Congreso: Knowledge under control. Religious and political censorship in islamic societies

Lugar: Barcelona

This is a cluster of four panels within WOCMES 2010 Barcelona, sponsored by the ERC Advanced Research Grant, the Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo (ILC-CCHS, CSIC) and the Spanish Ministry of Education.

It has recently been shown that Averroes had to change a previous version of his al-Kashf ,an manahij al-adilla - in which he departed from Ibn Tumart’s doctrine - under the pressure of the Almohad purists who wanted to preserve their founder’s views on anthropomorphism. Censorship and pressure to conform in this case resulted in the alteration of a text and probably influenced Averroes’ ‘disgrace’ and banishment. In other cases it led to more painful consequences. In this panel other instances of altered texts as result of censorship or auto-censhorship in the Muslim world will be studied with the aim of exploring how religious and political control in the writing domain was carried out in a variety of contexts.

Organizer: Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània (IEMed)

Contact: Maribel Fierro (ILC, CCHS-CSIC)