Project description
Local adaptations in the pre-Mongol Islamic East
The spread of Islam in Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia today is based on still unclear multicultural and culturally different adaptations. Previous studies have suggested that caliphal and sultanic authorities dominated over local realities in the pre-Mongol Islamic East. However, it has recently been hypothesised that local innovation and adaptation may have favoured the spread of Islam. The opening of Afghan Genizah to the public in 2013 and 2017 allowed the testing of the pre-Mongol Islamic East hypothesis. The EU-funded GO.LOCAL project will test whether Islam is a demonstration of cumulative culture or whether it is best to view it through the local anchoring model. The project will assess whether Islam and Islamisation correspond better to local innovations in authority and language than to the processes at imperial capitals and administrative hubs.
Objective
Multilingual and culturally diverse adaptations – not doctrinal uniformity or Arabisation – have allowed Islam to dominate the eastern Islamic lands in what is today Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. While Islamic fundamentalism exemplified by the bombing of the Bamiyan Buddhas has dominated the discourse on Islamisation in the region, it remains unclear when and how such forms of adaptations arose.
Previous research has argued that caliphal and sultanic authority underlie local realities in the pre-Mongol Islamic East. But the latter show central control, suggesting the underlying mechanisms at local level might be different. A better model for the spread of Islam in the East and its countryside might be local innovation and adaptation. In 2013 and 2017 when the newly discovered Afghan Geniza was made publicly available for the first time, it became possible to test this hypothesis for the pre-Mongol Islamic East.
Using both a top-down and bottom-up testing approach, GO.LOCAL will test whether Islam is a manifestation of cumulative culture – currently the implied hypothesis in the field – or whether it is best accounted for with the local anchoring model. That is GO.LOCAL will evaluate whether Islam and Islamisation are more similar to local innovations in authority and language than developments at imperial capitals and other central hubs. The outcomes and conclusions of GO.LOCAL will therefore inform several fields at once (e.g. history, sociolinguistics, anthropology, archaeology and theology).
This proposal is the first to test the local anchoring account developed by classicists in the Islamic East. If its predictions are confirmed, then multilingualism and cultural diversity will have emerged as far more important as factors in Islamisation than previously assumed. GO.LOCAL will radically transform our understanding in the evolution of Islam, Islamisation and religion more generally.
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.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory
- humanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionreligionsislam
- social sciencessociologyanthropology
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyarchaeology
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Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
OX1 2JD Oxford
United Kingdom