چکیده:
This article examines the methods of urban Muslim scholars of the early
Abbasid period in their endeavour to collect information from Bedouin informants.
Analogies with the problems of modern anthropological fieldwork are investigated,
and the impact of the preconceptions and assumptions that the scholars
brought to the field is highlighted. It is shown that mediaeval Muslim scholars’
fieldwork might involve varying activities taking place in different settings, and
the term ‘Bedouin informants’ masks quite a variety of individuals claiming some
expertise in ‘Bedouin’ culture. The idealised image of a scholar heading for the
Arabian deserts to visit genuine nomads and make lengthy inquiries among them
might be less typical than is often implicitly thought to have been. On the basis of
concrete cases of data-collection, three fundamental assumptions heavily influencing
the scholars’ thinking regarding Bedouin culture are identified.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Zoltan Szombathy Fieldwork and Preconceptions: The Role of the Bedouin as Informants in Mediaeval Muslim Scholarly Culture (Second-Third/Eighth-Ninth Centuries) Abstract: This article examines the methods of urban Muslim scholars of the early Abbasid period in their endeavour to collect information from Bedouin inform ants.
uk Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 2/21/16 10:29 PM Using the term ‘fieldwork’, closely tied as it is to a procedure associated with modern anthropology,¹ may strike one as anachronistic when applied in such a premodern context as the work of scholars in mediaeval Iraq and adja cent lands.
First, the breadth of the mediaeval Muslim scholars’ interests approximates to a sort of Geertzian ‘thick description’: curious about Arabian culture in its entirety, they collected elements of tribal folklore and linguistic usages such as verse and proverbs, inquired about kinship details, genealogies and historical traditions,⁴ 1 Summarising the common perception, Jenkins calls it “the single distinctive feature of anthro pological method”; see Timothy Jenkins, “Fieldwork and the Perception of Everyday Life,” Man, n.
Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 2/21/16 10:29 PM choice of informants was the choice of fieldwork venue and method.