Department Announcements

2023 Apr 05

From Arabic to Persian and Halfway Back Again: Naṣr Allāh Munshī’s Kalīla and Dimna

5:00pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, Room 201

The adaptation of Kalīla and Dimna written by Abū al-Maʿālī Naṣr Allāh Munshī in the 1140s CE is a cornerstone work of classical Persian prose literature—but there is a subtle tension in both its conception and its reception. Naṣr Allāh translated this book of fables from the second/eighth century Arabic version attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ. Along with bringing the text into Persian, he added a great deal of new material, and the result is a highly distinctive work. There is a substantial original preface, which argues for the value of Kalīla and Dimna within a framework...

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2023 Mar 01

From Above and Below: Reading an Ancient Society

5:00pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

33 Kirkland Street, William James Hall, Room 105

Gojko Barjamovic, Senior Lecturer on Assyriology, Harvard University

Gojko Barjamovic has taught Assyriology at Harvard since 2013. His research interests include institutional and civic order, wealth and inequality, literacy and knowledge production, trade and mobility, ethnicity and identity. His scholarly production is driven by integrative questions and characterized by extensive cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The talk engages the socially and chronologically dense archival material from the site of Kültepe in modern-day Turkey to showcase a...

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2022 Nov 17

Christianity in Iraq: Challenges and Hopes

4:30pm

Location: 

Williams Chapel, Swartz Hall 212, 45 Francis Avenue

His Excellency Archbishop Bashar Warda, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Erbil, Iraq

Christianity in Iraq is on the brink of erasure. Once home to some of the world’s oldest Christian sites and communities, Iraq and the greater Levant has witnessed an onslaught of instability and violence targeting minority religions. Despite these challenges, leaders of Iraq’s Christian community have risen to become a voice for persecuted religious groups across the region. Archbishop Bashar Warda is a face of these efforts, and his remarks will draw upon both his experience...

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2022 Nov 10

Seminar: Manifesto of the Great Resurrection (Qiyāmat-i buzurg)

4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

CGIS South S354, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
"Manifesto of the Great Resurrection (Qiyāmat-i buzurg): Examining a rare subaltern Nizari Ismaili Shi'i treatise from the 12th century " 

Thursday, November 10, 2022 | 4-5:30pm | CGIS South S354

Shiraz Hajiani
Alwaleed Bin Talal Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University
Research Associate in Transcendence and Transformation, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School

Co-sponsor: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations 

Alwaleed Bin Talal Seminar In Islamic Studies

The Ummah and the Arabs: Ethnicity and Ideology under the Umayyads

Thursday, October 6, 2022 | 4:00-5:30pm | Sackler Lecture Hall | RSVP Here
Sean Anthony, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, The Ohio State University
Co-sponsor: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

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