Conference | Workshop

The Social Dynamics of Communal Affiliation in Early Islam

Date

Thursday 11 June 2026 - Friday 12 June 2026

Location

Herta Mohr

Room

t.b.a.

 

The Social Dynamics of Communal Affiliation in Early Islam

Universiteit Leiden

11–12 June 2026

 

In much existing scholarship, our understanding of Muslim groups in early Islam has been gauged through a reliance on later works of heresiography and doxography. These fourth/tenth century works portray a diverse range of groups (including the Imami, Zaydi, and Ismaili Shiʿa, Kharijis, Muʿtazilis, Murjiʾis, and various others who eventually came under the banner of ‘Sunnism’) emerging in the first three centuries of Islam, often over issues surrounding the rightful political leadership of the Muslim community and later coalescing around other theological beliefs which facilitated more coherent, structured systems for members of these groups to adhere to. Studies engaging with such works have greatly enriched our understanding of the doctrines and beliefs ascribed to these groups, their evolution over time, and what images the sources construct of them.

 

In studies on the social dynamics of this period, however, more attention has been paid to relations between Muslim and non-Muslim groups through processes such as conversion and cross-communal engagement with alternative legal systems than has been between the various Muslim groups. There is arguably a lacuna in thinking about how individuals belonging to divergent Muslim groups interacted, and how the interactions between them were practically structured. Research on interactions between Muslims belonging to divergent groups has tended to focus on theological polemics or political violence, rather than day-to-day interactions. We therefore lack a deeper understanding of what it meant to belong to a Muslim group during this early period of the first/seventh to third/ninth centuries on a more practical level. This workshop, organised under the auspices of the ERC Horizon Starting Grant project ‘Embodied Imamate: Mapping the Development of the Early Shiʿi Community 700-900 CE’ with the support of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean, aims to address this these concerns.

Programme also available as pdf (see sidebar)

 

Programme

Day 1 ⇒ 11 June

09:30–09:45	Welcome and Introduction	Adam Ramadhan & Edmund Hayes
	Plenary
09:45–10:45	Approaches to the Study of Group Formation for Historians	Philip Wood (Aga Khan University, London)
10:45–11:00	Break
11.00-12.30	Panel I (Chair: Adam Ramadhan)
	What Kind of Group Were the Imāmī Shiʿa?	Edmund Hayes (Leiden)
	Heresiography, Communal Boundaries and Back-Projection	James Weaver (Oxford)
12:30–13:30	Lunch
13:30–15:00	Panel II (Chair: Leone Pecorini Goodall)
	Changing Alliances: Supporters of Zaydī Revolts in the Long 8th Century CE	Natalie Kontny-Wendt (Hamburg)
	Framing ‘Rebellions’ in Ḥadīth Literature: Anti-Khārijī Ḥadīths as Mechanisms of Social Exclusion and Identity Negotiation	Yi-Chia Chang (Edinburgh)
15:00–15:30	Break
15:30–17:00	Panel III (Chair: Edmund Hayes)
	Congregational Prayer and Communal Boundaries in the Early Imāmī Community	Adam Ramadhan (Leiden)
	Communal Boundaries and the Invocation of Divine Vengeance Through Shiʿi Liturgy	Vinay Khetia (Shiʿa Research Institute, Toronto)
18:30	Dinner for Speakers

 

Day 2 ⇒ 12 June

10:00–11:30	Panel IV (Chair: Adam Ramadhan)
	Social Relations as a Site of Communal Boundary Formation Among Early Sunnis (Second to Fifth Hijri Centuries)	Ahmed El Shamsy (Chicago)
	Beyond Legal Doctrine: The Social Dimensions of Madhhab Identity in Early Islamic North Africa	Clément Salah (Oxford)
11:30–12:00	Break
12:00–13:30	Panel V (Chair: Zahra Azhar)
	‘Khārijite’ and ‘un-Khārijite’ Activities in the Vitae of the Udayya Brothers, Abū Bilāl Mirdās and ʿUrwa	Raashid S. Goyal (Tübingen)
	Khārijite Marriage and Communal Belonging in the Early Islamic Period	Hannah-Lena Hagemann (Hamburg)
13:30–15:30	Lunch
15:30–17:00	Panel VI (Chair: Aila Santi)
	The Socio-Epistemic Rupture in Early Medinan Islam	Muhammed Omar (Exeter)
	The People of Medina: The Formation of a Local Communal Belonging and Its Universalization in the Islamic Tradition (1st/7th–3rd/9th c.)	Adrien De Jarmy (Strasbourg)
17:00–17:30	Concluding Remarks & Discussion about Publication

 

 

Contact

For any enquiries related to this event, please email Adam Ramadhan at [e-mail].

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