Natalie Kontny-Wendt, M.A.

SCORE Homepage

www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/SCORE

About

Natalie Kontny-Wendt is a research associate in the Emmy Noether research group "Social Contexts of Rebellion in the Early Islamic Period (SCORE)". Her current research focuses on pro-ʿAlid - especially Zaydī - rebellions in the long 8th century CE.

Her project will take the uprising of Zayd b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (b. 75/694-5 in Medina) as a starting point to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of pro-ʿAlid revolts in the early Islamic period. Zayd’s rebellion, which took place in 122/740 in Kūfa, was the first uprising in the name of the ʿAlid family after the Battle of Karbalāʾ (61/680) and can be seen as the beginning of a long series of revolts against the Umayyad and ʿAbbasid Caliphate in the name of ʿAlid descendants. The supporters and sons of Zayd b. ʿAlī, referred to as Zaydiyya in many sources, played a pivotal role in the political and military landscape of the early Islamic period and seem to have provided core support for most (if not all) ʿAlid rebellions that followed, well into the 9th century CE. The centrepiece of the PhD project will be a prosopographical study of the network of supporters of these revolts. Recent prosopographical studies (e.g., Ahmed 2011, Elad 2016, and Robinson 2020) have shown that this approach can usefully complement and substantiate our current understanding of the early Islamic period. Although the merits of prosopography have been recognized in the field of Islamic Studies since the 1970s, most contributions are rather recent, which is likely connected to the increase in digital tools that facilitate such studies.

Previously, Natalie was a research associate at the chair of Islamic Studies in Hamburg (Prof. Stefan Heidemann), and has worked on the perception and representation of the Indian Ocean in Arabo-Islamic sources (esp. geographies). 

She holds an M.A. and a B.A. in Islamic Studies from the University of Hamburg.