Reminder:
"Reimagining the Medieval
Maritime Silk Route through a Tang Period Shipwreck, Quanzhou Muslim
Tombstones, and a Contemporary Chinese Art Exhibit in Qatar”
By Professor Jacqueline M. Armijo,
Qatar University (emerita)
Thursday, Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Place: East Asia Library Room 224
(Lathrop Library, 518 Memorial Way, Stanford University, building next to CEAS,
near Littlefield Center)
In 2012, two very different museums
exhibits, one in Singapore and one in Qatar, dramatically brought to light
different dimensions of the historic maritime silk route connecting China and
the Persian Gulf. The exhibit in Singapore displayed an extraordinary
collection of 9th century ceramic objects that had been custom-made
for Persian Gulf markets in kilns spread throughout China. The objects were
recovered from a shipwreck off the coast of Indonesia that was discovered in
1998 and offered heretofore unknown evidence of the extent of the early
China-Persian Gulf trade. The exhibit in Qatar on the other hand, was the first
one by a Chinese artist in the Middle East. It included a range of monumental
works of art created by Cai Guo-qiang that were inspired by the history of Arab
and Persian traders who had settled in his hometown, Quanzhou, beginning in the
Song period.
This talk will discuss both the
extent and range of the early trade along China’s maritime silk routes, as well
Cai Guo-qiang’s ability to capture and shed light on the lives of the myriad of
Muslim traders who settled in China over the centuries, and their role in the
history of Islam in China.
Dr. Armijo was
Associate Professor at Qatar University, Department of International
Affairs, 2010 – 2016.
She has also taught
at Zayed University, Stanford University’s Department of Religious Studies,
Clark Atlanta University, Cornell University, and Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology,
Her Ph.D. in Inner
Asian and Altaic Studies is from Harvard University, with a dissertation on
“Sayyid ‘Ajall Shams al-Din: A Muslim from Central Asia, Serving the Mongols in
China, Bringing ‘Civilization’ to Yunnan.”
Her publications
include:
·
“DragonMart:
The Mega-Souk of Today’s Silk Road,” in Middle East Report special issue
on “China in the Middle East,” 270 (May 2014).
·
“China
and the Gulf: The Social and Cultural Implications of their Rapidly Developing
Economic Ties,” chapter in Asia-Gulf Economic Relations in the 21st
Century: The Local to Global Transformation, edited by Tim Niblock and
Monica Malik. (Berlin & London: Gerlach Press, 2013).
·
“Turning
East: The Social and Cultural Implications of the Gulf’s Increasingly Strong
Economic and Strategic Relations with China,” with Lina M. Kassem. The
Singapore Middle East Papers. Volume 1 (Spring 2012), published by the
Middle East Institute and the National University of Singapore.
This lecture is
sponsored by the Silk Road Foundation, Center for East Asian Studies, the
Stanford Archaeology Center, and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at
Stanford.
