The second meeting, again an event of the AGYA-Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences network, is hosted at Tunis/Tunisia (venue tbc). Originally planned for exactly 12 months after the first gathering, the event now has been rescheduled to November 12–16, 2020.

Changing identities, hidden knowledge, disguise, absence – there are many different ways how secrets and secrecy feature in the literary output of the 4th to 8th centuries. What is the mutual bottom line of all these different formats? Anne Alwis (Kent), Enass Khamsa (Beirut), and Konstantin Klein (Bamberg) again reunite experts of the field to discuss the function of secrets and secrecy in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and Early Islam. The focus in 2020 also is on further critical discussion of the papers presented in Bamberg 2019 for planned publication in the Journal of Late Antiquity (JLA; Johns Hopkins University Press). 

Isabel Toral presents her survey on secrecy in Arabic Advice Literature, with a special focus on Kalīla wa-Dimna, where the arts of secret diplomacy, espionage, disguise and intrigue are presented as legitimate means to manage political relationships and to “survive” at court.