Source in the Spotlight
Co-producing the End. The Use of Jewish Exegesis in Paul Alvar’s Apocalyptic Interpretation of Islam
In the 8th–9th centuries, some Christian authors identified Islam and Muhammad with the Antichrist. In his Indiculus luminosus, Paul Alvar goes further, combining Christian exegesis with Jewish interpretations and the Islamic calendar to predict the imminent end of Islamic rule – an example of apocalyptic ideas “co-produced” across religious traditions.
Latest Case Study
Why did the Christian Shrine-Keeper Poison the Muslim Astronomer? The Co-Production of Theology and History in al-Wathiq’s Expeditions to Confirm the Truth of the Qurʾan
Around the middle of the ninth century a man named Muhammad ibn Musa “The Astronomer” was poisoned by the wicked keeper of a Christian shrine. It happened (if it happened) deep inside a small mountain somewhere near the ancient city of Ephesus, on the southwestern coast of modern Turkey, in what was then the territory of East Rome. Thankfully for the history of science, Muhammad vomited up his poisoned lunch and survived the ordeal.
![Constantinople. 985. Miniature Minology Vasily II. Vatican Library. Rome. Authors of Menologion of Basil II (circa 985 AC, Constantinople), Byzantine manuscript illuminators[1]: Pantoleon with Georgios, Michael the Younger, Michael of Blachernae, Symeon, Symeon of Blachernae, Menas, and Nestor (Online on Vatican site) - http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1613/0143?sid=a7590df9b8aca22111c8359533716419&zoomlevel=4](/img/asset/Y2FzZV9zdHVkaWVzL3NldmVuX3NsZWVwZXJzXyhtZW5vbG9naW9uX29mX2Jhc2lsX2lpKS5qcGc/seven_sleepers_%28menologion_of_basil_ii%29.jpg?w=1200&s=596e62fc851b571e6045436580deab7b)
Event: International Conference and Workshop
Insular Entanglements: Malta, 300-1700
International Conference in Valetta, June 16-19th, 2026
Organizers: Mohamad Ballan (Stonybrook University) and Katharina Heyden (University of Bern)
Our upcoming conference "Insular Entanglements: Malta, 300-1700" examines Malta as a case-study of Mediterranean entanglement from Late Antiquity through the Early Modern period. The notion of entanglement that we propose is quite capacious, encompassing not only (nor even primarily) quotidian interreligious interactions but ideas of connections, polemics, memory, histories, and texts more broadly. This will include intellectual networks, economic and political connections, language, cultural encounters, religious thought and polemics, as well as the relationship between the local (Malta) and regional (Mediterranean). The idea of frontiers and borderlands will constitute an important theme of the conference, but we will also explore questions of materiality and material culture in early Christianity, the complex (and ever-changing) relationship between religious and cultural traditions, and the larger political transformations taking place across the medieval and early modern Mediterranean world.
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
JUNE 16th Tuesday
3.00 pm Welcome coffee
3.45 pm Welcome – Mohamad Ballan and Katharina Heyden
4.00 pm Evarist Bartolo – Former Minister for European & Foreign Affairs and Former Minister for Education
5.00 pm: Break
Panel 1: Insularity and Entanglement (Chair: Mohamad Ballan)
5.15-7.00 pm
Emanuel Buttigieg
History of, and History on Islands: Some Perspectives
Katharina Heyden & Davide Scotto,
Paul’s Shipwreck and Pagan Hospitality: Christian Reflections from Ancient Writers to Contemporary Popes
7.30 pm: Welcome Dinner
JUNE 17th Wednesday
[7.30 onwards: Breakfast]
Panel II: Mediterranean Connectivity and Medieval Mobilities (Chairs: Katharina Heyden and Gaetano Spampinato)
9.00-10.30 am
Nikolas Jaspert
Protective Tongues in a Sea of Anxiety: Malta’s Marine Treasures
Sofía Torallas Tovar
Greek in Malta: an approach to Roman and Late Ancient epigraphy
10.30 – 11.00: Coffee Break
11.00 am – 1.00 pm
Anna Usacheva
Insularity as Objectivation: Power Dynamics around Byzantine Malta
Jessica Minieri
Between Sicily and the Crown: The County of Malta in the Late Medieval Aragonese Mediterranean
Anthony Ellis
Exiled on the Maltese Archipelago: Lamentations, Poems and Visions
1.00 – 2.30 pm: Lunch
Panel III: Maltese as an Entangled Language (Chair & Discussant: Rosabel Ansari)
2.30-4:30 pm
Alex Metcalfe
History and Language: Malta, Sicily and Ifrīqiya in the Arab-Norman Period
Michael Cooperson
The Religious Vocabulary of Maltese
4.30 – 5.00 pm: Coffee Break
5.00 – 7.00 pm
Richard Assaley
Mediterranean Dissonance: Disentangling “Arabic” in Malta
Davide Basaldella
Some Notes on Maltese Triglossia (15th–17th Centuries)
7.30 pm: Dinner
JUNE 18th Thursday
[7.30 onwards: Breakfast]
Panel IV: Co-produced Spaces (Chair: Anthony Ellis)
8.30-10:30 am
Caroline Bridel and Maureen Attali
Entangled Deathscapes: Commensality in Late Antique Maltese Catacombs and the Shared Ritual Cultures of the Mediterranean
Charlene Vella
Basilian Monastic Materiality and the Muslim Imprint in Medieval Malta
Rachel Grillo
A Space of Entanglement: The Tribunal Room at the Inquisitor's Palace in Malta
10.30 – 11.00: Coffee Break
Panel V: Circulating Documents and Entangled Lives (Chair: Lea Schlenker)
11.00 am – 12.20 pm
Mercedes García-Arenal
Inquisition Trials from Malta: Crypto-Christianity in Ottoman Lands
Chanelle Mifsud Briffa
Paper Routes: Tracing Quasi-Islamic Paper in the Maritime Collection at the Notarial Registers Archive in Malta
12.30 – 2.00 pm: Lunch
2.00 – 3.30 pm
Mohamad Ballan
Muslim Refugees in Medieval Malta (ca. 1463)? Mobility, Migration and the Muslim-Christian Frontier in the Mediterranean World
Federico Stella
Manuscripts and Memory: Tracing Muslim Lives in Early Modern Malta
3.30 – 3.00 pm: Coffee Break
Panel VI: Apocalyptic Imaginaries and Historical Reflections (Chair: Caroline Bridel)
4.00-6.00 pm
Mayte Green-Mercado
The Place of Malta in the Apocalyptic Imaginary of the Early Modern Mediterranean
Lea Schlenker
Morals from Malta. Kâtib Çelebi’s (d. 1068/1657) Account of the Failed Siege of Malta as Part of Ottoman Historiography in an Age of “Decline”
Gaetano Spampinato
L’isola piccina. The Role of Malta in Michele Amari’s Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, between Religious Entanglement and National Ideology
6.00 – 6.30 pm: Break
Final Discussion (Introduction: David Nirenberg)
6.30–7.30 pm
7.30 pm: Dinner
Event: International Interdisciplinary Workshop
Interreligious Coproduction
Organized by SherAli Tahreen, David Nirenberg, and Katharina Heyden
Latest Publication
Interaction, Entanglement, and Co-production between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Part One: Lived Religion
PDFAbout
Who we are
The project is coordinated by Katharina Heyden, Professor for Ancient History of Christianity and Interreligious Encounters at the University of Bern (Switzerland), and David Nirenberg, Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (U.S.), and includes a network of collaborators across North America, Europe, and the Middle East.