News & Events

Arabic, Greek and bilingual documents and the Latin church in Norman Sicily

2023-03-08T09:42:02+00:00

A project workshop titled "Arabic, Greek and bilingual documents and the Latin church in Norman Sicily: The case of Patti" was held at The Khalili Research Centre on Saturday March 4th 2023.

Two of the papers presented on the day can be viewed below:

Francesca Potenza: The administration of the Greek population in the Greek documents of the Archivio Capitolare di Patti (view)

Jeremy Johns & Francesca Potenza: The Latin register of Greeks and Saracens in the Archivio Capitolare di Patti (view)

Islamic Law in Norman Sicily Lecture

2023-02-28T11:36:31+00:00

Professor Jeremy Johns delivered a lecture on Islamic Law in Norman Sicily at Wolfson College on Monday February 27th 2023 as part of the college's Law in Societies research cluster.

A recording of the talk may be viewed at: http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/resources/documult/jj_law_norman_sicily.mp4

Workshop: Norman Sicily and Ifrīqiya - Documents, Scripts and Islamic Law

2022-11-03T11:16:53+00:00

On Thursday 1st December 2022 from 2pm until 6.30pm, the Documult Project are hosting a workshop on "Norman Sicily and Ifrīqiya - Documents, Scripts and Islamic Law". The event is being held at The Buttery at Wolfson College, and is open to all. To reserve a place, please email susannah.cogan@orinst.ox.ac.uk before November 26th. Places are limited, and entrance will be restricted to those holding confirmation of a reserved space.

Please see the attached poster for full details of the workshop programme.

Summer School - "Documenting Legal Multiculturalism: An Historical Perspective"

2022-06-14T12:11:15+00:00

From June 20th to 22nd 2022 the Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza at the Università degli Studi di Palermo will be hosting a summer school titled "Documenting Legal Multiculturalism: An Historical Perspective". Please see the attached pdf for a full programme of events: summer school programme

DocuMult Project Workshop 2: Le Parole della Legge

2021-04-10T13:39:17+00:00

8-9 April 2021 - The second DocuMult workshop took place on the afternoons of Thursday 8 and Friday 9 April 2021 online via Microsoft Teams. Attended by members of the Oxford and Palermo project teams, members of the Academic Advisory Committee and other invited scholars, the purpose of the event was to examine and discuss legal formulae and terminology in documents written in all three of the principal administrative languages of Norman Sicily — Arabic, Greek and Latin — and to discuss how these might best be investigated by the DocuMult database.

The first day (which was conducted primarily in English) began with a brief Introduction (Johns) describing the progress of the project so far. It was followed by two sessions, each containing papers devoted the three principal administrative languages of Norman Sicily (Arabic, Latin and Greek), followed by open discussion: Session 1: Cultural isolation, self-sufficiency and synthesis in the legal formularies of the private documents of Norman Sicily (Jamil, Johns, Pasciuta, Rognoni), and Session 2: Formularies of Norman power: the creation of the vocabulary of royal power (Cerrito, Johns, Vuturo).

The second day (conducted primarily in Italian) was comprised of a single session: Session 3: Tagging Le Parole della Legge (Johns, Merli, Pasciuta, Potenza), and focussed on technical issues surrounding the tagging of legal formulae and terminology in the DocuMult database, as well as considering the format of the final output for this fundamental research tool.

Documult Seminars

2021-03-04T09:26:59+00:00

18 March 2021 - From March until June 2021 a series of seminars on the Documult project are being run by the project team based at the University of Palermo. For more details please see: https://krc.web.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/krc/documents/media/i_seminari_di_documult.pdf

Workshop: Documenting Multiculturalism in Norman Sicily and the Islamicate East

2019-11-30T13:40:05+00:00

29 November 2019: The DocuMult team organised the workshop Documenting Multiculturalism in Norman Sicily and the Islamicate East at Wolfson College, Oxford. The workshop was attended by approximately 40 participants, mainly project members, including the postdoctoral researchers from the Palermo teams, other researchers from Oxford and elsewhere, undergraduate and postgraduate students, and a few interested members of the general public.

Following an introduction and overview of DocuMult’s progress from Principal Investigator Professor Jeremy Johns, attendees heard from members of the Oxford-based team, including Dr Nadia Jamil (Senior Researcher), Dr Umberto Bongianino (Arabic Postdoctoral Researcher), and Daniel Burt (Technical Lead). The speakers presented on a range of topics relating to the Arabic legal and administrative documents of Norman Sicily, as well as the creation and development of the DocuMult database, which will be used to prepare new critical editions of the texts under study.

Two postdoctoral researchers based at the Università degli Studi di Palermo presented research from the Greek and Latin corpora, and sketched out potential directions for future research. Dr Marta Cerrito spoke on The anathema as penalty clause. A good example of plurality of iura in Sicily during the Norman period, and Dr Francesca Vuturo discussed The documents of Norman Sicily as a source for the study of Medieval Greek.

The workshop also hosted talks from members of the Invisible East programme, which is based in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. Principal Investigator Arezou Azad spoke on her two research projects, PersDoc and Go.Local, which examine the literary and material culture of medieval Afghanistan and Central Asia.

The workshop was followed by a networking event, which allowed for further discussion on the various projects.

DocuMult Launch Event

2019-04-10T13:40:50+00:00

9 April 2019 – In April 2019, the Palermo launch for the DocuMult Project was hosted by the Università degli Studi di Palermo in the Church of Sant’Antonio Abate at Lo Steri. Organised by Professor Beatrice Pasciuta (Senior Researcher and Latin Team Leader) and Dr Marta Cerrito (Latin Postdoctoral Research Assistant), the event aimed to raise the project’s profile within the university itself and more generally in the city of Palermo. There were approximately 100 attendees, including university leaders, academic staff and students, local government officials and journalists, as well as members of the public.

Following a welcome and introduction from the senior leadership team of Palermo University, attendees heard presentations on topics relating to the coexistence of the different religious, ethnic and linguistic communities in Sicily during the period of Norman rule (including Arab-speaking Muslims and Jews, Greek Christians, and Latin Christians). Speakers included Oxford’s Professor Jeremy Johns, the project’s Principal Investigator, as well as the two Senior Researchers based at Palermo, Professor Beatrice Pasciuta (Latin Team Leader) and Professor Cristina Rognoni (Greek Team Leader).

Following responses from Fabio Giambrone (Deputy Mayor of the Municipality of Palermo) and academic staff based at the Università degli Studi di Palermo, the discussion was concluded by Professor Karen O’Brien (Head of the Humanities Division at the Univeristy of Oxford).

Institute for Medieval Studies Open Lecture: Documenting Multiculturalism

2019-02-05T14:17:38+00:00

February 5th 2019 - On Tuesday 19th February 2019, Professor Jeremy Johns will be speaking about the Documenting Multiculturalism Project at the University of Leeds, as part of the Institute for Medieval Studies Open Lecture Series. The talk will start at 5.30pm and is being held in the Parkinson Building. All are welcome, and there is no charge for admission. For further details, please see: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/medieval/events/event/975/ims-open-lecture-documenting-multiculturalism

Workshop for Manuscripts and Text Cultures

2019-01-07T14:15:33+00:00

January 7th 2019 - The Workshop for Manuscripts and Text Cultures at The Queen's College is pleased to welcome you to a new event in its Lunchtime colloquiumseries. This is an opportunity to discuss research in progress in an informal setting with both senior and younger scholars. The focus of the Workshop lies on examining material aspects of writing and text production, including inscriptions, as well as transmission and the interface between the oral and the written, across pre-modern literate societies. Each term the 2nd week colloquium hosts two academics in conversation. The next event will take place on Tuesday, 22nd of January 2019 from 12:30–14:00 pm in the Magrath Room, The Queen’s College, University of Oxford. It will host Dr Nadia Jamil (Wolfson College, University of Oxford), and Prof. Jeremy Johns (Director of the Khalili Research Centre, Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford) for a co-presentation related to their project 'Documenting Multiculturalism'.

European Research Council awards €2.5 million Advanced Grant to the Documenting Multiculturalism Project

2018-04-03T14:13:39+00:00

April 3rd 2018 - The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the award of an Advanced Grant of approximately 2.5 million euros to the Documenting Multiculturalism Project.

The ERC review panel judged the project to be "a remarkable example of interdisciplinary cooperation, led by top scholars ... adopting a ground-breaking, bottom-up perspective". The panel considered the use of legal documents to address legal, cultural and linguistic challenges to be one of the strengths of the project, together with the usefulness of the research tools that will be produced, which will have a major impact on knowledge in the field. The panel also noted the international partnership between the University of Oxford and the Università degli Studi di Palermo to be a particular strength.

The Barakat Trust grants £8,000 towards digitisation of the Arabic documents of Norman Sicily

2017-04-28T14:10:04+00:00

April 27th 2017 - The Barakat Trust, a UK Registered Charity that supports the study and preservation of Islamic heritage, architecture, archaeology, art and culture by funding students, academic research, publications, digitisation, conservation, conferences and other projects, has made a generous grant of £8,000 towards the costs of digitising the Arabic documents of Norman and Hohenstaufen Sicily.