A lecture by Alison Vacca
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Michigan
This talk will review the extant evidence for Arab-American cross-cultural exchange in the Umayyad and early ‘Abbasid periods, focusing first on the development of ideas in Arabic texts. It will briefly address Arab knowledge of Arminiya in ‘Abbasid-era Arabic histories and geographical treatises. Arabs describes two different Arminiyas: one was the product of actual experience in the province and the other was imagined Arminiya. While the former demonstrates limited knowledge about Armenians and the lived experience of Armenians and Arabs in Arminiya, the latter is a product of the sectarian milieu in the centers of the Islamic world, outside of Arminiya itself.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies