw