Objective
What was the world into which Muhammad spread Islam, and have we missed the richest source of evidence?
Scholars have naturally expended great effort to understand Islam’s formative milieu in central Arabia c.600 CE, but the specifics of its society and political structures elude our grasp since the sources used to date lack the breadth of insight we need. There is, however, a vast and data-rich corpus that details the major tribes, their social structures, beliefs, territories, trade and much else besides, but it lies neglected because circumstances have not enabled scholars to profit from it. The source is pre-Islamic poetry, a corpus of tens of thousands of verses composed by central Arabians between 525-625 CE, and it is untapped because of long-standing doubts over its authenticity.
But new circumstances today can at last resolve those doubts. Saudi Arabia has opened its borders to international scholarly collaboration, and the PI has been granted unprecedented permission by the Saudi Ministry of Culture to conduct fieldwork on pre-Islamic poetry in the heartlands of Islam’s genesis. The possibilities have transformative potential for understanding the poetry. By combining philological analysis of the corpus with ethnographic fieldwork in the poets’ original homelands, this project capitalises on the long survival of local toponymic traditions to re-link the poetry to the land. Reading poetry through the lens of geography, this project’s “geo-poetic” approach enables a method to verify and validate the authenticity and accuracy of pre-Islamic poetry. We will reconstruct the first empirically-grounded map of pre-Islamic Arabia’s tribes, spaces and routes, inaugurate a systematic method to extract poetry’s unique data, and pioneer dialogue between Arabic literature and the latest historical and epigraphic scholarship on Late Antique Arabia to illuminate Muhammad’s world with greater depth and insight than hitherto possible.
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.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
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)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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.
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-2025-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.
2311 EZ Leiden
Netherlands
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.