The OIBlog from Beirut and Cairo
Fatima Al-Bazzal My project tackles an under-represented and highly dispersed manuscript archive. According to a popular narrative distributed among the people of Jabal Amil Region, today’s Southern Lebanon, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, the Ottoman governor...
Islamic Ethical Discourse”. Various typologies from the pre-modern texts of ethics including ethnic, religious, societal, gendered and historical typologies have been extensively discussed in five panels for three days in hybrid form. Eleven out of fifteen speakers were physically present in Beirut. All panels have been livestreamed to achieve a wide audience worldwide. The workshop took place from 10-12 March 2022 and has been organized by Fatih Ermiş (OIB), Bilal Orfali (AUB) and Enrico Boccaccini (OIB). The spectrum of the speakers ranged from Canada and USA to Germany, UK, the Netherlands, Turkey and Lebanon.
Rosemary Maxton In around 1700 CE, in the town of Mardin (current-day southeast Turkey), a priest decided to abandon his Syriac Orthodox faith and embrace Catholicism.[1] Though little else can be gathered about this...
Joud Alkorani By some recollections, the Arab Spring was characterized by God’s presence. “God is with us,” chanted some as they protested in the streets. “God is great,” proclaimed others as blood was shed....
Rosy Beyhom A public research seminar took place on the 15th of June 2022 in the main hall of Orient Institute Beirut and focused on music and politics. Rosy Beyhom, a visiting post-doctoral fellow...
Krieg und auch Bürgerkrieg sind meist mit Gewalt aussoziiert. Gewalt scheint das Merkmal von Kriegshandlungen zu sein. Doch auch in Zeiten des Krieges gibt es Handeln, das nicht von Gewalt durchdrungen ist, auch wenn...
Pierre France The international workshop “Alles ist Data? Tout est Data!” took place as an in-person conference with online invitation-only attendance, the first of its kind since the COVID-19 era started at the Institut....
The Orient Institut Beirut has officially joined the EGYCLASS project as a core institution. The main objective of this project – led by CNRS researcher Marie Vannetzel – is to set up an interdisciplinary...
Mustafa Emir Küçük People have used green spaces for recreational purposes throughout history, yet the concept of the park as a designed green space for people’s recreation in the middle of the city developed...
Ayşe Nur Akdal Today, one can find it bizarre to come across a rural element in cities. However, historically, there was not a clear distinction between urban and rural. Agricultural and urban space existed...
Georgios C. Liakopoulos The first extant Ottoman taxation cadastre of the Morea TT10-1/14662, dated 1460-63, divides the recorded settlements into Greek and Albanian on the basis of different rates of taxation, which favoured the latter ethnic...
Graham Auman Pitts Capitalism had it seasons in late-Ottoman Mount Lebanon. Each spring, the families that tilled orchards of mulberries purchased the eggs they needed on credit. Mulberry leaves nourished the eggs, which hatched...
Benan Grams On June 30th, 1903 Sultan Abdulhamid II approved a project to bring potable water to Damascus from the Ein el-Fijeh spring.1 The project was presented to the central government by Nazim Pasha,...
Nükhet Varlık Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It is known to have affected human societies for at least the last five thousand years. During its long history, it...
Interview with Pierre France What question can the reader of your book answer after reading it?There are two questions. One could be framed as a response to a classic debate in comparative political science...
