OTA (TSUKADA), Erina

Project Assistant Professor

Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa,
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
3-11-1 Asahi-cho, Fuchu-shi,
Tokyo, 183-8534, Japan

Email: e.otatsukada[at]aa.tufs.ac.jp

Personal Homepage:

Research interests: Pre-modern Arab history, Civilian elite

”The desire to survive”: Describing a universal theme from a historical perspective

How human beings endure and resist throughout their lives
: Survival strategies of the pre-modern Arab civilian elites

How have human beings fought for their lives and struggled to survive in harsh historical conditions? I have conducted case studies of civilian administrators in the late Mamluk period by reconstructing both their careers and human networks.
Repeated global occurrences of warfare and plagues had worsened the financial climate of the 15th century Mamluk dynasty. In light of these conditions, civilian elites tried to develop their survival strategies through a human nexus, which served as a safety net against the downfall in the prevailing system of nepotism. My work attempts to clarify these elites’ multilayered horizontal relationships in terms of patronage, marriage, and intercession via the means of prosopography.
My final aim is to describe the fundamental desire for survival and the wisdom of human beings developed from the dawn of history.

Recent Interests：

Prosopography via the digital analysis of Arabic historical sources

Many of the voluminous chronicles and biographies written in the Mamluk period have been published as critical and extensive editions and are, thus, ready for use. On one hand, these published historical sources provide us abundant information; on the other hand, however, it is not easy to determine whether the conclusions drawn from case studies are unique to a specific person or set of principles which can, in general, be applied to the contemporary civilian elites of the era.
I think that such problems can be solved by digital humanities’ techniques. I am currently investigating and developing methodologies for digital texts via computer analysis. Furthermore, I am also trying to collate information on Arabic sources with contemporary European historical materials by means of text encoding.

Research Projects:

Related Sites

Go back to Project Staff page