The Copts and the construction of religious authority

Thomas Soubira Archeologist, PhD student in Toulouse University icon-calendar Monday December 19ᵗʰ, 2016 The archeological site of Sijilmasa is being excavated by a French Moroccan team. This “harbour” of transsaharian trade between the 8th and the 15th centuries has remarkable hydrolic archeological remnants that can be observed on the entire excavation zone: water harvesting, transportation, storage, and disposal of sewage water. All this equipement reveal a creative human effort and a great diversity of techniques used to manage such a precious resource in this arid zone. Located in the Tafilalt lowland, this site is inhabited since prehistoric times. The city of Sijilmasa—or, probably rather an agglomerate of fortified houses—was founded around the mid-8th century by the Berber tribe of the Banū Midrār, at the convergence point of many caravan routes. In the beginning of the 16th century, Leo Africanus (d. 957/1550) describes it as a ruined city. At the end of the 18th century, this very oasis zone is also the cradle of the Alaouite dynasty, that still rules Morocco today. The site of Sijilmasa was only preserved from destruction because it was used as the burial site of the Alaouites.

Eric van Lit PhD in Islamic studies  Tuesday December 13ᵗʰ, 2016 A little problem keeps popping up century after century, in the writings of all kinds of Muslim theologians (80 to 90 authors have been identified so far); what happens if one person were to eat another person, can they both have bodily resurrection? The first occurrence of this theological question is to be found long before the advent of Islam, in Athenagoras’ De resurrectione in the second century and Augustin (fifth century) does not hesitate to call it the strongest argument against bodily resurrection. It is also discussed by Thomas Aquinas and many medieval christian theologians. When al-Sayyid al-Šarīf al-Ǧurgānī (d. 816/1413) deals with this issue, making a distinction between essential and non essential body parts, he actually answers the anthropological and philosophical question of what is a person. What is the link between our identity as separate persons and our body? Another question that emerges from this one is: What is resurrection, the gathering of scattered body parts or a new creation? These questions are actually what makes the cannibalism argument relevant in the end. Some theologians argue that the body is but a mere instrument, and the soul alone will be judged at resurrection. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 877/1472) is an early example of this. This nips in the bud the very point of the discussion, that has gone as far as whether the bodily parts of a righteous person would suffer hell’s fire if these parts had been eaten by a sinner, thus becoming part of his body.