Rediscovering the Chronicle of John of NikiuRound Table

4 June 2024

Senats-Sitzungssaal, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, 20146 Hamburg and Zoom

First published in 1883, the Chronicle of the Severan-miaphysite bishop John of Nikiu (fl. 690s) is the sole universal history to have survived from seventh-century Egypt. This notable historical source is known to us, however, exclusively in its Ethiopic version. In recent decades, the discovery of new textual witnesses and the application of new approaches to the study of the text have almost resulted in a rediscovery of this text for scholarship. This round table, with an introductory talk by Stefan Heidemann, will feature the work of four scholars who study the Chronicle from various perspectives.

This round table is organized within the project ‘The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: Text-Critical Edition and Digital Research Platform’, in cooperation with the Center for Advanced Study ‘RomanIslam – Center for Comparative Empire and Transcultural Studies’, both funded by the German Research Foundation.

The round table will take place in a hybrid format. To attend, please register by June 3, 2024, by sending an email to daria.elagina"AT"uni-hamburg.de.

Programme

14.00 – 14.20         Stefan Heidemann (University of Hamburg), Welcome and introduction: The Umayyad Empire, embracing a Multireligious Society.

14.20- 15.00           Daria Elagina (University of Hamburg), The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: A Chance Survival

15.00 – 15.45         Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga (University of Tennessee), Sirens in the Nile: Digressions, Taste, and the Implications of Genre in Historical Writing at the Byzantine Periphery

15.45 – 16.00         Break

16.00 – 16.45         Phil Booth (University of Oxford), John of Nikiu as Ethnographer: Between Christianity and Islam

16.45 – 17.30         Arietta Papaconstantinou (Aix-Marseille Université), John and the Jews

17.30 – 18.00         Final Discussion