Navigating Language in the Early Islamic World, 2018 Marco Symposium, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, April 6–7, 2018
In the last few years of the seventh century, the Marwānid Reforms established Arabic as the administrative language of the Umayyad Caliphate. Coins, inscriptions, and papyri subsequently attest the use of Arabic in caliphal and local administration. Despite the centrality of Arabic as a sacred language to Muslims, the language of the Qurʾān, it was appreciated across religious boundaries such that Christians and Jews quickly began composing and engaging texts in Arabic. Arabic adorns monuments, manuscripts, and clothing, attesting to its broad appeal and high aesthetic value.
Yet despite its centrality, Arabic did not spread evenly or quickly throughout the entire Islamic world. Even though Arabic became a commercial and religious language from Central Asia to the Iberian Peninsula, the populations of many provinces continued to write and converse in other languages such as Persian, Armenian, Coptic, and Syriac, to name a few. This symposium situates the history of Arabic and Arabization within a broader setting of linguistic diversity in the Islamic world in three ways. First, it seeks to understand multilingualism in an ethnically and religiously pluralist environment, including through engagement with studies of the pre-Islamic Near East. Second, it explores the way that communities produced, employed, and transformed Arabic in their own settings. Third, it contributes to the ongoing discussion of textual and oral transmission of narratives and historical accounts between the various languages of the Islamic world.
The 2018 Marco Symposium is organized by UTK professors Manuela Ceballos (Religious Studies), Tina Shepardson (Religious Studies), and Alison Vacca (History), together with Antoine Borrut (History, Univ. of Maryland).