Full Course Description

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The Muslim world has increasingly become a major topic of contemporary discussion and academic research. While numerous disciplines from history to anthropology to political science have made major contributions to the study of Islamic civilization (religion, politics, cultures and peoples) the impact of a growing body of archaeological investigations has barely been perceived outside of a small group of specialists predominantly within departments of Near Eastern Studies. This course will offer students a survey of the sites, methods and conceptual issues that constitute the present state of Islamic period archaeology and its ability to provide us with knowledge about the Islamic tradition, Muslims and social worlds that they inhabit.

Our approach will be wide ranging in both its temporal and geographical scope given the historical and topographical extension of the Islamic tradition as a social, cultural and spiritual phenomenon. Although we will focus on the earlier periods, from the rise of Islam in Arabia through to the collapse of the Abbasid dynasty, we will also consider the growing research in the sub-specialties of Crusader and Ottoman period archaeology. Similarly, given that the majority of archaeological research has been concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa these regions will serve as the primary focus of our discussion. However, “peripheries” such as Andalusia (Spain), Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, and even South-East Asia will also be addressed as part of an effort to probe questions of cultural syncretism and imperial expansion.

This course will concentrate on the presentation of archaeological materials in order to approach a number of topics of concern for the political, economic, and religious life of predominantly Muslim societies. They include: the spread of Islam, relations between confessional groups (Shi‘a, Sunnis, Christians, Jews, etc.), ritual/religious practice, urbanism, monumentality, continuities with the past, frontiers and jihād, sacred space, settlement patterns, tribal organization, political authority, and trade networks. However our concern with archaeological sites and artifacts will not be in isolation. We will also examine the texts (in translation) of important Muslim geographers, historians and religious scholars whose writings and representations bear on the interpretation of the material record. The goal will be to broaden the scope of Islamic archaeology beyond art historical concerns or the confirmation of political narrative histories. Instead we will turn towards a more anthropological appreciation of the intersection of political, socio-cultural and religious forces as the frame for investigating how materiality and textuality are linked in the constitution of the dynamics of Muslim societies and the Islamic tradition. This will ultimately allow us to rethink the relationship of text and artifact for the recuperation/production of the past and the use of that past in the present.