TRAKIMI · Travelling knowledge in medieval Islam: the Ash‘arites of al-Andalus and North Africa

In the context of the intellectual life of Muslim societies, systematic rational theology was traditionally seen as a discipline in its own right. It was thereby clearly distinguished from other, in many respects, similar intellectual endeavours like, for example, Graeco-Arabic philosophy. One of the most influential theological schools in Muslim history was the Ash‘ariyya. According to its self-understanding, this school sought to reconcile a rational approach towards theological issues with the limitations set by revelation. The school’s historical importance notwithstanding, major desiderata in the investigation of its variegated history and internal diversity remain.The proposed project aims to study one of the widely neglected chapters of the intellectual history of the Ash‘ariyya, namely its transmission to the medieval Maghreb, i.e. the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. The innovative nature of this project lies in its understudied subject and its interdisciplinary approach that combines philological methods and computational technologies for social network analysis.