Communities of Knowledge

This project will examine the social encounters of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish scholars in the Abbasid Near East (750–1258). Christian Oriental studies has helped to reveal the diverse exchanges of Abbasid scholars, particularly during the Greco-Arabic translation movement, but the social context of these exchanges is seldom considered. An area in which collaboration is constantly attested in primary sources is the medical field. Ibn Abi Usaybiʿa (d. 1270), a Muslim physician from Syria, composed a 250,000-word history of medicine describing the interactions of nearly 450 physicians along with their social environment. The proposed project will digitally record these interactions in order and, using network analysis, identify the persons who were most frequently involved in scholarly exchange. Ibn Abi Usaybiʿa’s representation of these events will then be analyzed and compared with representations from other sources. The project’s results will be published as a monograph and project data will be made accessible on the project website and in public archives.

The goal of the project is to revitalize Christian Oriental studies as a “kleines Fach” connected to Islamic and Jewish studies and to illuminate issues of religious diversity from a historical perspective.

• Birkhahn, Vanessa
• Dr. Gibson, Nathan
• Prof. Dr. Vollandt, Ronny
• Schmahl, Robin B.A.
• Tolay, Malinda
• Löhr, Nadine M.A.
• Hanna Friedel
• Lukas Froschmeier