Eirik Hovden
- E-mailEirik.Hovden@uib.no
- Phone+47 55 58 80 93
- Visitor AddressHF-bygget, Sydnesplassen 7Room248
- Postal AddressPostboks 78055020 Bergen
2020-2024: I now work as a project leader of the CanCode project, financed by the Trond Mohn Foundation and HF, UiB. In addition to the the general project leadership I also research the development of code-like legal texts from pre-modern Zaydi Yemen.
2018-2020: I started a post-dcotoral project at the Department of Foreign Languages at UiB. The project was aobut exploring understadings of secularity in Yemen and the Arab world. I taught at the Arabic bachelor program as part of my duty work.
2016-2018: I worked at AHKR, UiB as a researcher in a HERA-project together with Knut Vikør. The overall project was led by Robert Gleave in Exeter, UK, and was about how the past was and is used in Islamic law. My specific focus was on how the Zaydi law school theorize sovereignty and public management.
2012-2016: I worked at a researcher at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften in a large project on comparative medieval history. I worked in Institut für Sozialanthropologie in a team with other Yemen-experts and my focus was on religoius movements in the Zaydi-areas of Yemen in the medieval period, especially a branch of Zaydi-Islam called al-Muṭarrifiyya.
2007-2012: I did research for my PhD at AHKR, UiB with Anne K. Bang and Knut Vikør as supervisors. I did fieldwork in Yemen where I first focused on waqf and water supply and turned to focusing on the development of the waqf-laws in a historical and comtemporary context. Waqf means charitable Islamic foundations and is regulated in its own chapter in traditional Islamic law. This was in older times one of the most used modes of organizing public infrastructure as well as a vehicle for managing private wealth in the Islamic world, until the begunning of the 20th century. I had to relate to the classical texts of the Zaydi legal school, on which there had been little in-depth research before.
2006-2007: I worked as an assistant at the Nile Basin Programme (Unifob global) and aided Terje Tvedt in collected data for the bibliographies on usage of the Nile, which we co-authored.
1999-2006: I studied environmental geography, social anthropology and Arabic at UiB. I have an interdisciplinary MA degree from UiB on water studies and coastal management. I did fieldwork in Yemen and wrote my thesis on traditional rainwater harvesting structures in rural mountains of North-west Yemen.
Related to my post doctoral postion (2018-2020), I have taught Arabic textual analysis and translation in the couses ARA111 and ARA112 which are two courses in the beginning of the bachelor program at the Department of Foreign Languages. I have also taught ARA211 which is a course in authentic modern and classical Arabic texts towards the end of the bachelor program.
Selected publications:
Eirik Hovden, Waqf in Zaydī Yemen. Legal theory, Codification and Local Practice, “Studies in Islamic Law and Society”, Leiden: Brill, 2019.
Eirik Hovden and Johann Heiss “Zaydī theology popularized: a hailstorm hitting the heterodox”, in Cultures of Eschatology, vol. 1: Worldly Empires and Scriptural Authorities in Medieval Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist Communities. Ed. Veronika Wieser, Vincent Eltschinger, Johann Heiss. DeGruyter, 2020. (Open access)
Eirik Hovden. “Sanaa. Dynastienes kamparena i et splittet land” in Brennpunkt Midtøsten. Byene som prisme. Ed. Nils Buitenschøn and Rania Maktabi. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2018.
Johann Heiss, and Eirik Hovden. “Competing Visions of Community in Mediaeval Zaydī Yemen”. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO) 59 (2016) 366-407
Meanings of Community Across Medieval Eurasia. Editors: Eirik Hovden, Christina Lutter and Walter Pohl Leiden: Brill, 2016. (Open access, Brill online)
Eirik Hovden, “Birka and Baraka - Cistern and Blessing: Notes on Custom and Islamic Law Regarding Public Cisterns in Northern Yemen”. In Southwest Arabia across History: Essays to the Memory of Walter Dostal, Ed. Andre Gingrich and Siegfried Haas. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Denkschriften, 472. Band, 55-65. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014 (Open access: epub.oeaw.ac.at)
- (2022). al-Muṭarrifiyya. The Encyclopaedia of Islam Three.
- (2021). al-Manṣūr bi-llāh al-Qāsim b. Muḥammad. The Encyclopaedia of Islam Three.
- (2021). Practising Community in Urban and Rural Eurasia (1000–1600). Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Brill Academic Publishers.
- (2021). Defining Rules of Rural-Urban Flows: Endowments, Authority and Law in Medieval Zaydi Yemen in a Comparative Perspective. 24 pages.
- (2021). Conceptualizing City-Hinterland Relations and Governance: Medieval Sanaa as a Case Study. 15 pages.
- (2021). Compilation, Canonisation, and codification in the Islamic Legal Tradition.
- (2020). Zaydī Theology Popularised: A Hailstorm Hitting the Heterodox. 26 pages.
- (2020). Islamsk lov i forandring.
- (2019). Yemen after four years of war: What now?
- (2019). Waqf in Zaydī Yemen. Legal Theory, Codification, and Local Practice. 46.
- (2019). Waqf and patronage in Yemen.
- (2019). The three year rule in Zaydi legal texts regarding leases in waqf.
- (2018). Zaydī zakāt fiqh and the maʿūna tax.
- (2018). Shifting positions on the Hādawī family waqf: Yemeni Zaydī fiqh, polemics and decrees since al-Hādī until today.
- (2018). Sanaa. Dynastienes kamparena i et splittet land. 20 pages.
- (2018). Om situasjonen i Jemen.
- (2018). Imām al-Muʿayyad Bi'llāh Yaḥyā b. Ḥamza (d. 1348) and his decree justifying his right to confiscate certain types of waqf and selling them to fund war.
- (2018). Constructing Urban Communities. Endowments, Authority and Law.
- (2018). Conceptualizing City-Hinterland Relations and Governance. Medieval Sanaa as a Case Study.
- (2017). Zaydi fiqh of the imamate.
- (2017). Why are not more fleeing from Yemen.
- (2017). The Zaydī imamate between classical Zaydism and neo-traditionist positions. Reception and reuse in matters of succession/the electorate, views on sharīʿa/siyāsa, and the Shīʿī aspect.
- (2017). Maktvakuum etter Salihs død. Bergens Tidende.
- (2017). Maktspillet i Jemen. Bergens Tidende.
- (2017). Hvem er partene i konflikten i Jemen?
- (2016). Urban Communities in Medieval South Arabia: A comparative Reflection. 14 pages.
- (2016). Statens rolle som vannforvalter: tre bøker om vannproblemer i Jemen. Babylon - Nordisk tidsskrift for Midtøstenstudier. 58-67.
- (2016). Shawkani, al-. . In:
- (2016). Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, 2nd edn.
- (2016). Competing Visions of Welfare in the Zaydi Community of Medieval South Arabia. 24 pages.
- (2016). Competing Visions of Community in Mediaeval Zaydī Yemen. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 366-402.
More information in national current research information system (CRIStin)
Currently I'm the principle investgator of the CanCode-project (2020-2024). The project focuses on processes of canonization and codification of Islamic law.
Project website: uib.no/cancode
