Schwartz Daniel L.McLynn NeilPapaconstantinou Arietta - Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond

CONVERSION IN LATE ANTIQUITY: CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM, AND BEYOND

In memory of Tom Sizgorich

Adieu, chers compaignons, adieu, mes chers amis,
Je men vay le premier vous preparer la place.

Pierre de ronsard, Derniers vers (1586)

Papers from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, University of Oxford, 20092010

Edited by
Arietta Papaconstantinou, University of Reading, UK, with Neil McLynn, University of Oxford, UK and Daniel L. Schwartz, Texas A&M University, USA

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright Arietta Papaconstantinou, Neil McLynn and Daniel L. Schwartz 2015

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar (2009-2010 : University of Oxford)

Conversion in late antiquity : Christianity, Islam, and beyond : papers from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, University of Oxford, 2009-2010 / edited by Arietta Papaconstantinou, with Neil McLynn and Daniel L. Schwartz.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4094-5738-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-3155-7420-2 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-3171-5972-8 (epub) 1. ConversionChristianityHistoryTo 1500Congresses. 2. Church historyPrimitive and early church, ca. 30600Congresses. 3. Church historyMiddle Ages, 600-1500Congresses. 4. ConversionIslamHistoryCongresses. 5. IslamHistoryTo 1500vCongresses. I. Papaconstantinou, Arietta, joint editor. II. Title.

BV4916.3.A53 2009

204'.2dc23

2015002622

ISBN: 9781409457381 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781315574202 (ebk-PDF)

ISBN: 9781317159728 (ebk-ePUB)

Vita enim mortuorum in memoria est posita vivorum.

On Tuesday 25 January 2011, I received an email from Tom agreeing to participate in this volume, and promising to get you a title and abstract this week. I could still see his name further up my inbox when on Friday 28th I received a message from Clifford Ando letting a small group of common friends know that Tom had suddenly died of a stroke the day before. The news came as a bucket of cold water, and everyone who found out in the following days and weeks had the same reaction. Over his short career, and during his visits to Europe, Tom had acquired many admirers and friends. For all of us he was full of life and intellectual energy. We all imagined him as a towering figure in the future of a young academic field, of which he was already one of the most eloquent practitioners. It simply did not make sense.

I remember like yesterday the thrill of reading his first article in Past and Present. Entitled Narrative and Community in Islamic Late Antiquity, it expressed in an articulate, clear and yet amazingly sophisticated manner things that several scholars, including myself, had been trying to say - rather gauchely, it now felt. The professionalism and maturity of his work, and his astonishing gift for language, were there from the very start, and only got better with time.

That article prompted us with Muriel Debi to invite him to a panel on Near Eastern hagiography and historiography at the International Congress of Byzantine Studies in London in 2006. We were told by those who knew him that he would be easy to recognise, a California guy with orange hair. At the conference, we looked vainly for orange hair in the midst of a crowd of rather conventionally dressed Byzantinists, until a young man with hardly any hair at all came up to me and introduced himself as Tom. That was the beginning of a very exciting intellectual encounter. Sadly, Toms participation in the Mellon Sawyer Seminar that produced this book was its last manifestation. It was a very powerful one, as will be obvious from the references to his paper by other impressed speakers and contributors.

This master of both textual and sociological analysis, with a background in journalism, also excelled in relating his work to the reality of today. His understanding of Middle Eastern politics was uncommonly lucid and subtle, and it was a pleasure to discuss issues with him. He left us as the first events of the Arab Spring had just taken place in Tunisia, perhaps sparing himself the pain of seeing the hopeful Spring turn into an ugly Autumn. Yet how we could benefit, today, from his capacity to probe and dissect situations of contested identities and competing claims to power. His Violence and Belief, exploring the early Caliphate, has so much to teach us about the modern one if we care to look.

It has been four years, and as this book went into production, it marked the sad anniversary almost to the day. Much has been written already about Tom and his qualities, both human and scholarly. At the initiative of his friends and colleagues, a Memorial Award has been established in his name at the University of California at Santa Barbara, to support graduate students from an economically disadvantaged or non-traditional background a cause we all know was close to his heart. Most of all, vivid memories of his work and his presence hover over conferences and seminars concerned with a range of subjects related to the late antique and early Islamic Near East. If indeed the life of the dead lies in the memory of the living, Tom is still very much with us.

Arietta Papaconstantinou

Cicero, Philippic IX 10.

Averil Cameron

Polymnia Athanassiadi

Vesna A. Wallace

Simon Corcoran

Antonello Palumbo

Samuel N.C. Lieu

Christopher Kelly

Thomas Sizgorich

Elizabeth Key Fowden

Uriel Simonsohn

Moshe Lavee

Konstantin M. Klein

Max Deeg

Jan Willem Drijvers

Robert Schick