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The Holberg Prize Programme June 2–5, 2014 Monday June 2, 16.00–16.45 HOLBERG PRIZE LAUREATE 2014 MICHAEL COOK THE HOLBERG PRIZE PROGRAMME JUNE 2–5, 2014 MONDAY JUNE 2, 16.00–16.45 The Holberg Prize wishes to contribute to greater understanding, interest and enthusiasm for research in the academic fields of the arts and humanities, social sciences, law and theology. The Holberg Prize is awarded annually for outstanding scholarly work in the academic fields covered by the prize. The prize is worth NOK 4.5 million. The Holberg Prize laureate of 2014 is Michael Cook, a British historian and scholar of Islamic history. He is a leading expert on THE MULTILINGUAL SOCIETY the history and religious thought of Islam. Michael Cook is University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR The Nils Klim Prize is awarded to a Nordic researcher under 35 years old within the academic fields of the Holberg Prize. The prize is worth NOK 250 000. The laureate of 2014 is Terje Location: Chagall, Vaskerelven 1, 5014 Bergen Lohndal, Professor of English linguistics, Department of Language and Literature, Norwegian Nils Klim Prize laureate Terje Lohndal and Artemis Alexiadou, Professor at the Institute of University of Science and Technology. Linguistics at the University of Stuttgart, discuss the human-specific capacity for language. The Holberg Prize School Project is a research competition for students in Norwegian upper They will critically discuss the concept of Universal Grammar, which holds that there are abstract secondary schools. Three of the projects are awarded prizes of respectively NOK 15 000, building blocks of language that all humans are born with. In particular, they will focus on 10 000 and 5 000. A teacher’s grant is also awarded. how data from multilingual individuals can inform our understanding of Universal Grammar. The Holberg Prize was established by the Norwegian Parliament in 2003. It is named after Ludvig Holberg, the famous Norwegian-Danish playwright and scholar. He played an important part in bringing the enlightenment to the Nordic countries. The Nils Klim Prize is named after MONDAY JUNE 2, 17.00–18.00 the hero in Ludvig Holberg’s novel Nils Klim’s Subterranean Journey. www.holbergprisen.no MICHAEL COOK AT THE BERGEN INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL Location: Chagall, Vaskerelven 1, 5014 Bergen Michael Cook in conversation with journalist and writer Alf van der Hagen on Cook’s scholar- ship on the history of Islam and his latest book Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective. The event is a cooperation with Bergen International Festival. 3 THE HOLBERG PRIZE SYMPOSIUM, PANEL 1 09.00–09.15 Welcome Professor Sigmund Grønmo (Chair, The Holberg Board) 09.15–10.45 PANEL 1: WHY MONOTHEISM? VARIETIES OF MONOTHEISM TUESDAY JUNE 3, 09.15–15.30 IN LATE ANTIQUITY While many religious and intellectual move- Guy G. Stroumsa is Martin Buber Professor HOLBERG PRIZE ments referred to the One God in Late Antiquity, Emeritus of Comparative Religion, The Hebrew they did so in a number of ways, with vastly University of Jerusalem, and Professor Emeritus SYMPOSIUM 2014: different implications. In itself, “monotheism” may of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, and not be enough to characterize Muhammad’s Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, University religious revolution. A brief survey of religious of Oxford. His main interest is the religious history of the Mediterranean world and the Near East ANCIENT RELIGIONS, and philosophical approaches to the unity of in late antiquity, as well as in the history of the the Divinity in the Mediterranean and Near modern study of religion. Among his recent Eastern intercultural system might help us to MODERN DISSENT publications are The end of Sacrifice: Religious better understand the emergence and nature Transformations of Late Antiquity (2009) and A of Quranic monotheism. New Science: the Discovery of Religion in the Location: Auditorium A, Studentsenteret, Parkveien 1, Universitetet i Bergen Age of Reason (2010). 5 THE HOLBERG PRIZE SYMPOSIUM, PANEL 1 THE HOLBERG PRIZE SYMPOSIUM, PANEL 1 THE PEOPLE OF JUSTICE AND MONOTHEISM: THE PROPHETS OF MONOTHEISM MUʿTAZILISM IN ISLAM AND JUDAISM IN AL-ANDALUS The Islamic theological movement of the Sabine Schmidtke is Professor of Islamic Studies The noted Cordoban scholar Ibn Hazm (d. Maribel Fierro is Research Professor at the Centre so-called Muʿtazila, the “People of Justice and Founding Director, Research Unit Intellectual 1056) had no patience with the Biblical story of Human and Social Sciences at the Higher and Monotheism” as they called themselves, History of the Islamicate World at Freie Universität of Loth because of the many shameful things it Council for Scientific Research (CSIC—Spain). flourished between the Eigth and Thirteenth Berlin. She has published extensively on Islamic attributes to prophets. The protection of prophecy She has worked and published on the religious Century CE. While the methodological tools and Jewish intellectual history and religion. Her (tahsin al-nubuwwa) was a major concern for and intellectual history of al-Andalus and the of discursive theology had left their mark on books include The Theology of al-ʿAllama al-Hill him and for other Andalusi and Maghrebi Islamic West, and on Islamic law. Among her (d. 726/1325) (1991), A Jewish Philosopher recent publications are Abd al-Rahman III, The Jewish (mainly Karaite) thinkers writing in scholars. One of them, Qadi Iyad of Ceuta of Baghdad. ʿIzz al-Dawla Ibn Kammuna (d. first Cordoban Caliph (2005) and The Almohad Arabic since the early Ninth Century, there (d. 1149), produced a work in praise of the 683/1284) and His Writings (2006, with Reza Revolution: Politics and Religion in the Islamic West emerged a “Jewish Muʿtazila” around the turn prophet Muhammad that enjoyed huge and Pourjavady), and Rational Theology in Interfaith during the Twelfth-Thirteenth Centuries (2012). of the Eleventh Century that dominated Jewish Communication. Abu l-Husayn al-Basr ’s Muʿtazil lasting success in the Islamic world. In order to She is the editor of volume 2 (The Western theological thinking for centuries to come. Theology among the Karaites in the Fatimid Age understand Ibn Hazm’s and Iyad’s defence of Islamic World, Eleventh-Eighteenth Centuries) of (2006, with Wilferd Madelung). prophecy and prophets, the views of those who the The New Cambridge History of Islam (2010) took different views need to be analyzed, since and together with Camilla Adang and Sabine they indicate that the Muslims’ understanding Schmidtke, of Ibn Hazm of Cordoba. The Life of prophecy—and more specifically, of the and Works of a Controversial Thinker (2012). last Prophet, Muhammad—has been more complex than current treatments often indicate. MODERATOR PANEL 1: Sarah Stroumsa is Professor Emerita of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she taught in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature and the Department of Jewish Thought. She served as Rector of the Hebrew University from 2008 until 2012. She studies the history of philosophical and theological thought in Arabic in the early Islamic Middle Ages, Medieval Judaeo-Arabic literature, and the intellectual history of Muslims and Jews in Islamic Spain. Her publications in 10.45–11.15 Coffee English include: Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rawandi, Abu Bakr al-Razi, and Their Impact on Islamic Thought (1999); and Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (2010). 6 7 THE HOLBERG PRIZE SYMPOSIUM, THE HOLBERG LECTURE THE HOLBERG PRIZE SYMPOSIUM, THE HOLBERG LECTURE 11.15–12.45 THE HOLBERG LECTURE: MONOTHEISM AND THE RISE OF ISLAM The success of monotheism in world history combination of the two—and if so, just what is clearly related to power—but power of combination would that be? In my lecture what kind? Is it the intrinsic power of the I plan to review the extensive historical record monotheist idea, for example an unusual of the rise and spread of Islam—the process capacity to focus the energies of large numbers by which it became a world religion—to see of people in pursuit of a common purpose? what light it can shed on these questions. The Or is the power extrinsic, the result rather of issue is one that I have been aware of for historical contingencies that have forged an a long time, but this lecture will be my first adventitious link between monotheism and attempt to grapple with it. powerful states? Or does the truth lie in some Michael A. Cook, Holberg Prize Laureate 2014 Michael Cook is Professor of Near Eastern and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought Studies, Princeton University. He previously (2000). His introduction to The Koran (in taught at the School of Oriental and African the OUP “Very Short Introductions series”, Studies at the University of London. His early 2000) was followed by A Brief History of research on Ottoman population history the Human Race (2003). His previously RESPONDENT: Robert Hoyland is Professor of Middle East History at NYU’s Institute for resulted in Population Pressure in Rural published articles were collected as Studies Study of the Ancient World. He is the author of Seeing Islam as Others Saw it: A Survey Anatolia, 1450-1600 (1972). Subsequently, in the Origins of Early Islamic Culture and and Analysis of the Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian writings on Islam (1997), and the focus of his research shifted to the for- Tradition (2004). He is the general editor of Arabia and the Arabs from the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (2001). His recent mation of Islamic civilization and the role the New Cambridge History of Islam (2010), books include Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle: the Circulation of Historical Knowledge played by religious values in that process, which won the 2011 American Historical in Late Antiquity and Early Islam (2011), Doctrine and Debate in the East Christian World, leading to Early Muslim Dogma: A Source- Association Waldo G.
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