The Village and the Archive: On Documents in Iranian Languages (11th-13th century)
The study of documents is booming amongst historians of medieval Europe and western parts of the medieval Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Egypt, in particular). The value of everyday documents in understanding social and economic history, and the history of writing and reading outside court circles is immense. Historians of the eastern parts of the medieval Middle East have started to integrate documents into their understanding of the social and documentary history of the region as well. Dr Azad presents samples of documents in the Bamiyan Papers written in 11th to 13th century- Khurāsān (in today’s Afganistan), some of which are the oldest pieces of Perso-Arabic writing in the original in the world. We will see how this archive has been reconstructed by scholars of the Invisible East team in Oxford, what sorts of documents are in it, and how closely they are aligned with prescriptions in administrative manuals (inshāʿ). She will conclude with an assessment of what the documents reveal about how bureaucrats administered the countryside, how landlords and peasants strategized in meeting the demands for grain taxes, and how money lenders and accountants balanced the books.
Register for the whole series Rethinking History: Returning to Archives and Documents, including this event, at this link.
About the speaker
Arezou Azad is a historian of the medieval Islamicate East from the coming of Islam in the 7th century CE to the Mongol Empire of the 13th century, and all its various component cultures and societies. She has published a book entitled Sacred Landscape of Medieval Afghanistan (Oxford, 2013) which explores the ways in which the multicultural region of Balkh in Afghanistan, which hosted one of the most magnificent Buddhist monasteries and temples in antiquity, became "the dome of Islam". Her new book which is a fully commentated translation of the medieval local history of Balkh, produced together with Edmund Herzig and Ali Mir-Ansari, came out in 2020 in the distinguished Gibb Memorial Trust series.
Arezou also leads two team-focussed projects, the PersDoc project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Go.Local project funded by the European Research Council, both focussed on the study of documents, literary sources and material culture from medieval Afghanistan and Central Asia.
She received her DPhil (doctorate) at Oxford's Oriental Institute, after which she co-directed the Balkh Art and Cultural Heritage Project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust 2011-2015. Arezou was a lecturer in medieval history at the University of Birmingham from 2013-2019.
She was born and raised in Germany, and before joining academia served as a UN peacekeeper in the Balkans, Timor Leste, and other hotspots around the world.
