Prof. Dr. Patrick Franke, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Bamberg
DAAD Regional Office Cairo, 11 El-Saleh Ayoub St. off 26th July, Zamalek
Wednesday, 17. December 2025, 18:00-21:00
Abstract
How can a concise history of Islam still be written today, after it has undergone more than 1,400 years of development and become a religion of global dimensions, diversified into countless subcurrents and entangled in innumerable debates? Franke's lecture will present the model of the Bamberger Einführung in die Geschichte des Islams, a hypertextual "animated" historical overview in 14 chapters that he uses as the basis for his introductory course at his University. The text, which is freely accessible online, is regularly updated and revised according to current research findings. The presentation will explain the theoretical principles underlying this historical account. Franke's thesis is that in every epoch of Islam, new antagonisms arise, which are then bridged in the form of dialectical sublations in the Hegelian sense. The emergence of Islam itself can also be interpreted in this way as the resolution and sublation of antagonisms affecting Pre-Islamic Arab society.
Bio
Prof. Dr Patrick Franke is full professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Bamberg. Among his research focuses are Islamic conceptual history, Islamic doxography and early modern history of Mecca. Since 2013, he is engaged in building up a novel online reference work on the history of Islam integrated in German Wikipedia.