Call for papers: Burial and Memory in the early Islamic World
From 6-8 April 2026 the conference "From the ground up: The politics of burial and memory in the early Islamic world" will take place in Cairo, Egypt. Deadline for sending in your abstract: 21 June 2025.
As part of the NWO-funded VICI project, “Land, space, power: Landscapes of the early caliphate”, this conference aims to 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.
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 workshop 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, the workshop 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?
Details
- The conference takes place in the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo Egypt 6-8 April 2026.
- Papers will be 30 mins with 30 for Q&A.
- The papers are to be published in a collected volume.
- Travel and accommodation will be subsidised.
Submissions
We welcome submissions from leading and junior scholars, advanced graduate students, and independent researchers. The organizers are committed to gathering a diverse group of presenters and will do their best to give more visibility to the work of scholars from traditionally underrepresented groups in academia, including but not limited to junior scholars.
Please send your proposal of ca. 300 words by the deadline of June 21 2025 to: k.mokranova@hum.leidenuniv.nl.