Negotiating Islamic Legacies in Europe: Concepts, Heritages, and Comparative Approaches
Scientific Coordinators: Eleni Gara, Elias Kolovos, and Yorgos Tzedopoulos
Venue and Date: Museum of Islamic Art, Athens (Greece) – January 17, 2023
Meeting call:
The legacies of a medieval (in the case of in the case of the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, Sicily and other western mediterranean islands) and/or early modern (in the case of the Ottoman Balkans and southern Central Europe) Islamic presence in Europe are still noticeable today, especially in the form of architectural heritage. Arabic and/or Ottoman mosques, especially, and other Islamic buildings, have been mostly treated as “unwelcome”, or “dissonant” heritage in contemporary Europe – or have not been recognized as heritage at all – and have been constantly contested and negotiated by national ideologies and state policies. Moreover, the Islamic past has been negated, at least in terms of visibility, in monuments of high symbolic value. This is the case of the Acropolis of Athens, which had been the fortified part of the town in Ottoman times, with the Parthenon having been transformed from a church into a mosque. In juxtaposition, monuments like Hagia Sophia in Istanbul have been recently negated their Christian past. The legacies of an undesired past are constantly being reappraised. The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars who would be interested in discussing the management of medieval and early modern Islamic heritage in contemporary Europe, the public discourses concerning this heritage, and, consequently, the questions raised by the above on the very concept of “heritage”.
