The Global Asia Colloquium

Fridays, 4:00-6:45. With Wine and Cheese. 

701 KJCC (53 Washington Square South).

Come One and Come All !!

Boundaries and Boundary Crossing

READINGS ARE HERE

4:00-5:15. Beatrice Manz, “A New Look at the Mongol Conquest of Eastern Iran 1219-1223”

Accounts of the Mongol conquest usually focus on the actions of the Mongols
themselves, centering the narrative on the seizure of the largest cities, most fully
described in the narrative sources. Since the Mongols eventually conquered much of the Middle East, the emphasis has been placed on their successes. However the Mongols were not the only important military actors at the time, and they were not always successful. Violence was not limited to the Mongols; cities were also attacked by Khwarazmian and Iranian armies.

I suggest that to understand the course of the Mongol conquest, we must do two
things. First, we must take seriously the actions of the local population of Iran, and the politics which motivated them. It is clear that Iranians and the remaining armies of the Turkic Khwarazmshahs were militarily active throughout this period, sometimes fighting against the Mongols, sometimes within their armies, and sometimes pursuing rivalries only marginally connected to the Mongol enterprise. The actions of local populations did much to shape the nature of the conquest, since the Mongol used graded violence, sparing cities who submitted immediately, while visiting particularly harsh punishment on cities which first submitted and then rebelled. Many of the worst massacres were visited on eastern Iran, where several cities rebelled more than once. Secondly, if we are to understand Iranian resistance, we look should at the progression of the Mongol campaigns through the eyes of contemporaries. Mongol armies sometimes failed, and for several years it was probably not clear that the Mongols would win the region. Therefore cities often changed sides, as one or another force appeared stronger. For these reasons, the entry of the Mongols into a charged political field created a festival of violence which was part conquest and part civil war.

5:30-6:15 pm: Ismail Fajrie Alatas, “Border Crossing and Sectarian Boundary Making:
Reforming ʿĀshūrāʾ in early 19th century Muslim Southeast Asia” (READING is HERE)

Colonial observers in several areas of Muslim Southeast Asia first reported elaborate
commemorations of Ashūrāʾ (the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad) in the mid-19 th century. They suggested that the practice had been introduced by the South Asian Muslims who arrived in Southeast Asia under the new policies of colonial migration in the early 19 th century. While these South Asian Muslims and their descendants became gradually integrated into local communities, and their traditions became established within the cultural life of the region, there is a scarcity of sources that point to how Southeast Asian Muslims initially perceived the ritual. In this paper, I examine a little-known treatise on the commemoration of ʿAshūrāʾ written by an itinerant scholar from Ḥaḍramawt, Yemen, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar bin Yaḥyā (d. 1849). Entitled Risāla fī ibṭāl bidaʿ munkarāt (Treatise on Nullifying Wrongful Innovations), the text was composed in response to the ritual commemorations of ʿAshūrāʾ that the author witnessed during his travel to the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago between 1832 and 1835. In the treatise, the author builds a legal argument for reforming the commemorative ritual based on the work of the 16 th century Egyptian jurist of Mecca Aḥmad b. Ḥajar al-Haytamī (d. 1567) written during the height of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict. This article shows how Ibn Yaḥya’s treatise helped to define Islamic sectarian boundaries in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago.

Aji’s Readings now include his annotated translation of the fatwa he will discuss,  Ibn Yaḥyā’s Risāla fī ibṭāl bidaʿ munkarāt

Ismail Fajrie Alatas is assistant professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and History from the University of Michigan. His research explores the intersections of religious authority, social formation, mobility, semiotics and communicative practice with a focus on Islamic Law, Sufism, and Arab diaspora in Southeast Asia.