ILCAA Joint Research Project

Adaptation and Reorientation of Texts and its Actors in the Medieval and Early Modern Middle East (jrp000301)

Keywords

• Islamic Manuscripts
• Arabic
• Persian
• Turkish
• Knowledge Transfer
• Text Transmission

Areas

• West Asia
• Central Asia

Website

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About the Project

Project term: April, 2024–March, 2027

In this project, researchers of history and related disciplines will collaborate to elucidate the processes through which certain texts gain prominence or are forgotten due to various cultural activities in the Middle East during the Medieval and Early Modern periods. The sources discussed in this project encompass not only historical chronicles but also those classified as including "tradition," typically utilised in the fields of literature and Islamic studies, and remain unpublished. This approach facilitates cross-disciplinary discussions and helps overcome existing divisions in Middle Eastern historiography based on language, region, and period.

Members

Coordinator

• Yui KANDA

ILCAA Staff

• Nobuaki KONDO (Co-Coordinator)

Joint Researchers

• Philip BOCKHOLT (Co-Coordinator)
• Kenichi ISOGAI
• Takao ITO
• Osamu OTSUKA
• Kaori OTSUYA
• Nobutaka NAKAMACHI
• Ryo MIZUKAMI
• Kazuo MORIMOTO
• Kumiko YAMAMOTO

Outputs

Meetings

The 3rd meeting

• Date/Time: Thu 5 Sep – Sat 7 Sep
• Venue: Universität Münster, Institut für Sinologie und Ostasienkunde, Seminar Room RS23
• Language: English

• German-Japanese Bilateral Conference: Textual Transmission in the Islamic Manuscript Age: On the Variance, Reception, and Usage of Arabic and Persian Works from the Middle East to the Indian Subcontinent

  ■Thursday, 5 September

  15.00 Welcoming Address & Introduction

  Eric Achermann (Dean of the Faculty of Philology, University of Münster)

  Philip Bockholt (Münster) & Yui Kanda (Tokyo)

  15.30 / Chair: Ines Weinrich

  Panel 1: Knowledge Transfer from the Islamic West to the East

  Philip Bockholt (Münster): Ibn Khallikān’s Wafayāt al-Aʿyān in Persian: On Translation Processes in Late 15th-Century Gujarat

  Kaori Otsuya (Tokyo): Histories of Medina Transcending Regions, Time Periods, and Languages: A Preliminary Study on Jadhb al-Qulūb ilā Diyār al-Maḥbūb by ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Dihlavī (d. 1052/1642)

  16.45 / Chair: Jens Fischer

  Panel 2: Translations from Sanskrit and Arabic into Persian

  Eva Orthmann (Göttingen): The Persian Śalihotra: The Transformation and Adaptation of a Sanskrit Text in Persian Treatises on Horses

  Nobuaki Kondo (Tokyo): Comparing Manuscripts of a Popular Romance: The Persian Classic Version of the Ḥamzanāma

  18.00 Reception

  ■Friday, 6 September

  10.00 / Chair: Paula Manstetten

  Panel 3: Transmission of Religious Texts

  Isabel Toral (Berlin): The Muslim and Christian Arabic Versions of the Buddha Legend and its Trans-Religious Reception History

  Ines Weinrich (Münster): Stability and Change in the Transmission of Arabic Mawlid Texts: The Case of Mawlid al-ʿArūs

  Ryo Mizukami (Tokyo): From Aḥsan al-Kibār to Lavāmiʿ al-Anvār: Reworking a Faḍāʾil Work on the Twelve Imams for Shāh Ṭahmāsp

  11.30 Coffee break

  12.00 / Chair: Sacha Alsancakli

  Panel 4: Changes in Historiography

  Takao Ito (Kobe): Was there Another Version of Ibn Kathīr’s History?

  Osamu Otsuka (Tokyo): The Dedication of a Universal History to Various Patrons: A Case Study of the Ilkhanid Historian Shabānkāraʾī

  Akihiko Yamaguchi (Tokyo): Evolving Iranian Identity in the Periphery: A Study of Ardalān Historiography

  13.30 Lunch

  14.30 / Chair: Alfred El Khoury

  Panel 5: Evolution of Literary Texts

  Kumiko Yamamoto (Tokyo): A Few Questions on the “Older Preface” to the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī (In Memory of the Late Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila)

  Christine Kämpfer (Bamberg): Disseminating Adab and Mystical Thought Through Epic Imitation: Niẓāmī’s Makhzan al-Asrār and its Naẓīras

  Syrinx von Hees (Münster): Transmission of a Literary Contest in Different Textual Contexts: Questions of Reception

  16.00 Coffee break

  16.30 / Chair: Ahmet Aytep

  Panel 6: Development of Scientific and Legal Works

  Sacha Alsancakli (Münster): Questions of Authorship and Readership in a Seventeenth-Century Indo-Persian Scientific Majmūʿa

  Ken’ichi Isogai (Kyoto): Making Tax-Exempted Land Out of Kharājī Land: Central Asian Ḥanafīs to Legitimize Rulers’ Policies in Persian Legal Works

  19.00 Dinner

  ■Saturday, 7 September

  09.00 / Chair: Natalie Kraneiß

  Panel 7 : Afterlife of Genealogical and Hadith Texts

  Kazuo Morimoto (Tokyo): An Eventful Life of a Sayyid/Sharīf Genealogy: From al-Aṣīlī to Ghāyat al-Ikhtiṣār

  Stefanie Brinkmann (Leipzig): The Circulation and Reception of al-Baghawī’s Hadith Collection Maṣābīḥ al-Sunna and its Commentary Tradition

  10.00 Coffee break

  10.30 / Chair: Stephan Tölke

  Panel 8: Biographies Without End

  Paula Manstetten (Bonn): The Reception and Abridgement of Ibn ʿAsākir’s (d. 1176) History of Damascus in the Ayyubid and Mamluk Period

  Maxim Romanow (Hamburg): A Book of 30,000 Biographies: Computational Analysis of Sources of The History of Islam of al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348)

  11.30 / Chair: Tobias Sick

  Panel 9: Adaptation of Texts at Courts in Anatolia

  Yui Kanda (Tokyo): “May the World Be Slave to King Kaykāʾūs”: Reception History of Qāniʿī Ṭūsī’s Kalīla and Dimna

  Nobutaka Nakamachi (Kobe): Reception of Mamluk Manuscripts in the Ottoman Period: The Scattered Selimiye Collection of ʿIqd al-Jumān

  For details, please see here.

  Contact: kanda[at]aa.tufs.ac.jp (Please change [at] to @)

The 2nd meeting

• Date/Time: Wed 29 May 2024 15:30–17:00
• Venue: Hongo Satellite 3F Seminar Room, Online meeting
• Language: English

• 15:30–15:45 Dr. Yui Kanda (ILCAA)

  Introduction

  15:45–16:15 Dr. Kaori Otsuya (NIHU/ILCAA)

  “Jadhb al-Qulūb ilā Diyār al-Maḥbūb by ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddith al-Dihlawī (d. 1052/1642): A Persian Work Based on Al-Samhūdī’s (d. 911/1506) History of Medina?”

  16:15–17:00

  Discussion

  Abstract:

  Dr. Kaori Otsuya (NIHU/ILCAA)

  “Jadhb al-Qulūb ilā Diyār al-Maḥbūb by ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddith al-Dihlawī (d. 1052/1642): A Persian Work Based on Al-Samhūdī’s (d. 911/1506) Histories of Medina?”

  In recent years, there has been a significant increase in secondary literature on trans-regional cultural exchanges between South Asia and the Red Sea region, particularly from the fifteenth century onwards. Nevertheless, the reception of late medieval Arabic histories of the Hijaz in early modern South Asia remains relatively unexplored, partly due to the limited engagement of so-called “Arabists” in the discussion as well as the conventional division between the medieval and the early modern periods.

  This paper seeks to address this gap through a preliminary analysis of Jadhb al-Qulūb ilā Diyār al-Maḥbūb, a history of Medina written by the well-known South Asian hadith scholar and historian ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Muḥaddith al-Dihlawī (d. 1052/1642). While researchers working on the history of South Asia have briefly but often mentioned that ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq wrote Jadhb al-Qulūb based on the histories of Medina by the late medieval Egyptian scholar al-Samhūdī (d. 911/1506), the relationship between Jadhb al-Qulūb and al-Samhūdī’s histories of Medina has largely escaped the attention of modern researchers in the field of the late medieval Arabic historiography.

  After introducing al-Samhūdī and ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, this paper presents the wide distribution of the manuscripts of their works as well as the findings of a tentative comparison between Jadhb al-Qulūb and al-Samhūdī’s histories of Medina. In doing so, it hopes to shed light on transregional interactions between South Asia and the Red Sea region from the Hijazi perspective.

The 1st meeting ：Report (Japanese)

• Date/Time: Mon 22 Apr 2024 13:00–14:00
• Venue: Online meeting
• Language: Japanese

• 13:00–13:10 Yui Kanda (ILCAA)

  Introduction to the Annual Schedule (AY 2024)

  13:10–13:40 All Members

  Meeting and Introduction Session

  13:40–14:00

  Q&A and Discussion

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