SCHOLARLY RELEVANCE. The Shifāʾ is an important source for the history of the Islamic West, during the political transition from the Almoravids (1061–1147) to the Almohads (1130–1269). Moreover, the work never dropped out of circulation. But while Malikis continue to teach the Shifāʾ as a theological treatise, it has also transcended its Andalusi origins and became a much beloved biography of the Prophet in the Islamic East.
STATE OF THE ART. The Shifāʾ’s enduring popularity outside al-Andalus had not yet received any attention from Middle East historians. On the one hand, the Shifāʾ is a comparatively late addition to the already substantial corpus of literature about the life of the prophet (Ar. sīra), of which the oldest known works were compiled soon after his death. As the Islamic civilization between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries is still perceived as a middling period, characterized by cultural stagnation and intellectual decline, it attracts fewer scholars and less is known about it. On the other hand, popularity is often mistaken as an indication that a literary work has already been comprehensively studied. But so far, the Shifāʾ has been primarily valued as a source, which seems so well-known that nothing really new or original could be said about it.
WORK AND DISSEMINATION. The Experienced Researcher (ER) and her mentor worked on the project. In consultation with the Digital.CSIC the ER wrote a cataloguing template and a DMP to organize and standardize the manuscript descriptions for a future online database, which will supplement the project’s publications about the Shifāʾ. In collaboration with a Spanish colleague, the ER organized in Madrid a two-day international workshop about the comparative study of Jewish, Christian and Muslim literatures about prophets and saints from Iberia between 600 and 1600. A monograph with articles based on selected presentations at the workshop, co-edited by the ER and her colleague, is prepared for publication in 2020. The ER examined Shifāʾ manuscripts in Spanish, German, American, Dutch and British libraries. She participated in six conferences in Spain, Germany and the USA; in four workshops in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands; in two seminars in Spain and the USA; and in one panel discussion in Germany. As regards outreach and dissemination, the ER wrote about the project on her research blog, and selected posts are available in the Digital.CSIC and the Academic Commons of Columbia University (USA). She completed one article about the Shifāʾ in Ottoman book culture, which is in press and will be published later this year, and is currently completing three more articles; all articles will be made available in Green Open-Access (OA).
