Dynastic Genealogical Trees in the Early Modern Period: Visualizing Historical Imagination and Political Legitimacy in the Islamic World

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Ilker Evrim Binbas
• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies ; Early Modern History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 519619457

This project is part of a four-project-package “World Genealogy. Presenting, documenting, and instrumentalizing lineages in early modern Asia, Europe, and the Middle East”. The four projects—submitted independently, yet simultaneously—discuss genealogical practices of * Middle Eastern politics, * Japanese Buddhism, * European aristocracies and state governments, and * China’s rural elites. The projects together attempt to establish a conceptual roadmap towards a future cross-culturally comparative investigation of genealogical practices. All projects share a common research agenda and working schedule, focusing on genealogical media (year 1), routines of genealogical knowledge management (year 2), and the role of genealogical arguments in creating social, political, and cultural legitimacy (year 3). Within this larger context, the present project investigates dynastic and religious genealogies composed after 1500 in the Islamic world. The project focuses on diagrammatic genealogical trees and studies these in the context of their rich narrative contexts. One of the main objectives of this project to understand the internal logic of genealogical trees by analyzing the layers of narratives in genealogical trees. Through a clear understanding of the “visual grammar” of genealogical trees, the project aims at analyzing the role that these genealogical trees played in dynastic legitimization, the articulation of political discourses, and the establishment and perpetuation of aristocratic privileges. The original perspectives that this project contributes to the Paketantrag therefore include, but are not limited to, questions pertaining to genealogical concepts derived from Islamic literary traditions; the meaning and logic of visualized graphic and diagrammatic representations; and the relationships between these visual representations and the actual social and political change on the ground. The project also brings together the Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and South Asian genealogical narratives, thus bridging the western and eastern corners of the Paketantrag, that is the Western European, Chinese, and Japanese genealogical traditions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants