History and Culture of Central Asia (Summer term 2025)Approaching and Distancing from Home in al-Fārābī's Great Book on MusicA lecture by Yasemin Gökpinar, Humboldt University of Berlin

20 May 2025

Photo: © Sinani

Professor Heidemann would like to invite you to the next lecture in our series on the history and culture of Central Asia, with a special focus on the Zerafshan Valley, which we're also offering this summer term. The second lecture of this semester, "Approaching and Distancing from Home in al-Fārābī's Great Book on Music" will be presented by Dr. Yasemin Gökpinar, visiting professor at Humboldt University of Berlin.

• Topic: Approaching and Distancing from Home in al-Fārābī's Great Book on Music
• Speaker: Dr. Yasemin Gökpinar, visiting Professor for Islamic Studies, Humboldt Unviersity of Berlin
• When?: May 20th, 2025, 2:00 PM CET, 5:00 PM Tashkent Time, 8:00 AM Easer Daylight Time (Eastern Coast)
• Where?: Online via ZOOM

Why to listen to Dr. Gökpinar:
Al-Fārābī’s Great Book on Music (Kitāb al-Mūsīqī al-kabīr) is one of the most significant theoretical works in the history of Arabic musical theory. The question of potential references to al-Fārābī’s own origins—his birthplace (where?) and his early intellectual environment—has received little attention. This paper explores whether and how notions of proximity and distance, both literal and metaphorical, shape the structure, content, and conceptual framework of the Great Book on Music. Does al-Fārābī’s engagement with musical thought reflect traces of his homeland, or does it rather indicate a conscious intellectual distancing? By examining key passages of the text in their historical and philosophical context, this study aims to reassess the relationship between biography, geography, and music-theoretical discourse in al-Fārābī’s work.

Speakers Profile:
Yasemin Gökpınar combines the study of Islamic philosophy and manuscript culture with musicology. In 2016 she received her PhD from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB). Between 2018 and 2023, she held the position of an executive assistant the RUB and while at the same time being research associate at the ERC project “Ancient Music Beyond Hellenization” at the Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Vienna. Between 2023 and 2025, she taught as visiting professor at the Asien-Afrika Institut at Hamburg University, and starting in 2025 at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Participation:
In order to participate, please click here or use the following Zoom credentials:
Meeting ID: 446 979 3351
Password: 12345

About the lecture series:
The series is jointly organized by Prof. Dr. Stefan Heidemann, Department of Islamic Studies at the Asien-Afrika-Institut (Universität Hamburg), and Dr. Shovosil Ziyodov, director of the Imam Bukhari International Scientific Research Center in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

For more information about the joint Lecture Series on the History and Culture of Central Asia, please see here.