While in Hamburg, Corisande Fenwick will be working on a writing project ‘Building Islamic Ifrīqiya: Urban Aesthetics and the Economics of Architecture in the Aghlabid Period’ which forms part of her ERC-funded project EVERYDAYISLAM: Becoming Muslim: Cultural Change, Everyday Life and State Formation in early Islamic North Africa (600-1000). She will also give a presentation on this research in a workshop at the Center.
The Aghlabid dynasty (800-909) of Ifrīqiya built some of the most spectacular buildings that survive from any period of North Africa’s history, and the most numerous. Corisande’s project examines how and when this energetic, but often overlooked, state-sponsored building programme transformed the appearance of North African towns and the role the construction industry played in the medieval economy.
The Center for Advanced Study “RomanIslam – Center for Comparative Empire and Transcultural Studies,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines working on Romanization and Islamication in Late Antiquity with a focus, though not exclusive, on the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa during the first millennium CE.
The overall purpose of the Center is to explore new approaches to Romanization and Islamication in this period and set the scholarly debate on a new footing.
Congratulations Corisande!