This lecture is an invitation to consider how histories of friendship might offer not only a distinct cartography, but an alternative ethics for imagining the world. It rethinks how we tell trans-regional Arabia–Asia histories by moving beyond familiar idioms of “flows,” “networks,” and “connectivity,” which flatten the textures of historical life into technical metaphors. As a counterpoint, it turns to The Crown of Brides (Tāj al-Aʿrās), a mid-twentieth-century Arabic hagiographical compendium from Indonesia, approaching it not as archive but as a site for excavating alternative world-making schemes. At its center lies wilāya—protective friendship—a complex idiom of relatedness that organizes connection through asymmetry, dependence, generosity, and reciprocity. Within this grammar, hierarchy is a structure of hope; dependence, a condition for dignity; and continuity, a sacred inheritance. The lecture shows how wilāya engenders geographical imaginaries through bonds of affection, patronage, reciprocity, and care, revealing Arabia–Asia as a moral world shaped by care, hospitality, protection, and blessing.

Speaker

Ismail Alatas - Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, History, New York University

In Person (NYUAD Campus)

The seminar is open to the NYUAD community and by invitation. Please register below.