Precis: Medieval Arabic sources are replete with stories about Muslims traveling far and wide. The abundance of such examples tempts one to believe that these traveling individuals created and maintained the pan-Islamic cultural commonwealth. Yet the Islamic written legacy is so vast that drawing decisive conclusions that traveling was indeed as widespread as our sources suggest is hardly possible. This presentation describes the use of computer-assisted research methods to enable an analysis of 29,000 biographies drawn from the from the massive 50-volume Taʾrīkh al-islām (“The History of Islam”), written by the Damascene historian al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348).

 

Sponsored by: Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies Department of History, Department of Linguistics, Department of Religious Studies, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, European Studies Center / European Union Center of Excellence, Global Studies Center, Graduate Program for Cultural Studies, University Honors College, World History Center