Prof. Dr. Shahzad Bashir

Website: https://vivo.brown.edu/display/sbashir4

Research Interests:

History, theory and philosophy of history, religious studies, Iran, Central Asia, South Asia

Biography

Prof. Dr. Shahzad Bashir specializes in Islamic Studies with interest in the intellectual and social histories of the societies of Iran, Central and South Asia circa fourteenth century CE to the present. His published work is concerned with the study of history and temporality, Sufism and Shi’ism, messianic movements originating in Islamic contexts, representation of corporeality in hagiographic texts and Persian miniature paintings, literary and religious development during the Timurid and Safavid periods, and modern transformations of Islamic societies.

Project Abstract

My work during the fellowship is part of an enhanced digital monograph entitled Islamic Pasts and Futures: Horizons of Time (under contract with MIT Press). This is an innovative, born digital, publication whose interface has been engineered to suit the topic. It consists of seven media-rich interpretive essays that suggest ways of rethinking the conjunction between Islam and temporality through attention to case studies spanning the centuries and regions where Islam has been a significant presence. Looking beyond the commonplace view of Islamic history as a one-way stream that begins in sixth-century Arabian peninsula, the project sees ‘Islamic time’ as a vast matrix of horizons generated from ‘present’ moments that fold pasts and futures into themselves.

During the fellowship period, I will complete sections of the book relevant for the reception of antiquity in Islamic contexts. The birth of Islam is a late antique phenomenon, whose significance is manifest in all Islamic historiographical tradition. 'Islamic' universal history begins not with Muhammad but with foundational figures such as Adam (regarded as the first prophet) and the Persian mythical figure Kayumars. Additionally, grand scale Islamic histories almost always contain sections that enumerate the great Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, whose theories about time, moreover, had great influence on Islamic thought.

Over the centuries, antiquity has also been a resource for creative imagination for Muslims. For example, I highlight the city of Kudus, on the island of Java in Indonesia. This is an Islamic 'new Jerusalem' founded in the mid-sixteenth century where Muslims have continually appreciated and reinterpreted the Middle Eastern holy city for centuries. I excavate the various 'time signatures' embedded in monuments and stories associated with this city to show the working of history as a web of nodes rather than a straightforward timeline in Islamic contexts.