The Battle of Yarmuk (636 CE): Rethinking ‘Conquest’ in the Late Antique Near East From Byzantium to Islam

A conference titled ‘The Battle of Yarmuk (636 CE): Rethinking ‘Conquest’, by the Abteilung für Orient- und Islamwissenschaft at Tübingen University will take place at the Evangelisches Stift from 16-17 June 2017. Please find the full programme here.

The Programme:

Friday, June 16, 2017

9.00                  Introduction

9.10                  Welcoming address of the Ephorus V. Drecoll

Framing conquest

Chair: J. van Ess

9.20                  T. Raum (Tübingen), Byzantium on the eve of the conquests

10.00                  J. Howard-Johnston (Oxford), The Arab conquests of the Roman Levant: The sources

10.40                   Coffee break

11.00                  S. Kovarik  (Oxford), Conquests and papyri in 7th-century Egypt

11.40                  A. Marsham (Edinburgh), Were there strategic considerations in the 7th-century Arab conquests?

12.20                  Lunch break

The battle of Yarmūk in the Arabic historical tradition

Chair: K. Franz

14.00                  M. Akpinar (Tübingen), Searching for the earliest layers in the Arabic sources

14.40                  M. Schönléber (Budapest), The narration of the events preceding the battle

15.20                  Coffee break

15.40                  J. Scheiner (Göttingen), Narrating the battle movement

16.20                  Y. Dehghani Farsani (Göttingen), Religious and military designations of Muslims and Byzantines

17.00                  Coffee break

Processing conquest

Chair: M. Meier

17.20                  F. Montinaro (Tübingen), On some sources for the reign of Constans II

18.00                  W. Brandes (Frankfurt), Überlegungen zum Constans-Vaticinium

19.00 Keynote

Walter E. Kaegi (Chicago)

Retrospective reflections on military operations at Yarmūk and vicinity

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Processing conquest (continued)

Chair: E.M. Conner

9.00                   L.M. Frenkel (São Paulo), The influence of Late Antique religious polemical discourse on Early Byzantine perceptions of the first Muslim victories

9.40                  C. Zuckerman (Paris), The sixty martyrs of Gaza

10.20                  Coffee break

Material approaches

Chair: M. Ritter

10.40                  M. Phillips & S. Tyler-Smith (Biggleswade/Cambridge), From ‘Ancient’ to ‘Medieval’: Coinage as evidence for the nature of historical change. The case of 7th-century Syria

11.20                  L. Ilisch (Tübingen), A new old 7th-century coin hoard from the Aleppo region

12.00                  Lunch break

13.40                   R. Schick (Mainz), The Byzantine-Umayyad transition in southern Jordan

14.20                   K. Meinecke (Wien), Syria capta. Herrschaftsanspruch in der Bildersprache der Umayyaden

15.00                  Coffee break

Distant voices

Chair: P. Tedesco

15.20                  K. Choda (Tübingen), Argumentum ex silentio? Religiöse Überzeugungsstrategie in der Continuatio Byzantia-Arabica

16.00                   M. Conterno (Ghent), History with and without Yarmūk: the double account of the 7th century in Agapius of Mabbug

16.40                   P. Pilette (Louvain-la-Neuve), The 7th century in the History of the churches and monasteries of Egypt

17.20                  Coffee break

18.00 Evening lecture

M. Penn (Stanford)

“Syriac Christian memories of the Islamic conquests”

19.00 Closing lecture and discussion

Fred M. Donner (Chicago)

“The conquests of the Arabian Believers’ movement as historiographical concept and historical reality”