Conference
From the ground up: The politics of burial and memory in the early Islamic world
- Date
- Monday 6 April 2026 - Wednesday 8 April 2026
- Address
- Nederlands-Vlaams Instituut Cairo (NVIC) and Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale (IFAO)
Cairo, Egypt
The Arab-Islamic conquests of West Asia and North Africa initiated sweeping transformations of the region’s social, political, religious, and cultural customs and practices. Scholars have paid much attention to the military, economic and administrative logistics of the conquests and the subsequent establishment of the caliphate in the conquered lands; however, less attention has been paid to how these deeply entrenched cultural patterns were so comprehensively re-oriented and what accounts for the remarkable resilience and longevity of the caliphate.
The workshop "From the Ground Up” invites scholars to examine this question through the lens of burial practice and what changes in these potent customs tell us about the re-imagining of the natural and built environment and its contribution to the processes of conquest and the establishment of Arab-Muslim rule.
Burial spaces are collective representations of the community’s values and beliefs and an enduring physical emblem in the landscape, offering insight into the socio-cultural and political contexts in which they functioned and opening up possibilities for assessing the organisation of civic structures, identity formation, and symbolic systems.
At the same time, landscapes of death, represented through burials, (saints’) tombs and cemeteries, are liminal spaces where the relationship between the living and the dead emerges in material and spatial forms and further affirms the continued social existence of a community through memory and practice.
This conference examines Islamic funerary landscapes as dynamic intersections of memory, space, and practice, and explores how the politics of burial and memory shaped and reflected the discursive processes of the new Islamic consciousness.
Against this backdrop, ‘From the Ground Up’ seeks to explore the politics of burial, space, and memory by focusing on two central themes: ‘Death and Memory’ and ‘Death and Space’. To explore these themes, we invite contributors to examine the following questions:
- What are the commemorative and appropriative aspects of funerary practice and how do the places of interment represent a personal experience of death and serve as focal points for collective remembrance and memorialisation?
- How do burial locations and visual strategies reflect cultural dynamics, social stratification, and acts of place-making which imbue spaces with multivocal meanings shaped by community, memory, and use?
- What role did the materiality of tombs and spatial organisation of cemeteries play in communicating meaning and shaping early Islamic landscapes?
- How are death and memory in different communities and social classes reflected and expressed in funerary landscapes?
As part of the NWO-funded VICI project, “Land, space, power: Landscapes of the early caliphate”, this conference will bring together both senior and junior scholars to present case studies of burial practice and memory throughout the WANA (West Asia and North Africa) region from ca. 650 to 1500 CE as a mechanism of anchoring Islamic rule.
Provisional programme
DAY 1 – Lectures at the NVIC (Nederlands-Vlaams Instituut in Cairo), followed by a guided tour of early medieval Cairo
DAY 2 – Lectures at IFAO (Institut français d'archéologie orientale), followed by a keynote and reception
DAY 3 – Lectures at the NVIC (Nederlands-Vlaams Instituut in Cairo), followed by a final discussion and dinner