Antoine Borrut, Aligning Heaven, and Earth

The Tunisia Office of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University and The Balzan Seminar for the Study of the Formation, Maintenance, and Failure of States in Muslim Societies invite you to:

"Aligning Heaven and Earth: Astrology and the Construction of Historical Knowledge in Early Islam"

A lecture by Antoine Borrut, Assistant Professor of History, University of Maryland

Antoine Borrut is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He specializes in early Islamic history and historiography. His publications include: Between Memory and Power: The Syrian Space under the Late Umayyads and Early Abbasids (c. 72-193/692-809) (Leiden: Brill, 2023); Navigating Language in the Early Islamic World: Multilingualism and Language Change in the First Centuries of Islam (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024). He just finished a book manuscript tentatively entitled Aligning Heaven and Earth: Astrology and History in Early Islam.

This talk is based on a forthcoming book (with the same title) that focuses on the construction of historical knowledge during the first centuries of Islam (7th-10th centuries CE) and sheds light on the much-neglected genre of astrological histories. Borrut contends that astrologers played a significant, albeit totally overlooked, role in the making of Islamic historiography. Aligning Heaven and Earth documents a unique moment in historical writing and reveals enduring legacies of this exceptional corpus of texts and historical horoscopes. The flourishing and eventual vanishing of astrological histories reveal broader historiographical trends, most notably a shift of cultural brokers serving as arbitrators of (historical) knowledge and a change of regime of historicity.

This event will be held in person. 

Admission Free