From 15 to 16 March, the Euro-Arab Foundation will be holding the first international seminar ‘Maqbara. Islamic burial spaces, rituals and ceremonies from the origins to the present day” will be held at the Euro-Arab Foundation, where different aspects of the Islamic funerary world will be discussed.
Maqbara I is the first international seminar organised by the R&D project “Maqbara. Arabisation, Islamisation and resistance through cemetery spaces in the southeast of al-Andalus” (PID2020-113188GB-I00) with the collaboration of the University of Granada, the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Euro-Arab Foundation.
This seminar will bring together the different aspects of the Islamic funerary world and under Islam, from a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective and, therefore, bringing together some of the leading specialists in the field (anthropology, archaeology, history, epigraphy and Arabic studies).
At the same time, this first Seminar aims to disseminate recent maqābir findings from al-Andalus and elsewhere, especially those that can contribute to the central debate of the research project, such as Islamisation, Arabisation and resistance.
The Islamic funerary world and funerary spaces under Islam have so far been the subject of numerous partial and, in many cases, unidisciplinary studies. Occasional works, finds of graves in urban and rural contexts, as well as funerary archaeology projects are of great interest for the knowledge of past societies, particularly in the Andalusian world.
However, most of the information available is fragmentary, scarce or limited to a brief approximation as a consequence of the lack of resources of the archaeologist, the scant respect for the preserved remains and the lack of coordinated work between different specialists.
For all these reasons, an effort of dialogue, comparison between the various sources of information and collaboration between the disciplines involved in the study of human remains and the materiality linked to them must be made, taking into account the different perspectives and approaches (gender, decolonial, Islamisation…) and even historical stages (from the origins of Islam to the contemporary period).
