International Mamluk Symposium – II: Science, Thought, Art, and Institutions
- Event Category: Scientific Congress
- Activity Type: Symposium
- Organized Event Year: 2023
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Abstract:
The era of Mamluk rule was a time of intellectual and artistic flourishing. From 1250 to 1517, the Mamluk elite established madrasas, dervish lodges, hospitals, and observatories across the lands they ruled in Egypt, Syria, and the Hijaz, including in the great cities of Cairo, Damascus, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Aleppo. Scholars, scientists, thinkers, artisans, and Sufis from all over the Muslim world relocated to the Mamluk realm, further nourishing its intellectual and cultural dynamism. Meanwhile, pilgrims, students, and other visitors to Mamluk lands brought what they learned there back to their homes, thereby helping to spread Mamluk accomplishments in various fields to other parts of the Muslim world, including both newer territories like Anatolia and the Balkans as well as older centers of learning, trade, and governance like the Maghreb, Andalusia, Iran, Transoxiana, and India.
The rich endowments established by the Mamluks and the institutions and activities those endowments supported played an essential role in preserving, developing, and transmitting the scientific and intellectual heritage of Islam across the Muslim world, even long after Mamluk rule itself had come to an end.
For this symposium, distinguished scholars from all over the World have presented papers on this legacy, on the intellectual and artistic activities of the Mamluk lands and their effects on other regions and later periods.