About SCORE
The research group “Social Contexts of Rebellion in the Early Islamic Period” (SCORE) is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Emmy Noether scheme. It will run for six years (2020-2026) and comprises two post-docs and two PhDs, all of whom study their own individual sub-projects. More information about the team members can be found here; to find out more about the sub-projects, please click here.
Objectives
The project pursues three main objectives: i) improving our understanding of rebellion in the 8th century CE by liberating it from the primacy of religion, also through the inclusion of non-Muslim/mixed revolts; ii) creating a typology of rebellion in the early Islamic period that responds to the lack of a theoretical underpinning of Islamicist discourse on revolt; and iii) advancing a more nuanced picture of early Islamic society, its social strata and inter/intra-communal relationships, which also includes the (changing) mechanisms and processes of power distribution. The focus on a ‘long 8th century CE’ allows for a diachronic analysis that tracks (changing) patterns of rebellion independent from common periodization, i.e. the separation of the 8th century CE into an Umayyad (pre-750 CE) and an ʿAbbāsid (post-750 CE) period, which is unsuited for the study of long-term developments. [More]
Research Approach and Methods
The SCORE team considers acts of rebellion from a fresh perspective that does not prioritise religion as an explanatory factor. We address this issue through a combination of research methods and approaches that include an emphasis on biographical and prosopographical analysis; the use of new technologies developed in the Digital Humanities; testing the applicability of insights regarding rebellion from other disciplines to the case studies of the proposed research project; and the consideration of documentary evidence. [More]