Reading tarājim with Bourdieu: prosopographical traces of historical change in the South Asian migration to the late medieval Hijaz
Abstract:
This article presents a new analytical reading of one of the most popular genres in medieval Arabic historiography, biographical dictionaries, in order to address broader questions of historical change in transregional movements and scholarly group cultures. It builds on recent scholarship that focuses on shifting trade patterns across the Western Indian Ocean and in particular the intensification of commercial connections between the Red Sea region and South Asia during the 15th century to advance an argument on the sociocultural dimensions of a concomitant migration of South Asians (al-Hindīyūn, sg. al-Hindī) from the subcontinent to the Hijaz. The case study is empirically grounded in the reading of prosopographical sources, biographical entries (tarājim, sg. tarjama) of South Asians as they appear in biographical dictionaries by the famous Mamlūk historians al-Fāsī (d. 832/1429), al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442) and al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1497) from the late medieval period. Most importantly, Pierre Bourdieu’s (d. 2002) theoretical concepts of “field”, “capital” and “habitus” will provide the heuristic tools to detect social and cultural significances within the narrative fabric of the historiographical texts. Interrelating these significances on an analytical level will allow the study of historical transformations on the basis of traces in the prosopographical archive. I argue that the appearance of these South Asian tarājim in the biographical works can be read as a recording of an increased migration of South Asians during the late medieval period, bringing about a social broadening and cultural diversification of the South Asian community in the Hijaz.
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
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- Elizabeth Sgalitzer Ettinghausen
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- Erdbeben in arabischen Gedichten der Ayyūbiden- und Mamlūkenzeit
- Tracing a Gypsy Mixed Language through Medieval and Early Modern Arabic and Persian Literature
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- Mohammed Hocine Benkheira/Avner Giladi/Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen/Jacqueline Sublet, La famille en islam d’après les sources arabes, Les indes savantes
- Michael Crawford, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab
- Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Michael North, eds., Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia
- Alev Masarwa, Bildung – Macht – Kultur. Das Feld des Gelehrten Abū ṯ-Ṯānāʾ al-Ālūsī (1802‒1854) im spätosmanischen Bagdad
- Jean-Michel Mouton, Dominique Sourdel and Janine Sourdel-Thomine, Mariage et séparation à Damas au moyen âge. Un corpus de 62 documents juridiques inédits entre 337/948 et 698/1299 (Documents relatifs à l’histoire des Croisades XXI)
- David S. Powers, Zayd
- Hasan Shuraydi, The Raven and the Falcon: Youth and Old Age in Medieval Arabic Literature
- Guy G. Stroumsa, The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 225 pp, ISBN: 978-0-19-873886-2.
- Francesca Trivellato, Leor Halevi, and Cátia Antunes (eds.), Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000–1900
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Elizabeth Sgalitzer Ettinghausen
- Articles
- The First Iconoclasm in Islam: A New History of the Edict of Yazīd II (AH 104/AD 723)
- Two Arabic Deeds of House Lease Agreement on Papyrus
- The development of Sūq al-Qaṭṭānīn quarter, Jerusalem
- Erdbeben in arabischen Gedichten der Ayyūbiden- und Mamlūkenzeit
- Tracing a Gypsy Mixed Language through Medieval and Early Modern Arabic and Persian Literature
- From One Thousand and One Nights to Safavid Iran: A Persian Tawaddud
- ʿAli Qoli Jebādār et l’enregistrement du réel dans les peintures dites farangi sāzi
- Le temps d’une vie. Une « famille de textes » autour d’Abū Šāma entre VIIe/XIIIe et IXe/XVe siècle
- Reading tarājim with Bourdieu: prosopographical traces of historical change in the South Asian migration to the late medieval Hijaz
- Reviews
- Betül Başaran, Selim III, Social Control and Policing in Istanbul at the End of the Eighteenth Century
- Mohammed Hocine Benkheira/Avner Giladi/Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen/Jacqueline Sublet, La famille en islam d’après les sources arabes, Les indes savantes
- Michael Crawford, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab
- Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Michael North, eds., Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia
- Alev Masarwa, Bildung – Macht – Kultur. Das Feld des Gelehrten Abū ṯ-Ṯānāʾ al-Ālūsī (1802‒1854) im spätosmanischen Bagdad
- Jean-Michel Mouton, Dominique Sourdel and Janine Sourdel-Thomine, Mariage et séparation à Damas au moyen âge. Un corpus de 62 documents juridiques inédits entre 337/948 et 698/1299 (Documents relatifs à l’histoire des Croisades XXI)
- David S. Powers, Zayd
- Hasan Shuraydi, The Raven and the Falcon: Youth and Old Age in Medieval Arabic Literature
- Guy G. Stroumsa, The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 225 pp, ISBN: 978-0-19-873886-2.
- Francesca Trivellato, Leor Halevi, and Cátia Antunes (eds.), Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000–1900
