Vici for Petra Sijpesteijn: 'Islamic Empire rapidly became unified'
photography: Elif Kırankaya
After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic Empire expanded at a tremendous pace. Within a hundred years, it stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian subcontinent. How did such a rapidly conquered territory become one empire? Professor Petra Sijpesteijn has been awarded a Vici grant to answer this question.
'Many researchers have focused on how the conquest of this enormous territory took place,' says Sijpesteijn. 'I don't find that particularly interesting. I want to know how the Arabs managed to turn these conquered territories into such a successful empire that remained a political unity for three hundred years.'
Leaving their mark on the landscape
This interest isn't new. Sijpesteijn previously studied the administrative infrastructure of the empire, later followed by research into social cohesion. 'Initially, I thought it was mainly important to understand how the empire was run and how taxes were collected. After all, you can do everything with that. When that didn't tell the complete story, I started exploring what connected people. Now I'm convinced that I need to look at the combination of both to truly understand it.'
A Vici grant will enable Sijpesteijn to focus on this work in the coming years. 'I'm now going to focus on how people in the Islamic Empire made the environment their own, particularly in what was previously the Byzantine Empire. How did they leave their mark on the landscape?'
Hajj, cemeteries and stories
Sijpesteijn focuses on three subjects, starting with the Hajj routes. 'Political leaders derived prestige from well-maintained and safe routes,' she explains. 'They were keen to leave inscriptions when they had built a new bridge, for example. These would mention who was responsible for it.' The pilgrims themselves also left their mark. 'They left behind a kind of "graffiti" along the route, writing who they were and leaving various pious statements.'
These inscriptions suggest how the landscape became Islamic, Sijpesteijn thinks. Older elements such as existing trade routes merged with new ones, like the Hajj. Through the inscriptions, pilgrims also took possession of their environment, while the content offers a glimpse into their mindset. The same applies to cemeteries and inscriptions on gravestones. Sijpesteijn: 'Once you've buried your ancestors in an area, you really can't leave anymore. You're rooted there.'
Finally, stories form an important part of Sijpesteijn's research. 'I want a PhD student to look at the role of landscape in stories. When do monuments or landscape elements start playing a role in Islamic stories? And when a new city is founded or a mosque is built, how is it explained why it should be built in that particular location?'
Increasingly detailed maps
Sijpesteijn hopes to paint a better picture of the medieval Islamic Empire. 'Of course, there are limitations for our fieldwork due to the political situation in places like Libya, but there are so few people working on the medieval Islamic Empire that there's still a lot of unprocessed data. That's one of the reasons why I want to integrate this project into my teaching even more than previous ones.'
Her students will primarily work with the cemeteries. 'There's still so much open data there: it would be absolutely wonderful if they could extract information from archaeological sources, gravestones and historical sources, which we then display on a map, so you can see the changes at a glance. Eventually, I hope to do this for all three sources. I've also received an ECOLe educational innovation grant for this.'