Dear colleagues,
We are delighted to announce the next talk in the series “More-than-Human South Asia: Ecologies, Knowledge, Bodies, and Senses,” organized by the Ghent Centre for South Asian Studies, on May 20th, 4 pm CET. This will be a hybrid lecture by Riyaz Chenganakkattil, titled "Camelbacks, Hoofprints, and the Hajj: South Asian Archives of Non-Human Life-worlds in the Journey to Mecca."
More information about next week's session can be found below, and in the attached document. You can also register to attend online at this link.
Hope to see many of you there!
Title: Camelbacks, Hoofprints, and the Hajj: South Asian Archives of Non-Human Life-worlds in the Journey to Mecca
Speaker: Riyaz Chenganakkattil, Ghent University
Abstract: For decades, scholarship on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, has been predominantly anthropocentric, focusing on the human pilgrim. The vital entanglement of the pilgrim’s journey with the lifeworlds of non-human actors remains critically underexplored, and the indispensable role of these beings in sustaining the pilgrimage infrastructure has been largely overlooked. This talk addresses a central question: how can we trace the non-human lifeworlds integral to this global Muslim phenomenon? Turning to multilingual South Asian Hajj literature, it argues for the essential narrative and archival presence of animals, birds, and other beings—serving as means of transport, ritual sacrifice, companions, and agents in devotional acts. By investigating literary and historical archives, the presentation weaves a narrative that reveals intricate mutual dependencies between humans and non-humans. In addition to examining religious, moral, and fictional story-worlds, it highlights a historical reality that persisted until the mid-twentieth century—a world shaped by vast caravan (qafila) networks and a regime of animal mobility, where neither human nor non-human could exist without the other. Consequently, it suggests that the Hajj was not merely a human migration, but an ecological event and an occasion of multi-species entanglement.