Hadith, Piety, and Law:
A Conference in Honour of Christopher Melchert
Monday, 25 September 2023
09:00 – 09:15 Arrival and coffee
09:15 – 09:30 Welcome note by Robert Gleave (University of Exeter)
09:30 – 11:00 Islamic Law (1)
Chair: Maribel Fierro (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid)
Devin Stewart (Emory University): “Five Theories Regarding al-Shāfiʿī’s Risālah”
Joseph Lowry (University of Pennsylvania): “Who Does the Qurʾan Think Will Enforce its Laws?”
Ahmad Khan (American University of Cairo): “Qāḍīs, Caliphs, and Law-Making in the Ninth Century”
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 – 13:00 Hadith
Chair: Pavel Pavlovitch (Sofia University)
Belal Alabbas (University of Bristol): “Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī’s Life and Works”
Maroussia Bednarkiewicz (University of Tübingen): “Regularity and Variation in Hadith Chains of Transmission”
Mathieu Tillier (Sorbonne Université): “Hadith Transmission in Ninth-Century Egypt: The View from the Papyri”
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch Break
14:00 – 15:30 Piety and Sufism
Chair: Talal Al-Azem (Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies)
Karen Bauer (Institute of Ismaili Studies): "Laughter, Weeping, and Qur’anic Piety"
Nora Schmid (University of Oxford): “Asceticism and Scripture-Based Piety in Kharijite Poetry”
Harith Bin Ramli (independent scholar): “Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī and the Basran Origins of Sufism”
15:30 – 16:00 Coffee Break
16:00 – 17:00 Islamic Law (2)
Chair: Robert Gleave (University of Exeter)
Paul Gledhill (University of Exeter): “Abū Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī’s (d. 242/857?) Defence of the Medinese Regional School”
Salman Younas (Cambridge Muslim College): “Hadith Criticism according to Ṭarīqat al-Fuqahāʾ in the Discourse of Abū Bakr al-Jaṣṣāṣ”
17:00 – 17:30 AFTERSHOCK
Shawkat Toorawa (Yale University): “Christoph Melchert’s (un)Orthodox Scholarship”
The conference is convened by Belal Alabbas, Robert Gleave, and Nicolai Sinai. The conference organizers gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Pembroke College's Brian Wilson memorial fund.
