Berbers and Moors: Authority Beyond State and Tribe in the Early Medieval Maghreb

18^th-19^th May 2018, UCL, London

A workshop hosted by the University of Leicester and UCL and sponsored by the Society for Libyan Studies

Organisers: Corisande Fenwick (UCL) and Andy Merrills (University of Leicester)

Friday, Room 612 (6^th floor), UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY

2:00pm Welcome and Introduction

Corisande Fenwick (UCL) and Andy Merrills (University of Leicester)

2:30pm Mapping the pre-desert of Algeria: a satellite remote sensing to settlement  patterns in the mid-first millennium AD

Martin Sterry (University of Durham)    

3.30-4pm Tea

4-6pm: The Men who Would be King: The Importance of Titulature in Fifth- and Sixth-Century North Africa

Andy Merrills (University of Leicester)

The struggle for Africa: Local power brokers

Roland Steinacher (Universität Tübingen)

6pm Drink Reception in Staff Common Room followed by dinner at a local restaurant for speakers

Saturday, IAS Common Ground, UCL Main Building, Gower Street, London

10-12pm: Identifying the Imamate: State Building and Society in the Age of the Rustamids

Cyrille Aillet (Université Lumière Lyon 2)

Berbers and Borderlands: Rulership, Authority and City-building in Islamic Morocco

Corisande Fenwick (UCL)

12.00- 1:30 Lunch

1:30-3.30pm

Les Banû Yahrâsan, figures politiques et sacrées de l’ibadisme à Djerba

Virginie Prevost (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Fact, Fiction and Polemic in the Study of the Almoravid and Almohad empires

Amira Bennison (University of Cambridge)

3:30 – 4 Coffee Break

4-4:50   The role of climatic modulations in the economic, social and political reorganization of Maghreb al-Asqa at the time of the emergence of the Islamic emirates (8th-9th centuries).

Chloe Capel (UMR 8167 Orient et Méditerranée)

4:50-.    Authority Beyond the State: A Response.

Andrew Marsham (University of Cambridge)

5:20-6pm. Final Discussion

6pm Drink Reception followed by dinner at a local restaurant for speakers