Scholars working on the pre-modern Near East are keenly aware of the limitations of literary sources, which predominantly reflect Muslim, elite, male, and urban perspectives. Inscriptions and documents offer contemporaneous evidence for the multi-confessional societies of the Near East during the transformative centuries of early Muslim rule, including the experiences and interactions of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other communities.
The skills required to read, interpret, and integrate epigraphic and documentary evidence into historical research remain largely absent from university curricula. The Cambridge–LMU Strategic Partnership grant Epigraphic and Documentary Sources from Early Islamic Egypt: Tools and Skills for Graduate Students and Researchers addresses this gap through three training workshops on epigraphic and documentary sources from the Arabic-speaking world for graduate students and early-career researchers.
The first workshop, on Arabic documents, was held in Munich in November 2025 and taught by Prof. Geoffrey Khan. The second took place at the Genizah Research Unit in Cambridge and was led by Prof. Ben Outhwaite and colleagues. This third workshop will introduce participants to the latest research on Arabic epigraphy, from the pre-Islamic to the early Islamic period. It is taught by Prof. Ahmad al-Jallad (Ohio State University), Dr. Ilkka Lindstedt (University of Helsinki), and Dr. Teresa Bernheimer (LMU Munich).
The workshop is supported by the Cambridge–LMU Strategic Partnership grant Epigraphic and Documentary Sources from Early Islamic Egypt: Tools and Skills for Graduate Students and Researchers, directed by Prof. Geoffrey Khan and Prof. Ben Outhwaite at the University of Cambridge, and Dr. Teresa Bernheimer and Prof. Ronny Vollandt at LMU, Munich.
t.bernheimer@lmu.de
