The silk road and beyond: narratives of a Muslim historian
- Submitting institution
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Bath Spa University
- Unit of assessment
- 28 - History
- Output identifier
- 3282
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- ISBN
- 9780199405961
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Building upon the author’s extensive archival and empirical research, this monograph derives from four decades of material study across four continents. The book combines methods in ethnography, history and heritage relating to eminent urban centres on, and beyond, the Silk Road. Covering thousands of miles, it integrates cultural, architectural and literary accounts, distilling evidence from English, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi source-material, and autoethnography to analyse trans-regionality in the Muslim experience. It addresses the relevance of these interconnected spaces to policy planners, educationists and heritage professionals, while retaining wider appeal for scholars and general readership alike.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Studies on Muslims and Islam tend to focus on geo-politics, ethno-sectarian violence, civilizational contestations, gender imbalances and identity issues in Diaspora. This 348-page volume focuses instead on Muslim communities, cities and their edifices. It attempts to capture history, literature, mobility, crafts, architectural traditions and cultural vistas. Some Western cities and their institutional relevance for Muslim heritage equally figure in this volume—away from the clichéd premise of clash of civilisations.
The multi-disciplinary volume incorporates four decades of formal and informal empirical investigation of histories, anthropologies, literary foundations and contemporary sociologies. It draws upon a methodology which combines cultural, architectural and literary accounts, distilling source-material from English, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi, with auto-ethnography. Conducted by a curious Muslim academic at different stages of his life over the course of four decades, the underpinning fieldwork includes extensive visits, time and efforts spent in inner towns for observation, archival research, interviews and parleys with scholars and heritage experts, and the sharing of experiences with ordinary people.
The volume is lodged in historical and extra regional contexts, while introducing a novel autobiographical format and extending over a lifetime of the author’s travelling, teaching and researching across four continents while experiencing human excellence and strife. Consequently, the volume’s interdisciplinary methodology enabled the author to reach the aim of initiating readers of diverse interests into encountering vibrant lives where communities share commonalities beyond narrowly defined parameters. The predominantly Muslim locales examined in the book along with frequent exposure to representative Western socio-cultural settings emphatically underline transregionality in lived human experience, as well as the relevance of this source material specifically for policy planners, educationists and heritage industry personnel.
This volume, written in an autobiographical genre to reach a larger readership, became publicly available in November 2020.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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