In September 2016, the 28th Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (UEAI) was held entitled Re-defining a Space of Encounter. Islam & Mediterranean: Identity, Alterity and Interactions. This time the event was hosted by the University of Palermo (Università degli Studi di Palermo).

UEAI is one of Europe’s long-established Arabic scholarly societies, which has brought together lecturers and researchers from leading European universities every two years since 1962 to report on their latest research. Initially open to conferences for scientists with an advanced level of science, in recent years PhD students have begun to give lectures here. Our Institute and the field of Hungarian Arabic were represented by Miklós Maróth as its director, István Lánczky, András Mércz, Gyöngyi Oroszi, Mónika Schönléber and Zoltán Szombathy.

Zoltán Szombathy gave a lecture entitled Some Notes on Stylistic Parodies in Medieval Arabic Literature on the first day. Mónika Schönléber’s presentation was entitled The Role of Poems in Ibn al-A’tham al-Kūfī’s Ridda Narrative, while Miklós Maróth spoke about the relationship between Yaḥyā Ibn ʽAdī and literary debate in his presentation titled Yaḥyā ibn ʽAdī and Adab al-Munāẓar. András Mércz spoke on Conversion in the Chronicle of Zuqnīn. Reversed Baptism or Authentic Shahāda? István Lánczky summarized his research under the title God’s Knowledge of Particulars: Avicenna and the Greek Philosophical Tradition.

The conference provided an excellent opportunity for international networking and engagement in science, as some of our staff had the opportunity to become involved in international research.
More on conference programme here.