This workshop aimed to bring together historians working in the area of Libyan history in order to reflect on their own research in relation to the past, present and future of Libyan historiography. In particular, Libyan and non-Libyan historians will discuss and debate the ways the toppling of the 40-year-old Gadhafi regime will impact the writing and re-writing of Libyan history as well as their own research and publication. Some of the questions that will be tabled are:
- What do we really know about 19th- and early 20th-century Libya? What are the historical connections between Benghazi (east), Tripoli (west) and Fezzan (south)?
- How are the Libyan coastal cities tied to Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa? What socio-political events of the late 19th century have helped to shape contemporary Libyan social and political structure? How has historical research and knowledge production been organized and deployed in the past, and how do we envision the regime change to impact the state of Libyan history and historiography in the near future?
Recent events have thrust Libya into the spotlight. Since the early days of the revolution in Benghazi in February of 2011, international media outlets have scrambled to piece together a picture of the country, which until then has had a one-dimensional representation. In the past, popular media has consistently portrayed Libya, one of Africa’s largest and most culturally diverse countries, as a simple reflection of its former leader, Mu’ammar Gadhafi. In a struggle to understand the roots of the revolution and the conflict between pro- and anti-Gadhafi forces, self-identified experts on the history of Libya played up the so-called historical divide between the East West and South of the country; the “unnatural” formation of the Libyan nation-state; and the war between Libya and Chad. Moreover, many of these predictions that were supposedly based on Libyan history were used as a justification for the intervention (or inaction) of foreign and local powers alike.
Now, as Libyans begin the task of envisioning a new future for Libya, the importance of scholarship on Libya’s past becomes especially important. At this critical junction, the past becomes almost as important as the present moment, allowing for a rare opportunity to reconsider conventional telling of history as a way of allowing for an image of a new Libya begins to emerge. The proposed workshop is a start of an academic conversation on the wider history and historiography of Libya, with the aim of bringing together scholars of 19th- and 20th-century-Libya in order to address certain questions about the complex history of Libya through the participants past’ and current academic research. Historians working within Ottoman, Arab, African and Colonial frameworks will come together in the spirit of transcending the boundaries of area studies, and the regional academic silos. Scholars from the wider Middle East, Europe, Africa, and North America will briefly discuss their research in a two-day workshop meant at bridging the academic divide of regional scholarship, with the aim of starting a very timely conversation on the past with the aim of better understanding today’s scholarly challenges. Most importantly, we will use this workshop as an occasion to turn the spotlight on historical research on Libya, in its multi-dimensional complexity, in a forum divorced from the often-utilitarian aims of popular media sound bites and the ready-made explanations for historically-rooted and often-complex contemporary social, economic, and political conditions.
Speakers:
Mohammed Edeek is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Tripoli and a Researcher at the History Department at the National Center for Archives and Historical Studies. He is a prolific author with dozens of publications on Libyan Modern history and politics.
Emna Elaouni is an architect and an assistant professor of architecture at the National School of Architecture and Town Planning in Tunis. She is interested in the theme of housing and specific modernities. She is currently preparing her tenure on “context and modernity in the architectural and urban space in Tunis".
Güneş Işıksel is the chief-librarian at the Bibliothèque des études arabes, turques et islamiques of the Collège de France and will defend her PhD Thesis in June, 2012.
Suad Mohammmed al-Jaffal has a Bachelor of Arts in history from al-Nasser University in Libya, and a Masters in History from the University of Tripoli. She is currently working on her PhD dissertation on the topic of Triplitanian-German relations between 1884-1918 at the University of Tripoli. She has participated in several conferences and authored a book based on her Masters thesis titled The Libyan-Tunisian Relations During the Ottoman Period (1835-1911).
Jakob Krais has studied History, Islamic Studies and Philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin and Università La Sapienza, Rome. He taught at the Department of Islamic Studies, FU Berlin. Currently, he is working on a PhD on Libyan historiography during the colonial period at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies, FU Berlin.
Nora Lafi is the chair of several research projects at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin and has published numerous books, papers, and articles on 19th-century history and contemporary politics of the Middle East and North Africa. She also is a member of the Kollegium of EUME.
Mostafa Minawi is a EUME Fellow at the berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien for the year 2011/12. He is a specialist in Ottoman history of the 19th century, with a special emphasis on the Ottoman-African and Ottoman-Hijazi dimension. He defended his PhD dissertation in History and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University in 2011, and will take up an Assistant Professor position at the Department of History at Cornell University in the fall of 2012.
Eileen Ryan is a doctoral candidate in the history department at Columbia University. She is finishing a dissertation on the relationship between the Italian colonial state and the political authority of the Sufi tariqa of the Sanusiyya in eastern Libya, and she is scheduled to defend in June 2012. Starting in the fall, she will begin teaching courses on Europe in the World at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Henning Sievert is a specialist in Mamluk and Ottoman history. His current research project is on local and translocal politics in late Ottoman and early Italian Libya. He is an associated researcher in the Middle Eastern studies department of Zurich University and a lecturer at the Institute for Oriental and Asian Studies at Bonn University.
Ebubekir Subaşı is a writer and expert on the Ottoman archives, with a special emphasis on the archival records of Ottoman North Africa.
Salaheddin H. Sury is a retired professor of history who has taught at several universities in Tripoli and Benghazi. He is currently a senior counselor at the CNARHS (Centre for National Archives and Historical Studies), and is in charge of its research projects.
Knut S. Vikør is a professor of the history of the Middle East and Muslim Africa at the University of Bergen. His book Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge on the founder of the Sanusiya order, Muhammad b. Ali al-Sanusi (d. 1859), is a seminal work on the Sanusiya. He has also published extensively on related topics of Sufism and Islamic law.
Schedule:
Friday, June 8, 2012: Workshop
10.30 am – 11 am
Opening Remarks and Introduction
Mostafa Minawi (Eume Fellow 2011-12) and Nora Lafi (ZMO)
11 am – 12.30 am
Panel 1: New Approaches to Colonial History in Libyan
Eileen Ryan (Columbia University), Italy and the Sanusiyya: Negotiating Authority in Colonial Libya
Jakob Krais (Freie Universität Berlin), The Italo-Ottoman War and Colonial Libya: A Hundred Years of Historical Writing
Chair: Nora Lafi (ZMO)
2 pm – 3.30 pm
Panel 2: European - Tripolitanian Relations in the 19th century
Suad Mohammad al-Jaffal (University of Tripoli)
Mahmoud ed-Deek (University of Tripoli), Aspects of the European Diplomatic Relations during the Ottoman Epoch
Chair: Mostafa Minawi (EUME Fellow 2011-12)
4 pm – 5.30 pm
Panel 3: Between the Local and the Imperial in the Writing of History
Kunt Vikor (University of Bergen), Sanusi Studies After the Fall
Mostafa Minawi (EUME Fellow 2011-12), On the Use (and Misuse) of Ottoman Archives for the Writing of Sanussi History into the Narrative of the Nation
Chair: Florian Reidler (ZMO)
Saturday, June 9, 2012: Workshop
10.30 am – 12 am
Panel 4: Late Ottoman Stakes in Tripolitania
Hennig Sievert (University of Bonn), Intermediaries and Local Initiative Around 1900
Güneş Işıksel (Collège de France), Ottoman Investments in Libya in the Turn of Twentieth Century
Chair: Elke Hartmann (Freie Universität Berlin)
1.30 pm – 3 pm
Panel 5: State and Archives: Politics and Scholarly Pursuits
Salaheddin Sury (CNARHS, Tripoli), Libya: Sixty Years Later
Ebubekir Subaşı (BOA, Istanbul), The Importance of the Archives in the Telling of the History of Libya and Some Problems with the Archival Material
Chair: Adam Mestyan (EUME Fellow 2011-12)
3.30 pm – 5 pm
Panel 6: Putting the Libyan South in Focus
Nora Lafi (ZMO), How to write a decolonized history of the Libyan South? The Fezzan between Ottoman Empire and European Imperialisms
Emna el-Aouani (ENAU, Tunis), Towards a Specific Modernity of the Space in Ghadames: Urban and Architectural Analysis of the Historic City
Chair: Chanfi Ahmed (ZMO)
