The Persian Documents from al-Ḥaram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, 1300-1353

• Applicant: Dr. Zahirhassan Bhalloo, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 449163880

The corpus of over 900 legal and administrative documents from al-Haram al-Sharîf (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem is of outstanding importance for understanding the history of pre-Ottoman Asia. While most of these documents were produced in fourteenth century Mamluk Jerusalem, the proposed project investigates 78 multilingual and multiscriptual documents produced outside Jerusalem in Persian, Arabic, Georgian, Armenian, Turkic and Mongolian between 1208-1353. The aim of the proposed 2-year project extension period is to integrate 36 newly discovered documents to the study of the existing old corpus (42 documents). As the corpus has almost doubled compared to the original application the new documents have to be integrated into the project to achive its core aim: understanding the archival and textual logic of these unique written artefacts of Islamic sharia law and state bureaucracy in the region of Transcaucasia, Anatolia, and Northwest Iran during the thirteenth to fourteen centuries.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Japan
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Masatomo Kawamoto