Two upcoming public lectures by a friend, on “Wonders of Egypt”

Last updated on: September 16, 2019 at 8:18 pm by Dan Peterson

Two upcoming public lectures by a friend, on “Wonders of Egypt” 2019-09-16T20:18:33-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Sunset in Luxor, Egypt, near the Temple of Karnak and the Valley of the Kings (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

I would like to call attention to three public speeches that will be delivered later this month by my friend Hany Tawfeek (pronounced roughly HAH-nee taw-FEEK), who is one of the leading tour guides in Egypt. My wife and I have known him for years now, and have shared several tours of Egypt with him.

He will be speaking on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Monday, 23 September 2019, at 5:30 PM:

https://www.facebook.com/events/374402586826032/?notif_t=plan_user_invited&notif_id=1568414010385894

He will also be speaking at 7 PM on Tuesday, 24 September 2019, in the Jordan Events Center behind the Cruise Lady offices at 9112 S. Redwood Road, West Jordan, Utah. Since seating is limited, you should call either 801-453-9444 or 888-707-4386 to register before the lecture. My understanding, although I could be wrong, is that there will be no charge for the evening.

The topic at both locations will be “Wonders of Egypt.” I, alas, will miss both of Hany’s speeches because of a prior engagement on another continent.

You can look at some of the tours that Hany will be accompanying in the near term here:

https://www.cruiselady.com/?tour_search=1&tourtax%5Btour_phys%5D=0&tourtax%5Bpa_destination%5D=egypt&tourtax%5Bpa_month%5D=0&lang=

***

I’ve been asked by Oxford University Press to revisit an annotated bibliography that I did for them some years ago concerning the Zaydi branch of Shi‘a Islam. Since the Zaydis are predominantly located in Yemen, and since Yemen is currently quite a bit in the news, this is perhaps a timely opportunity. Here is the beginning of the bibliography as it currently stands. As I get a few moments, I intend to go through it in order to see what, if anything, I would add or substract or extend or modify. Suggestions are welcome:

Zaydiyya. Zaidiiya. Zaydiis. Zaidiis. Zaydism. Zaidism.

The Zaydiyya are a branch of Shi‘i Islam, often termed “moderate” or “the practical group of the Shii‘a,” that diverged from other Shi‘i factions in the course of the dispute over the succession to the imamate that followed the death of the fourth imam, ‘Ali Zayn al-‘Abidin, in 713. Rejecting the claims of Muhammad al-Baqir, the Zaydis instead chose Zayd ibn ‘Ali (d. 740), a grandson of the martyred Husayn, as the fifth imam (hence their name, and hence the common nickname for them, “Fivers”). One reason they preferred Zayd was his activist revolutionary stance against the Umayyad dynasty. Indeed, Zayd was the first descendant of Husayn to rebel openly against the Umayyads, which led to his violent death in 740. Thus, their theological moderation—which is actually no more than their relative doctrinal affinity to Sunnism, privileged as the norm—did not entail political moderation.

Bibliography

Until political events brought Shi‘i Islam forcibly to Western attention over the past few decades, Shi‘ism received relatively little attention from Western scholarship. But even in the recent period, scholarly work on the Zaydiyya has been comparatively sparse, perhaps because they are overwhelmingly located in remote portions of Yemen, which is itself remote and often overlooked. Much of the best work on the Zaydiyya has been done by a few German-speaking scholars.

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