The 2010 Levi Della Vida Award Honoring Professor C. Edmund Bosworth

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
9:30 AM - 7:00 PM
314 Royce Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095

The contribution of Turkish peoples to the historical development of the Islamic world and its civilisation has been overshadowed by those of the Arabs and the Persians. Turkish rulers and military commanders came to dominate a vast stretch of the Islamic lands, from Algiers in the West to Bengal in the East, from the middle Volga region in the North to Yemen in the South, for almost a millennium, into the early 20th century Yet their presence was by no means a governmental and military one; Turkish scholars, theologians, religious lawyers, poets and other literary men, all became part of the richfabric of the Islamic world and its culture. The lecturers for the Conference will endeavour to show the richness of this contribution and how it developed from the first appearance of Turks from their Inner Asian original homeland to the formation of such states of prime significance as the Qarakhanids, the Seljuqs of Rum, the Ottomans, the rulers of Turkish origin in Iran and the Mughals of India, and their culture and literatures.

Clifford Edmund Bosworth

Born 1928 in Sheffield, England, Professor C. Edmund Bosworth gained degrees in modern history at St. John's College, Oxford, and in Arabic, Persian and Turkish at Edinburgh University, and his Ph.D. in Eastern Islamic history at Edinburgh University. He was a lecturer in Arabic at St. Andrews University (1956-67) and a professor of Arabic studies at Manchester University (1967-90). He is currently a visiting professor at the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Exeter University. He has been a visiting professor at UCLA, Kuwait University, Princeton and Harvard. He is a fellow of the British Academy and an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has received the UNESCO Avicenna Silver Medal, Paris; the Dr. Mahmud Afshar Foundation Prize for Contributions to Iranian Studies, Tehran; the Triennial Award, Royal Asiatic Society, London; and the Annual Award, British Society for Middle East Studies, Oxford. He is the author or editor of some 20 books on topics ranging from the pre-modern history of the Central and Eastern Islamic lands and of Central Asia, to high Arabic literature and that of low life, and, more recently, the travel narrative of a 17th-century Scottish traveler in the Islamic lands of the Mediterranean basin and in Central Europe. For more than 30 years, he was British editor for the Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition. He is a consulting editor of the Encyclopaedia Iranica and co-editor of Iran, Journal of the British Institute of Perian Studies.

For the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Series in Islamic Studies, visit HERE.

PROGRAM

DAY 2:  Wednesday May 19 / 9:30 AM - 7 PM

9 AM – Noon:  Panel II – Turks in the Indian Subcontinent

    Chair: Ismail Poonawala, UCLA

    9-9:45 AM –  Sunil Kumar, School of Oriental and African Studies - Trans-regional Contacts and Relationships: Turks, Mongols and the Delhi Sultanate in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

    9:45-10:30 AM – Benedek Péri, Budapest University - Turkish Language and Literature in Medieval and Early Modern India

    10:30-11:15 AM – Francis Robinson, University of London - Relationships, Emotions and Monuments: The Great Mughals, 1526-1707

    11:15 AM - Noon – Discussion

Noon-1:30 PM – Lunch Break

1:30-3:45 PM - PANEL CANCELLED

Panel III: The Seljuqs

    Chair: Irene Bierman-McKenna, UCLA

    1:30-2:15 PM  – Robert Hillenbrand, Edinburgh University - Brick versus Stone: Saljuq Architecture in Iran and Anatolia

    2:15-3 PM – Carole Hillenbrand, Edinburgh University - The Court of the Great Seljuqs

    3-3:45 PM – Discussion

3:45-4 PM: COFFEE BREAK

4-6:15 PM - Panel IV - The Northern Tier in Later Times: Ottomans and Safavids

    Chair: Gabriel Piterberg, UCLA

    4-4:45 PM – Ali Anooshahr, University of California, Davis - Revisiting Safavid Origins in Light of Contemporary Documents

    4:45-5:30 PM – Robert Dankoff, University of Chicago - Evliya Çelebi’s Expeditions on the Nile

    5:30-6:15 PM – Discussion

Cost : Free and open to the public

www.international.ucla.edu/cnes