Local Memories in Tripolitania: alternative narratives about the Futūḥāt and their aftermath

"Local Memories in Tripolitania: alternative narratives about the Futūḥāt and their aftermath" by Sébastien Garnier

The MS Paris, BnF Ar 1892 comprises an intriguing history of Tripolitania that we are currently editing, translating and analyzing. Stretching over one millenium, from the Futūḥāt until the Ottoman conquest, its periodization seriously contradicts the standard timeline, either in the contemporary Tiḏkār of Ibn Ġalbūn (fl. 12th/18th c.) or in the historiographical works written in the past two centuries. We focus in this talk on the presentation of an alternative sequence where the Christians play a more important role until a much later epoch. We expose the data we could retrieve from a preliminary examination. We confront the discrepancies (datations, names, events) with what has been commonly accepted. We elaborate on the motives behind the redaction of this competing memory.

Sébastien Garnier is agrégé d'arabe (2008) and took his PhD in history at EHESS (2019), having also been member of the Holberg Seminar (2015-2019, Michael Cook — Princeton). His revised thesis, Histoires hafsides. Pouvoir et idéologie, was published by Brill (IHC, 2022). He was recently elected Associate Professor in Arabic at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. As a founding member of LibMed, an international academic team studying medieval Libya (https://libmed.hypotheses.org), he is in charge with the pole of manuscripts in the country. His current research focuses on the question of memories in Ifrīqiya.