Prof. Dr. Kurt Franz
Research Project: Political and Commercial Spaces in the Maghrib and Northern Sahara during the Age of Arabic Oral Transmission (7th–9th C. CE)
Profile
An historian of society, politics, and scholarship in the lands of Islam between 600 and 1600, I ask how human experience has initially transformed into texts and thence into the intertextual literary transmission of knowledge. My research interests notably lie with the history of Arabic chronical and geographical writing, slavery and the social division of labour, socio-religious rebel movements, nomadism and the Bedouin, communication and traffic networks, and Digital Humanities. Looking ever more into the geo-spatial dynamism of Islamic history, I seek to understand the ways in which man’s spatial environments, human agency, and geographically related literature have acted upon each other. I thus also explore the encounter of spatial history, historic concepts of geo-space—both learned and popular—and cartographic visualization by introducing the method of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for historical Islamic Studies.
Having studied Arabic and Islam, Sociology, Political Science, Mediaeval and Modern History, and Semitic Languages at Göttingen, I earned my PhD from Hamburg university. I next conducted research at the university of Halle and the Orient-Institut Beirut and taught Arabic and Islam at Göttingen, Hamburg, Halle, and Kiel as well as at summer schools in Jerusalem. In the framework of the German Universities Excellence Initiative, I then accepted a professorship in Islamic Studies at Tübingen university (to 2021). Monographs of mine focus on ‘Compilation in Arabic Chronicles’ and ‘Bedouin Groups in the Islamic Middle Period’, vol. I (both in German), and I am about to conclude the first GIS-based historical atlas on the Islamic Middle East. Editorial work comprises a volume, co-edited with Wolfgang Holzwarth, on ‘Nomad Military Power in Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period’.
CV
Select Publications
Franz, Kurt (2021a), “The Divine in Yāqūt’s Lexicon of Peopled Places: A Reduction”, in: Christoph Mauntel, ed., Geography and Religious Knowledge in the Medieval World (Das Mittelalter. Beihefte 14), Berlin: De Gruyter, 109–139.
Franz, Kurt (2021b), “Franciscus ignotus: Zur zeitgenössischen orientalischen Schau des Kreuzzuges gegen Damietta”, in: Amir Dziri / Angelica Hilsebein / Mouhanad Khorchide / Bernd Schmies, eds., Der Sultan und der Heilige: Islamisch-christliche Perspektiven auf die Begegnung des hl. Franziskus mit Sultan al-Kamil (1219–2019), Münster: Aschendorff, 279–333.
Franz, Kurt (2017), “Slavery in Islam: Legal Norms and Social Practice”, in: Reuven Amitai / Christoph Cluse, eds., Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000–1500 CE) (Brill’s Inner Asian Library 31), Turnhout: Brepols, 51–141.
Franz, Kurt (2016), “Arabische Chronistik”, in: Gerhard Wolf / Norbert H. Ott, eds., Handbuch Chroniken des Mittelalters (De Gruyter Reference), Berlin: De Gruyter, 867–950.
Franz, Kurt (2015a), “Handlist of Stations of the Ayyubid and Mamluk Communication Systems”, in: Amalia Levanoni, ed., Egypt and Syria under Mamluk Rule: Political, Social and Cultural Aspects (Brill’s Inner Asian Library 181), Leiden: Brill, 295–369.
Franz, Kurt (2015b), “Bedouins and States: Framing the Mongol–Mamlūk Wars in Long-term History”, in: Kurt Franz / Wolfgang Holzwarth, eds., Nomad Military Power in Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period (Nomaden und Sesshafte 18), Wiesbaden: Reichert, 29–105.
Franz, Kurt / Holzwarth, Wolfgang, eds. (2015), Nomad Military Power in Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period (Nomaden und Sesshafte 18), Wiesbaden: Reichert.
Franz, Kurt / Büssow, Johann / Leder, Stefan, eds. (2015), The Arab East and the Bedouin Component: From Late Antiquity to the Ottoman Period = themed issue of Der Islam 92/1.
Büssow, Johann / Franz, Kurt / Leder, Stefan, eds. (2015), The Arab East and the Bedouin Component: From the Ottoman Period to the Present = themed issue of Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient 58/1–2.
Franz, Kurt (2013), “The Castle and the Country: Spatial Orientations of Qipchaq Mamluk Rule”, in: David Durand-Guédy, ed., Turko-Mongol Rulers, Cities and City Life in Iran (Brill’s Inner Asian Library 31), Leiden: Brill, 347–384.
Franz, Kurt (2011), “The Bedouin in History or Bedouin History?”, in: Nomadic Peoples N.S. 15/1, 11‒53.
Franz, Kurt (2009), “Qarmaṭen und Zanǧ: Das Andere als Societas malorum”, in: Benjamin Jokisch / Ulrich Rebstock / Lawrence I. Conrad, eds., Fremde, Feinde und Kurioses: Innen- und Außenansichten unseres muslimischen Nachbarn (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients N.F. 24), Berlin: De Gruyter, 213‒250.
Franz, Kurt (2008), “The Ayyubid and Mamluk Revaluation of the Hinterland and Western Historical Cartography”, in: Mamlūk Studies Review 12/2, 133‒158.
Franz, Kurt (2007a), Vom Beutezug zur Territorialherrschaft: Das lange Jahrhundert des Aufstiegs von Nomaden zur Vormacht in Syrien und Mesopotamien, 286‒420/889‒1029. Beduinische Gruppen in mittelislamischer Zeit I (Nomaden und Sesshafte 5), Wiesbaden: Reichert.
Franz, Kurt, ed. (2007b), Verwaltete Nomaden: Mobile Viehzüchter und Dienstleister zwischen Autonomie und staatlicher Anbindung (Orientwissenschaftliche Hefte 25; Mitteilungen des SFB “Differenz und Integration” 11), Halle: Orientwissenschaftliches Zentrum.
Franz, Kurt (2004), Kompilation in arabischen Chroniken: Die Überlieferung vom Aufstand der Zanǧ zwischen Geschichtlichkeit und Intertextualität vom 9. bis ins 15. Jahrhundert (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients N.F. 15), Berlin: De Gruyter.
