Research Foci in the History of Science in Past Islamicate Societies

Abstract

In recent years, numerous changes have emerged in the History of Science of what has traditionally been called the Islamic world. By now, it has become usual to speak of the Islamicate world, albeit more so in Islamic Studies and related historical disciplines. The notion Islamicate wishes to express that the societies rule by Muslim dynasties were multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional and plurilingual. Different Muslim denominations could form majority but also minority groups. The processes of change in the study of the sciences in those societies can be summarized as efforts to pluralize research approaches and to historicize objects, themes, people, institutions and practices. The pluralization of approaches includes the multiplication of (1) modern disciplinary homes for studies of scientific topics dealt with in Islamicate societies, (2) the languages acknowledged as languages of scientific texts such as New Persian, Ottoman Turkish or Urdu worthwhile to analyze, (3) the number of historical disciplines accepted under the umbrella of history of science, (4) the centuries or periods as well as the regions that have been incorporated into the investigation of past scientific knowledge and (5) the recognition that more than a single history can and should be told about the sciences in past Islamicate societies. The process of historicization means, first and foremost, to turn away from macro-units of research (Islam, medieval or Arabic science) to medium- or micro-level units. Historicization indicates, secondly, the turn toward contextualization beyond the analysis of individual texts or instruments. And thirdly, it signifies the integration of features or aspects of scholarly practices that are not limited to the content of a discipline or a text but include layouts, the organization of text production, types of visualizations of knowledge or rhetorical strategies and paratextual elements. My paper reports on trends that I consider relevant for understanding how the field changed over the last decades and how it ticks today. But it does not try to be comprehensive.