EAST OF BYZANTIUM LECTURE

Arabic and Coptic documents dug up on the edge of the Egyptian desert give unparalleled views into the history of medieval Islamic Egypt’s peasants, villagers, and tribespeople—the majority of the population of any pre-modern society, but often invisible in grand historical narratives. Such documents have typically been used to study social and economic history, but what can they tell us of ritual and devotional life? This talk brings together documentary sources with archaeological and art-historical evidence from Dayr al-Naqlun, a monastery in Egypt’s Fayyum Oasis, to explore the distinctive ritual practices of Coptic Christianity in the rural hinterland of the Fatimid Caliphate.

Lev Weitz is associate professor of history at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. A historian of the Islamic Middle East, his scholarly interests lie in the encounters among Muslims, Christians, and Jews that have shaped the region’s history from the coming of Islam to the present. He is the author of Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).

This lecture will take place live on ZOOM, followed by a question and answer period.

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Monastery of the Archangel Gabriel at al-Naqlun, Fayyum, Egypt. © fayoumegypt.com