Project description
Shaping Christian-Muslim relations in the Early Middle East
The period between the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the First Crusade is pivotal in shaping Christian-Muslim relations, yet its complexities have often been overlooked. During this time, Eastern Christian communities, including those in Byzantium, grappled with the rise of Islam. The ERC-funded NOMOS project seeks to shed light on this history by analysing how these communities, despite linguistic, cultural, and theological differences, defined and interpreted Islam through their legal frameworks. Using AI-supported technology, NOMOS will compile and create new editions of key legal texts, offering a fresh perspective on how encounters with Islam influenced the development of Christian legal regimes. The findings reshape our understanding of Christian-Muslim relations in the premodern world.
Objective
In the crucial half-millennium between the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the First Crusade, an absolutely essential part in the origins of Christian-Muslim relations has been overlooked, namely how the normative regimes of Eastern Christians including those of Byzantium, the Islamicate world and the space in between grappled with the rise of Islam. Exploring this history has important implications for our understanding of the development of Christian-Muslim relations in the premodern period, the genesis of Eastern Christian legal regimes and the earlier precedents which Eastern Mediterranean states after the year 1100 might have drawn on in dealing with Islam.
By assembling a corpus of Saracen law provisions and utilizing cutting-edge, AI-supported technologies to create new editions of legal texts, NOMOS will examine how, within the realm of normative knowledge, the new religion was interpreted, circumscribed and defined and, moreover, how the encounter with Islam itself shaped long-term developments within Eastern Christian legal regimes. Despite differences in literary language (Greek, Syriac, Coptic and Armenian), levels of statehood (ranging from the Byzantine Empire, the smaller Armenian principalities to the stateless Coptic and Syriac communities) and confessional affiliation (Orthodox, Monophysite or Nestorian/Church of the East), the encounter with Islam constituted the most significant factor in the late antique development of each of these legal normative orders in this period. This innovative, legal-historical approach to the history of the early medieval Middle East will not only offer a new way of looking at Late Antiquity in the first centuries of Islam, but will also provide a crucial new narrative of Christian-Muslim relations in the Eastern Mediterranean world before the First Crusade and thereby problematize the traditional Western-dominated paradigm for this history.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history ancient history
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion religions islam
- social sciences law
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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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.
80539 MUNCHEN
Germany
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