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Knowledge and manipulation of nature between usefulness and deception in the Arabo-Islamic tradition (9th-15th century)

Project description

Exploring the technical tradition in pre-modern Arabic literature

The EU-funded UseFool project will investigate the knowledge and exploitation of nature, especially as it applied to entertainment and fraud in the Arabic technical literature dealing with artisanal impostures. The main sources are Arabic handbooks written between the 13th and 15th centuries. It will perform a philological and textual analysis, recreate the material aspect of the procedures and lastly re-enact the performative and theatrical characteristics involved in the various forms of deception. The project intends to shed new light on this knowledge’s cultural, social, and material history from the perspective of Arabic technical literature.

Objective

The UseFool project studies the knowledge and manipulation of nature applied to entertainment and fraud, as described in the Arabic technical literature dealing with the practice of charlatans and performers along the streets and in the markets. At the core of UseFool’s textual corpus are four Arabic handbooks composed between the 6th/12th and the 9th/15th century, combined with other sources, such as the handbooks for the inspector of the market that focus on artisanal impostures. The project will reconstruct the refined technical notions mastered by marginal social groups, showing how the lightly dismissed ‘popular knowledge’ was actually a form of ‘street science’. The project’s goal is to write a new chapter in the cultural, social, and material history of knowledge looking through the lens of Arabic technical literature. UseFool proposes a new interdisciplinary approach to its sources: this begins from a philological and textual analysis that focuses on their technical contents, expands to the reconstruction of the material dimension of the procedures through hands-on replication, and completes its all-round approach with the re-enactment of the performative and theatrical dimension entailed in the different forms of deception. In this way, UseFool will assess the interaction between the narrative component and actual practice in this textual tradition. The project will also map the sources of this technical literature on deception, in order to reconstruct lines of transmission in a long time span and across different cultures. The project reflects on the roots of the handbooks on entertainment and fraud in the antique and late antique heritage, with the aim of providing a searchable and organized structure to the lore of natural properties. UseFool also expands its horizon to the close relationship between the Arabic and the Latin Mediaeval technical sources, with the aim of deepening our understanding of their transmission in a longue durée perspective.

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Topic(s)

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2021-COG

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Host institution

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 943 208,00
Address
VIA ZAMBONI 33
40126 Bologna
Italy

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Region
Nord-Est Emilia-Romagna Bologna
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 943 208,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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