Herzliche Einladung zum Gastvortrag von Marco Demichelis (PhD)

ABSTRACT: During the last forty years the historical comprehension of the first century of Islam has been de-constructed and analysed through a more interdisciplinary way:  archaeological, numismatic, historical, inter-religious sources have deeply reshaped the understanding of early Islamic history.  Historians in Islamic Studies as John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone, Uri Rubin, Robert Jeffrey, G.R. Hawting, Fred Donner, Robert Hoyland contributed to a new understanding of early Islam, portraying it rather as an inclusive monotheistic milieu than a clear-cut and well-structured new religion. The lecture aims to discuss the early conquering campaigns within this new methodic approach to early Islamic history: were these campaigns the concrete expression of the ag-gressive violence of a new religion or, on the contrary, of an expanding more-unified “nation”? More specifically, the discussion will focus on different technical aspects of the Arab campaigns to highlight some inter-religious unexpected facets of this historical period between the seventh and eighth centuries. It will be argued that inter-religious violence and conquering campaigns did not mould from the beginning an “Islamic” state with a broad religious identity, but at least for the first century, a more Abrahamic-monotheistic consciousness.

MARCO DEMICHELIS (Torino, 1979) is Marie Curie Fellow (IF, 2016) in Islamic Studies and History of Middle East within the ICS at the University of Navarra. He previously worked as Research Fellow within the Dept. of Religious Studies at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan (2013-2016) and as Adjunct Prof. in His-tory of Islamic World at the University of Turin (2010-2012). He recently published for Gorgias Press (eds. with Paolo Maggiolini), The Struggle to Define a Nation: Rethinking Religious Nationalism in the Contemporary Isla-mic World, while he is finalizing a monographic work on Fana’ an-Nar, the Annihilation of Hell within Islamic Thought. In Italian he published several essays: Il Pensiero Mu‘ tazilita (PhD Diss., Torino: Harmattan, 2011), Storia dei Popoli Arabi. Dal Profeta Muhammad al XXI secolo (Torino: Anakelab, 2ed. 2015), L‘Islam Contem-poraneo. Sfide e Riflessioni tra Modernità e Modernismo (Torino: Anankelab, 2016), Etica Islamica. Ragione e Responsabilità (Milano: Edizioni Paoline, 2016). His academic articles have appeared on Oriente Moderno, JNES, Parole de l’Orient, ASQ, Archiv Orientalni, ASR, Orientalia Christiana Analecta.