Applying different methods on a broad range of sources, the present book attempts to transcend the limits between disciplines of Oriental Studies in twenty articles dedicated to the scholar Heinz Gaube. Focusing on cultural connections between the Arab and the Iranian world, its geographical scope ranges from the Nile to the Syr-Darya. Covering a chronological span from pre-Islamic times to the present, the articles in this book deal with different aspects of cultural history in the Islamic East.
The vast region between the Nile and the Syr-Darya (the Jaxartes of antiquity) has, geographically and thematically, been at the core of Oriental studies for a long time. Disciplinary boundaries have, in recent years, stressed the difference between the Arab and the Iranian world and have underlined the separate approaches according to philological, historical, geographical and archaeological subjects. This book attempts to transcend these boundaries by applying a range of approaches on a broad spectre of sources. It is dedicated to the scholar Heinz Gaube, who has, in the words of a well-known Persian geographical handbook, fathomed the “limits of the world” in his oeuvre.
Articles in the present book deal with a vast, but coherent field: Chronologically, they range from the early history of oriental cities and the writings of antiquity to the present internet-based discussions on Islamic justifications of certain manners of living. The geographical scope extends over the eastern part of the Islamic world, from Yemen across Jerusalem and Aleppo, the Persian Gulf and Iran to Samarkand and India. Connections between the Arab and the Iranian world are explicitly discussed or implicitly dealt with – be it with a structural comparison between palaces of the 9th to 11th centuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, be it with overarching phenomena of coinage, or be it with the travelogue of a Persian from Jerusalem under the Fatimids.
Under the heading “Cities, Sites and Landscapes”, articles dealing with the shape of individual places are presented. The section “Epigraphy, Numismatics, Monetary history and Documents” analyses sources of these categories, most of which hitherto unpublished. The third section, titled “Cultural Contacts” comprises five case studies pointing to the inner relationship between the Arab and the Iranian world, with a glance on India.
„Entstanden ist somit eine Festschrift, deren zwanzig Beiträge einen reichen Strauß ergeben und deren Lektüre sehr schön die Breite und Vielfalt iran- und islamwissenschaftlicher Beschäftigung widerspiegelt. In diesem Sinne: Lasst weitere Blumen blühen!“
Jens Scheiner
In: sehepunkte
http://www.sehepunkte.de/2010/11/17971.html(22. November 2010)
Lorenz Korn has read Islamic studies, art history and political science at the Universities of Tübingen and Oxford. Since 2003, he is professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology at the University of Bamberg. His main fields of research are architecture and architectural decoration of the Islamic heartlands (11th to 16th cent.), metalwork from the Iranian world, and Arabic epigraphy.
Eva Orthmann has read Islamic studies, Iranian studies and Arabic studies at the Universities of Tübingen and Halle. Since 2007, she is professor of Islamic studies at the University of Bonn. Her main fields of research are the history of science, especially astrology, Islam in India, and tribal structures in the early Islamic centuries.
Florian Schwarz has read Islamic studies and Iranian studies at the University of Tübingen. Since 2005 he teaches History of the Middle East at the University of Washington in Seattle. His main fields of research are the cultural history of the early modern Middle East, the history of Central Asia, and Islamic numismatics and codicology.
