Going Local in the Perso-Islamic Lands: Afghan Geniza, Islamisation and Language in the pre-Mongol Islamic East

ongoing

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.