11.00 am- 1.00 pm > Nuṣayrie-Alawi literature: contribution to the history of a marginal near-eastern community and evaluation of its contribution to history

Nusayri-Alawite literature: contribution to the history of a marginal Middle Eastern community and evaluation of its contribution to History

Wed 12th July 23
11:00 A.M - 2:00 P/M
Déméter 021

Abstract:

The religious doctrine of the Alawites of the Near East (The Nusayris of Arabo-Islamic sources) is still poorly known, and it goes without saying that its literature is just as well, even if the editions and translations of M. Bar-Asher and A. Kofsky have partly raised the veil on it. For it is an abundant literature, with religious motivation but belonging to various genres, written in Middle Arabic or in a chastened and elegant language; a literature which also testifies to a pronounced taste for controversy and to a more complex history than the false idea of an immutable and somehow fossilized religious doctrine would suggest. 

While taking stock of the state of this rich corpus still largely unpublished, this workshop aims to make its modest contribution to the history of the Alawite community of the Near East, its religion and its literature, with papers about such major authors as Abū Sa'īd Maymūn alṬabarānī (d. 1035) and al-Makzūn al-Sinjārī (d. 1240); the first “manual” of religious initiation, the Kitāb al-Dustūr, or Kitāb al-majmū‘; and Alawite liturgical poetry. 

It will also aim to contribute, through close reading of this literature, to the history of the community and its doctrine, of their evolution in time and space. 

Finally, it will aim to place the Alawites in the social, literary and religious history of the ArabMuslim world, not only in its relations with the Greek, Christian or Iranian worlds, but also and above all with the Muslim world itself, whether it is Twelver Shiism or Ismailism, Druzism or Sufism. 

Convenor :
Bruno Paoli, CIHAM-UMR 5648/Université Lumière Lyon 2 

Meir Bar-Asher, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The role of Abū Sa‘īd Maymūn b. al-Qāsim al-Ṭabarānī in the consolidation of the Nuṣayrī-‘Alawī religion in Syria

Tariq Rajab, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Theological aspects of the Nuṣayrī liturgical poetry 

Malika Scotto D’Aniello, CIHAM-UMR 5648/Université Lumière Lyon 2
Ta'wīl and symbolism in the poetic work of al-Makzūn al-Sinjārī

Bruno Paoli, CIHAM-UMR 5648/Université Lumière Lyon 2
The Kitāb al-Dustūr, or Kitāb al-Mağmū‘, first book of initiation to the Nusayrian-Alawite doctrine: contribution to the history of the community and its religious doctrine