The Zīrids and the Islamic world in the 10th and 11th centuries

The study of medieval North Africa is experiencing a renaissance. Recent scholarship on the caliphal (700-800), Aghlabid (800-909) and early Fatimid (909-972) periods as well as the Ibadi imamates has transformed our understanding of North Africa’s complex history in the early Islamic period. 

The Zīrids (972-1148), a Berber Sanhaja dynasty, were the first of the great Berber dynasties to rule North Africa with their reach extending from Morocco to Cyrenaica at times. Yet unlike the Almoravids and Almohads, Zīrid Ifrīqiya has not received sustained scholarly attention since Hady Roger Idris’s (1962) landmark history which notably overlooked material culture. 

However, Zīrid Ifrīqiya was no periphery. At the crossroads of the Mediterranean and the Sahara, the region – and its peoples – played a central role in transregional political, economic, craft and scholarly networks in the fragmented but increasingly connected world of the 10th-12th centuries.

The time is ripe to bring scholars together to reassess Zīrid Ifrīqiya and its role in the Islamic world from the inside out through a major international conference and state of-the-field monograph.

A 2-day conference will be organised in London in May 2026 which will showcase the latest research from early-career and established scholars in archaeology, history, art history, numismatics etc. based in North Africa, Europe and beyond. 

The conference will address key themes including art and architecture, the manuscript industry, cities and the countryside, the economy, and connections between Zīrid Ifrīqiya, the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa. Papers will be published as a state of-field monograph.

This conference and the resultant state of the field volume will mark a critical intervention into 3 major scholarly debates: the impact of Fatimid imperialism on the Islamic world, the economy of the tenth and eleventh century Mediterranean and transformations in Islamic art, architecture and craftsmanship in this pivotal period. It will demonstrate the centrality of the Zīrids and North Africa to global economic and political networks and underscore the need to move beyond traditional models of core-periphery and influence from the Fatimid East. 

Together, conference and volume will set a new agenda for future research on these debates and medieval North Africa in a neglected period.

Related outputs

• Fenwick C. (2021), ‘The Arab Conquest and the end of ancient Africa?’ in B. Hitchner (ed.) A Companion to North Africa in Antiquity. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell: 425-39.
• Fenwick, C. & A. Merrills. (2021), ‘Introduction: Authority beyond Tribe and State in the ‘Middle Maghrib’, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 42,1: 1-13.
• Fenwick, C. (2020), ‘Ifrīqiya and the central Maghreb’, in Walker, B., Insoll, T. and Fenwick, C. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 243-66.
• Fenwick, C. (2020), ‘The Umayyads and North Africa: Imperial Rule and Frontier Society’ in A. Marsham (ed.) The Umayyad World. London: Routledge: 293-313.
• Fenwick, C. (2020), Early Islamic North Africa: A New Perspective. London.
• Fenwick, C. (2018), Early medieval urbanism in Ifrīqiya and the emergence of the Islamic city’ in S. Panzram and L. Callegarin (eds), Entre civitas y madīna. El mundo de las ciudades en la península ibérica y en el norte de África (ss. IV-IX) , Madrid: Casa de Velázquez: 283-304.
• Anderson, G., Fenwick, C. & M. Rosser-Owen (eds.), (2017), The Aghlabids & Their
  Neighbors: Art & Material Culture in Ninth-Century North Africa. Leiden: Brill (Handbook of Oriental Studies Series).
• Fenwick, C. (2013), ‘From Africa to Ifrīqiya: Settlement and Society in Early Medieval North Africa (650–800)’, Al-Masāq 25: 9-33.

Funding

• The Barakat Trust

Conference Organisers

• Corisande Fenwick (UCL)
• Annliese Nef (Paris 1- Panthéon-Sorbonne)
• Viva Sacco (UCL)