Papers by Aslisho Qurboniev
Gorgias Press eBooks, Sep 29, 2023
Literary Snippets: Colophons Across Space and Time, edited by Geoge Anton Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke , 2023
Hadith Commentaries: Continiuities and Changes, ed. Joel Blecher and Stefanie Brinkmann (Edinburgh University Press), 2023
In this essay we reflect on the challenges involved in corpus building for hadith studies as well... more In this essay we reflect on the challenges involved in corpus building for hadith studies as well as the advances already made. We specifically focus on the Open Islamicate texts Initiative (OpenItI), a large, academically curated corpus of arabic texts sourced from various online libraries. this corpus is continuously vetted and expanded by scholarly contributions. We discuss its advantages for computational macro-analysis and for more traditional close reading, and survey recent research in digital hadith studies as an example of the possibilities of computational macro-analysis, we focus on assessing the output of the software ‘passim’, which has identified millions of instances of text reuse – places where texts share materials with one another across the OpenItI corpus by employing a set of algorithms to detect and align similar passages of text.1 these instances of reuse may the result of citation, plagiarism, use of common sources and many other forms of intertextuality text reuse is used in this chapter as a broad analytical category that may account for all these forms. In the final part of this essay we present examples of this text reuse data, specifically as it applies to the study of hadith commentaries.
The Medieval Globe 5/2: Medieval Sicily, al-Andalus, and the Maghrib: Writing in Times of Turmoil, eds N. Carpentieri and C. Symes, published online by Cambridge University Press., 2019
This article discusses the significance of the writing and transmission of two accounts recording... more This article discusses the significance of the writing and transmission of two accounts recording disputations (munāẓarāt) that took place in 909 CE, the year of the Fatimid revolution, in Qayrawān (modern Tunisia). These debates, in which local scholars of all politico-religious factions participated, were organized by the agents of the Fatimid daʿwa as part of their attempt to establish a Shīʿī caliphate. But the accounts themselves, written at different times and for different motives, were triggered by personal trauma and responded to broader political and religious issues, which helps to explain their inclusion in later narratives of defiance and hagiography. The first was authored by a local Mālikī debater, Saʿīd b. al-Ḥaddād, and immediately went into circulation. It then became part of the North African biographical tradition and was regularly quoted as a brilliant (if paradoxical) defence of Mālikī belief against “heretics and tyrants.” A different account of these disputations was written nearly forty years later by Ibn al-Haytham, a local Fatimid dāʿī. Unlike that of Ibn al- Ḥaddād, Ibn al- Haytham’s memoir, entitled Kitāb al-Munāẓarāt, was written to commemorate an older generation of dāʿīs, especially the revolutionary brothers Abū- l- ʿAbbās and Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī, both of whom had been executed in 911. Also unlike the previous record, this one circulated privately and only became known to modern scholars in the 1990s. Link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/medieval-sicily-alandalus-and-the-maghrib/writing-of-munazarat-in-times-of-turmoil-disputations-infatimid-ifriqiya/D7ED2BC0D8768FA39E6D0A7B3D34EFA2
Identity, History and Trans-Nationality in Central Asia: The Mountain Communities of the Pamir, 2019
Trekking in Tajikistan by Jan Bakker and Christine Oriol (Cicerone), 2018
This is a short historical overview of modern Tajikistan. While it is obviously difficult to give... more This is a short historical overview of modern Tajikistan. While it is obviously difficult to give an account of two thousand years of history in one thousand words, I tried to give some clues about how to make sense of the country and what historical events shaped its contemporary culture, geography, demography and so on. I contributed only this chapter to the book written by Jan Bakker and Christine Oriol, available from https://www.cicerone.co.uk/trekking-in-tajikistan.
Edited Volumes by Aslisho Qurboniev
The Medieval Globe, 2020
The seven articles in this volume offer new perspectives on the interactions between Islam and Ch... more The seven articles in this volume offer new perspectives on the interactions between Islam and Christendom at a time of traumatic transitions from one political hegemony to another, as reflected in a variety of genres: apologetic and hagiographical works, interreligious polemics, military and diplomatic dispatches, historiography, travel narratives, and romance. These analyses reveal a cultural panorama in which internal otherness and religious rivalry are both generative forces within a Mediterranean of fungible linguistic and social boundaries, where traditional genres are inflected and re-invented and new vernacular forms arise from multicultural and multi-confessional encounters.
Edited by Nicola Carpentieri and Carol Symes
Access the volume here:
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/41578
Encyclopaedia entries by Aslisho Qurboniev
Routledge Resources Online - Medieval Studies, ed. by Hannele Klemettilä, Jo Van Steenbergen., 2022
Abu Tamim Maʿadd b. Ismaʿil, the fourth Fatimid imam-caliph, the founder of Cairo and the fourtee... more Abu Tamim Maʿadd b. Ismaʿil, the fourth Fatimid imam-caliph, the founder of Cairo and the fourteenth Ismaʿili imam under whom the power of the Fatimid empire reached its zenith. He was the last Fatimid caliph in Ifriqiya (present-day Tunisia), having transferred the seat of his caliphate to Egypt where his general Jawhar al-Siqilli had founded the new capital – al-Qahira. By moving the centre of his empire closer to the heartland of Islamdom, al-Muʿizz li-Din Allah came one step closer to realising the ambition of his forefathers – to create a universal Islamic caliphate headed by a Fatimid Ismaʿili imam. Taking Egypt was a personal achievement for al-Muʿizz, but it also raised the regional importance and prestige of Egypt, transforming it from a mere province to the seat of a powerful empire (for the first time since late antiquity).
Routledge Resources Online - Medieval Studies , ed. by Hannele Klemettilä, Jo Van Steenbergen, 2022
Abu Muhammad ʿAbd Allah al-Mahdi, the first caliph of Fatimid dynasty and the first Shiʿi Isma‘il... more Abu Muhammad ʿAbd Allah al-Mahdi, the first caliph of Fatimid dynasty and the first Shiʿi Isma‘ili imam to proclaim his imamate after a period of concealment. Al-Mahdi, who is also known by the diminutive form of his name (ʿUbayd Allah) in non-Isma‘ili sources, led a successful revolutionary movement against the ‘Abbasid dynasty which culminated in the foundation of the Fatimid caliphate. After the revolution triumphed, ʿAbd Allah was proclaimed caliph in Ifriqiya (present-day Tunisia), and adopted the honorific name al-Mahdi Billah (rightly guided by God).
Blogs by Aslisho Qurboniev
KITAB Blog, 2021
What do we know about the authors of the earliest Arabic books in terms of their native origins a... more What do we know about the authors of the earliest Arabic books in terms of their native origins and linguistic and cultural backgrounds? Were the majority of them Arabic-speaking Muslims from imperial capitals, or non-Arab converts or even non-Muslims? Could this information be useful in tracing the flow and formation of ideas and culture? To answer these questions computationally, one must begin with creating a corpus of texts – in this case the OpenITI – including robust metadata for the texts and their authors. In this blog, I will discuss the question of the native origins of scholars and authors of early Islamicate society based on a sub-corpus of the OpenITI, which includes all the texts in the corpus written within the first five centuries of Islam ending at 505/1111, al-Ghazali’s death date. More generally, I hope to show how a combination of quantitative and macro-analytic approaches can be useful for the study of premodern Arabic texts and the history of the Arabic book and its authors.
Link here: https://kitab-project.org/b/
Sharh Hadith Raʾs al-Jalut, originally titled al-Fawaʾid al-Radawiyya, is a treatise by Saʿid al-... more Sharh Hadith Raʾs al-Jalut, originally titled al-Fawaʾid al-Radawiyya, is a treatise by Saʿid al-Qummi from his incomplete Arbaʿinat (forty treatises on various subjects), which has been published separately. It constitutes al-Qummi’s commentary on ʿAli b. Musa al-Rida’s answers to questions asked by the Jewish Exilarch. While overwhelming and converting a Jewish scholar is a known topos in Muslim literature, the presence of a Jewish Exiliarch in a medieval Muslim society is not a fiction. Geniza materials testify that the office of Exiliarch continued at least until the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258 (Gafni, 1999). More elaborate versions of the interreligious debates of Imam Rida at the court of al-Maʾmun were first related by Ibn Babawayh (d. 329/991) in his Kitab al-Tawhid and ʿUyun akhbar al-Rida. These debates are well known and have been analysed by several scholars (Wassertrom, 1995; Wasserstein, 1999; Cooperson, 2004; Sahner, 2019). It is however this short enigmatic version preserved by al-Qummi that gave rise to a separate commentary tradition.
You can read the blog on KITAB-project's website https://kitab-project.org/Between-Manuscripts-and-Digital-Texts-Commentaries-on-Hadith-Ra%CA%BEs-al-Jalut/
It is not accidental that a large number of books in the OpenITI corpus belong to one important g... more It is not accidental that a large number of books in the OpenITI corpus belong to one important genre, the Prophetic hadith – the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and accounts of his practice. As a repository of the Prophetic tradition (sunna), they are considered as an authoritative source of law and moral guidance in Islam. When early Muslim religious scholars sought ‘knowledge’ (ʿilm), they often meant hadith. In this blog, I will briefly discuss what Shiʿi hadith is and provide some preliminary ideas towards reconstructing early hadith transmission through computational reading.
You can read the blog on KITAB-project website https://kitab-project.org/Algorithmic-Reading-of-Shi%CA%BFi-Hadith-Collections-Direct-Borrowing-and-Common-Sources/
PhD Thesis by Aslisho Qurboniev
PhD Thesis, 2019
The University of Cambridge. Department of Middle Eastern Studies
Doctoral Thesis: Abstract/Ackno... more The University of Cambridge. Department of Middle Eastern Studies
Doctoral Thesis: Abstract/Acknowledgements/Table of Content
Conference Presentations by Aslisho Qurboniev
by Aristotelis Nayfa, Philip Harrison, Anna Stockhammer, Kyle B . Brunner, Fraser Reed, Christine Roughan, Aslisho Qurboniev, Ewan Short, George Robert Luff, Matteo G Randazzo, Tim Penn, Alice van den Bosch, and Samuel Nwokoro 2019 Conference Program
Droit ismaélien et concurrence juridique en Ifrīqiya fatimide Le droit ismaélien fatimide émergea... more Droit ismaélien et concurrence juridique en Ifrīqiya fatimide Le droit ismaélien fatimide émergea dans la première moitié du ive-xe siècle au moment où l'État fatimide cherchait à renforcer sa domination en Ifrīqiya.
Session 1223, WEDNESDAY 06 JULY 2022: 14.15-15.45.
BORDERS IN MEDIEVAL ISLAM, I: SOCIAL BOUNDARI... more Session 1223, WEDNESDAY 06 JULY 2022: 14.15-15.45.
BORDERS IN MEDIEVAL ISLAM, I: SOCIAL BOUNDARIES IN THE ISLAMIC WEST
Andrew Marsham, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
Caroline J. Goodson, Faculty of History / King’s College, University of Cambridge
The Deep Past of the Arab-Byzantine Border in Medieval Arabic Geography (Language: English)
Edward Zychowicz-Coghill, Department of History, King’s College, London
Communal Boundaries, Boundary Spanners, and Religious Change in Ifrīqiya, 10th-11th Centuries (Language: English)
Aslisho Qurboniev, KITAB (Knowledge, Information Technology & the Arabic Book) Project, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, London
Sainthood and Social Boundary Crossing in Medieval North Africa (Language: English)
Amira K. Bennison, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
The formation of the Mālikī juristic community of the Islamic West and the consolidation of thi... more The formation of the Mālikī juristic community of the Islamic West and the consolidation of this tradition is usually attributed to the works of Saḥnūn b. Sa īd and other important jurists whose work was transmitted and studied widely in North Africa, Spain, and Sicily. The compendium of Mālikī fiqh – al-Mudawwana (lit. The Compendium) is considered a foundational text of the school after the Muwaṭṭa of Malik b. Anas. While there are many uncertainties about the precise date of the composition of the Mudawwana, its first draft, and its final recension, Saḥnūn is still understood to have played a crucial role in its compilation and transmission. The present author has been working on various methods to reconstruct the activities of the school from the time of Saḥnūn and Asad b. al-Furāt to the Zīrid period. These include both the construction of the scholarly networks based on manuscript transmission, citation networks, and text reuse methods. Text reuse methods have been particularly useful for understanding the reception of the Mudawwana. To this end, I am also working on an application that will allow researchers to analyze text reuse and quotation from other works in the Mudawwana, and hope I will be able to share and discuss it with the participants of the workshop in Lausanne.
This paper aims to provide a perspective into Fatimid cosmopolitanism through the textual heritag... more This paper aims to provide a perspective into Fatimid cosmopolitanism through the textual heritage produced under the Fatimid caliphate, including those works produced by agents of the Fatimid daʿwa, with special attention given to the provenance and networks of Fatimid authors. At the same time, the paper aims to situate Fatimid texts and authors within the wider Islamic textual world, for which we have a much larger corpus and metadata available for computational analysis. I have prepared a growing collection of machine- readable texts from the Fatimid period, including texts such as the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, whose connection to Ismaili thought in general and to the Fatimid daʿwa in particular needs further investigation. I ask how Fatimid authors incorporated ideas and narratives from other religious and intellectual traditions to shape their own system of thought and which genres, traditions, formats they accepted or rejected.
Methodologically, the paper is a first ever attempt at distant reading, i.e. computational reading of a corpus of Fatimid texts (more than 3.5 million words) with the aim of discerning patterns and relationships which are not obvious to the naked eye. This method will complement and guide my close reading of Fatimid texts, as well as that of other scholars.
Uploads
Papers by Aslisho Qurboniev
The full volume is available in Open Access here: https://www.gorgiaspress.com/images/uploaded/Gorgias%20Open%20Repository/978-1-4632-4400-2_QAOK.pdf
Edited Volumes by Aslisho Qurboniev
Edited by Nicola Carpentieri and Carol Symes
Access the volume here:
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/41578
Encyclopaedia entries by Aslisho Qurboniev
Blogs by Aslisho Qurboniev
Link here: https://kitab-project.org/b/
You can read the blog on KITAB-project's website https://kitab-project.org/Between-Manuscripts-and-Digital-Texts-Commentaries-on-Hadith-Ra%CA%BEs-al-Jalut/
You can read the blog on KITAB-project website https://kitab-project.org/Algorithmic-Reading-of-Shi%CA%BFi-Hadith-Collections-Direct-Borrowing-and-Common-Sources/
PhD Thesis by Aslisho Qurboniev
Doctoral Thesis: Abstract/Acknowledgements/Table of Content
Conference Presentations by Aslisho Qurboniev
BORDERS IN MEDIEVAL ISLAM, I: SOCIAL BOUNDARIES IN THE ISLAMIC WEST
Andrew Marsham, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
Caroline J. Goodson, Faculty of History / King’s College, University of Cambridge
The Deep Past of the Arab-Byzantine Border in Medieval Arabic Geography (Language: English)
Edward Zychowicz-Coghill, Department of History, King’s College, London
Communal Boundaries, Boundary Spanners, and Religious Change in Ifrīqiya, 10th-11th Centuries (Language: English)
Aslisho Qurboniev, KITAB (Knowledge, Information Technology & the Arabic Book) Project, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, London
Sainthood and Social Boundary Crossing in Medieval North Africa (Language: English)
Amira K. Bennison, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
Methodologically, the paper is a first ever attempt at distant reading, i.e. computational reading of a corpus of Fatimid texts (more than 3.5 million words) with the aim of discerning patterns and relationships which are not obvious to the naked eye. This method will complement and guide my close reading of Fatimid texts, as well as that of other scholars.
VI-17: "Communal Boundaries
and Networks of Learning and
Communication in the PreModern Maghrib"
Organized by: Camilo Gómez-Rivas
Presenters: Aslisho Qurboniev, Camilo Gómez-Rivas, Tomoaki Shinoda, Caitlyn Olson, Catey Boyle
The full volume is available in Open Access here: https://www.gorgiaspress.com/images/uploaded/Gorgias%20Open%20Repository/978-1-4632-4400-2_QAOK.pdf
Edited by Nicola Carpentieri and Carol Symes
Access the volume here:
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/41578
Link here: https://kitab-project.org/b/
You can read the blog on KITAB-project's website https://kitab-project.org/Between-Manuscripts-and-Digital-Texts-Commentaries-on-Hadith-Ra%CA%BEs-al-Jalut/
You can read the blog on KITAB-project website https://kitab-project.org/Algorithmic-Reading-of-Shi%CA%BFi-Hadith-Collections-Direct-Borrowing-and-Common-Sources/
Doctoral Thesis: Abstract/Acknowledgements/Table of Content
BORDERS IN MEDIEVAL ISLAM, I: SOCIAL BOUNDARIES IN THE ISLAMIC WEST
Andrew Marsham, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
Caroline J. Goodson, Faculty of History / King’s College, University of Cambridge
The Deep Past of the Arab-Byzantine Border in Medieval Arabic Geography (Language: English)
Edward Zychowicz-Coghill, Department of History, King’s College, London
Communal Boundaries, Boundary Spanners, and Religious Change in Ifrīqiya, 10th-11th Centuries (Language: English)
Aslisho Qurboniev, KITAB (Knowledge, Information Technology & the Arabic Book) Project, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, London
Sainthood and Social Boundary Crossing in Medieval North Africa (Language: English)
Amira K. Bennison, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
Methodologically, the paper is a first ever attempt at distant reading, i.e. computational reading of a corpus of Fatimid texts (more than 3.5 million words) with the aim of discerning patterns and relationships which are not obvious to the naked eye. This method will complement and guide my close reading of Fatimid texts, as well as that of other scholars.
VI-17: "Communal Boundaries
and Networks of Learning and
Communication in the PreModern Maghrib"
Organized by: Camilo Gómez-Rivas
Presenters: Aslisho Qurboniev, Camilo Gómez-Rivas, Tomoaki Shinoda, Caitlyn Olson, Catey Boyle
with other Ismāʿīlī texts from the period.
The Idea of the Silk Road: Historians Debate and Discuss this Modern Concept,” (Silk Road Events, AKF), London, 07.07.2021: https://tinyurl.com/silkroads2021
Since the publication of Richard Bulliet’s ground-breaking quantitative work on conversion to Islam (Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, 1979), few people have attempted to quantify conversion and by extension the
contribution of the converted people. However, the rapid development of computational technology in the past two decades has made it increasingly easy to peruse and analyse an astonishing amount of material instantly.
Thus, this paper will be able to offer a “bird’s eye view” of the people of Khurāsān and Transoxiana in ArabIslamic texts, including histories, biographical dictionaries and hadith collections, employing distant reading,
(i.e. computational method to read and extract information) from thousands of written sources. Finally, the paper will focus on a couple of case studies to demonstrate the merits and shortcomings of the method in answering historical questions.
3rd Annual Edinburgh Graduate Conference in Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies, 22nd-23rd November 2019.
Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, UK.
How did the Shīʿī Fāṭimid rule affect the transmission of Sunnī Mālikī learning in Qayrawān, Ifrīqiya? Medieval Mālikī authors characterise the Fāṭimid rule as a period of trial and persecution for Sunnī scholars. Hence, modern scholarship also emphasises the Fatimids’ hostility to non-Shīʿī scholars and the adverse effect of their rule on the Mālikī tradition. While the Fāṭimids’ policies and politics of knowledge are still poorly understood, the negative effect of their rule on Sunnī Mālikī learning is often taken for granted. Literary sources, as well as numismatic and archaeological evidence, also support the idea that the revolution of 909 CE brought about some drastic changes in Qayrawān – the capital of medieval Ifrīqiya. In this paper, I aim to use some quantitative methods to test these assumptions. My focus is on a small and closely connected network of legal scholars who consolidated as Mālikīs in Qayrawān. These networks are based on Mālikī biographical dictionaries, and documentary sources; they reflect a perspective that is generally hostile to the Fāṭimids, but nevertheless provide a perspective that one does not get from the narratives. I analyse the scholarly networks, networks of knowledge transmission and riḥla journeys to suggest a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the Fāṭimid state and the Mālikī jurists. I use “network analysis" to demonstrate that the Fāṭimid period was a productive period for Mālikī knowledge transmission in Ifrīqiya and argue that Mālikī historiography tends to highlight and exaggerate episodes of violence and persecution directed against the Mālikīs in order to give more credit to the heroes of their narratives.