MF CASR Talk - Mina Monier - The Quest for the Assal's Lost Library in Medieval Cairo

Mina will present his research on the intellectual enterprise of Awlad al-ʿAssāl, a 13th-century Coptic family whose archive redefined Christian Arabic scholarship through critical, multilingual, and ecumenical methods. 

He will demonstrate how medieval Copts practiced rigorous textual criticism centuries before the Enlightenment. Through a reflexive lens, Mina will argue how both the medieval archive and modern historiography serve as contested sites for negotiating Coptic heritage and the politics of knowledge.

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