Objective
This ambitious aim is to understand the political and economic workings of a pre-modern empire, the Islamic Empire (660 - 940 CE), which stretches over almost the entire Hellenistic-Roman world from the Atlantic to the Hindukush. In contrast to the conventional model of the empire founded on a religious revelation, the project is the first systematic attempt to explain the functioning of the empire from its regions and the brokering and management abilities of the caliphate and its various elites.
While usually we have a top down approach as seen from the centre, this project takes the view from the regions, to explain the functioning of the caliphal government. The project looks at five key regions from North Africa to Central Asia, establishing their changing political and economic structures and chronologies, and identifying trans-regional political, military, judicial, and indigenous elites. The tested hypothesis expects to see the central caliphal government in a more conscious role as moderator between the regions.
In order to shift our understanding of the functioning of the empire from a chronicle-driven top down view to a region-driven view, a multidisciplinary and multilayered approach seems to be appropriate: in addition to the literary sources, parallel to but independent from centre-based chronicles and biographical dictionaries, are read sequences of coins (Islamic coins have up to 150 words, of mostly administrative information), the results of archaeological excavations, and regional surveys (the PI is involved in a number of excavations from Egypt to Afghanistan), together with a data-base study of elite groups connecting the regions with the centre.
Emphasizing the role of the regions in the formation of the Islamic Empire points the view in a direction different from traditional ‘Islamwissenschaft’ which since its inception by Carl Heinrich Becker in 1910 has focussed Islam and its caliphate as the major formative force of the Empire.
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.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences databases
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion religions islam
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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.
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.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
ERC-2013-ADG
See other projects for this call
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.
Host institution
20148 Hamburg
Germany
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.