A Scholarly Finale to the Academic Year: Dr Awad Ibn Nahee on the DARAH Initiative
Yesterday evening (Thursday 11 July), the Society hosted what may be the last lecture in its events programme for the 2023-4 academic year. This was a lecture by Dr Awad Ibn Nahee (Najran University) on the ‘DARAH project for Arabian History: Syriac Sources for the History and Civilizations of Arabs and Arabia’. This pertains to a project recently launched by the King Abdulaziz Foundation (DARAH) which aims to make a new contribution to historical sources for the study of Arabic civilization in the Arabian Peninsula. Supervision of this project has been delegated to a scholarly team that is composed of a number of researchers and specialists in Syriac literature and the ancient and Islamic history of Arabia, drawing from different scholarly disciplines to create a database comprising texts translated into Arabic, as well as the original Syriac language alongside Western translations. We are grateful to Dr Ibn Nahee for bringing the project to the attention of a wider audience, both those who were able to enjoy the presentation at Stephenson Way as well as those who joined online.
The past year has been an extremely busy time for the Society, during which we enjoyed a host of events, exhibitions, and other activities associated with our 2023 bicentenary. Although this Summer will be quieter, we will continue to build on the legacy of those achievements, including by planning more lectures and publications investigating and reflecting on the history and collections of the Society. Please stay tuned for more information later this year.
In the meantime, while our programme of events will slow down until the end of Summer, we will continue to operate our usual library service, and welcome individual researchers as well as group visits of those wishing to study or learn more about our collections. This week, we welcomed a group from the Courtauld Institute, who are studying Indian architecture. We were pleased to be able to make available a number of important artworks from our collection. One example is RAS 074.001, ‘Tirumala Nayak’s palace, Madura’, by Alaghery Sawrey Naig, ca. 1825.
Last week, we shared sad news of the passing of Robert Irwin (1946-2024), on 28 June. We would like to draw your attention to two further obituaries in the Daily Telegraph on the 4th July and the Guardian on the 10th July, in addition to one in the TLS on the 5th July mentioned in last week’s blog. Robert Irwin was a remarkable scholar with wide ranging interests whose scholarship inspired the greatest respect among his peers. An excellent Arabist, his academic work explored the many histories of the Islamic world, while his wider literary oeuvre reflected on and incorporated elements of his own experiences as a British convert to Islam. He was a long-standing member of the Society and received the RAS Medal in 2023 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Asian Studies. The Society sends its sincere condolences to his wife Helen and daughter Felicity at this very sad time.
إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ Qur’an 2:156 [‘Indeed we belong to Allah, and to him we will return’]