While Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in Bergen cover a wide field both geographically and thematically, certain common focuses stand out and cut across departmental and subject boundaries; and also unite a number of independent individual and joint research projects. The Middle Centre are working to promote these cross-departmental links by establishing some more long-term 'research focuses' around these individual projects. In the current period, two such research focuses are, on the hand 'Society and Culture around the Indian Ocean', on the other 'The interaction of Islam with society' (with particular attention, respectively, to Africa and to Europe/Norway).

SOCIETY AND CULTURE AROUND THE INDIAN OCEAN

The Indian Ocean focus grew up, partly from the Sudan milieu, partly from independent research on East Africa and South-East Asia in the late 1990s. Its main bases has been in Anthropology, History as well as Archaeology which has been active in East African studies for some time. Within this area, two independent larger projects with external funding has taken place, one from Anthropology until 2000; the other in History starting as the first came to an end.

The Indian Ocean Programme: Hadrami diaspora: migration of people, commodities and idea

This research project, which was carried out 1996-2000, focused on several major themes around Hadramaut in South Yemen and the migrations from to areas around the Indian Ocean. One relates to the formation of diaspora communities and the links between the diaspora and the home areas of Hadramaut. A second focus is on the major trade systems and the organization of trade across the Indian Ocean, including themes such as transport, credit relationships, the solution of conflicts etc. Thirdly the spread of Islam throughout this region, both mediated by migrants, traders and Muslim scholars, helped spread the Shafi'i school of Islam, introducing not only a new faith, but also a new platform for organising communities and their activities. A fourth research theme is the study of loanwords as evidence for culture contact, with particular emphasis on Swahili, Somali, Indonesian and Urdu loanwords in the Arabic dialect of Hadramaut.

The conceptual challenge of the programme is how to deal with the Indian Ocean in the 'long durée'. Links across the ocean date back to the first and second millennium BC, and such links have provided links between early communities and state formations earlier conceived as being fairly isolated. In this perspective studies on technologies for travelling and for communication have been important. This field affects both the way the Hadramis could travel on their migration and what it took to undertake such a travel, but also how and what type of links could be maintained between the Hadrami migrants in the diaspora and the communities back home. One important part of this brings us to the history of navigation in the Indian Ocean and the importance of the monsoon to the earlier phases of such navigation, compared to later technologies based on steamships and air traffic. Such links of communications did not only bring people around the region. Central was also the flow of commodities, coffee from Yemen, spices from India and South East Asia, slaves from East Africa, dried fish from Shihir, and also the considerable business involved in transporting people going on pilgrimage to Mecca. Hence issues such as the availability of trade capital, the ability to organize trading houses in rational ways and dealing with the issue of information about markets far away become central operational challenges. The travelling of people also implied travelling of Islamic missionaries and the propagation for the Shafi'i school of Islam. The dominance of this law school throughout the Indian Ocean is intimately linked to the migration history of the Hadramis that we are dealing with. Thus there is a need to focus on such intellectual networks and how Islamic teachers have maintained links to each other across the ocean, and how they have related to local populations, be they fellow Hadramis or other Muslims. Of particular importance in the historical studies is the role played by the 'neo-Sufi brotherhoods' around the region.

Moving towards the question of diaspora adaptation itself, and how the Hadramis experience this adaptation, the programme has approached this question through comparative research of particular histories of diaspora formation. Cases studies have been undertaken in Hyderabad, in Singapore, in the Sudan and in southern Ethiopia, to see the extent to which we can catch similarities in experiences across time and space, but also between different groups and individuals in different economic and social positions in society.

It is this wider cultural historical perspective that the study of loanwards becomes of particular relevance, in order to document effects of the various phases of culture contact that have been indicated above.

The four-year project concluded with a conference in Bergen in December 2000.

Involved in project are, from Bergen: Staff: Leif Manger, R.S. O'Fahey, Anders Bjørkelo, Anne K. Bang; Anthropology students: Helle Silva (Mozambique Island), Kjell Hausman (Hadramaut), Jorid Tveita (Comoro Islands).
Outside collaborators include Ulrike Freitag, London, Sylvain Camelin, Paris, Samia el Hadi el Naqar, Khartoum, N. Sudhakar Rao, Hyderabad, Mikhail Rodionov, St. Petersburg, Abdul Sheriff, Zanzibar; and in Hadramaut: Mustafa Aydarus and Mohamed Said.

Trade, migration and cultural change in the Indian Ocean

Archaeological and local written sources enable us to discover trade- and migration networks across the Indian Ocean extending from the Middle East to East Africa, to India and Indonesia and further east as early as 2000 BC. Similarly, material from Tamil and Chinese sources give a new understanding of the early history of Indian Ocean. From the first century AD we find networks which closely resemble the later Arab trade- and migration networks. On this background, it seems fruitful to discard the previous division between the pre-Islamic and the Islamic period, as well as the division supposedly caused by the coming of the Portuguese.

The emergence of Islam in the seventh century and the subsequent spread of Arab-Islamic culture across the Indian Ocean brought a new dimension and intensity to already established networks. More specifically, the regions to the south and east of Arabia became linked for the first time through a common religion, Islam, and through the adoption of elements from Arab culture. On the eastern shores of the Indian Ocean and deep into Central Asia Buddhism spreading from India played a similar uniting role. As the Arab-Muslim networks spread it was not long before Islam started to replace Buddhism in some areas. A comparison between functions of these two religions in the creation of over-seas trading networks will definitively underline the broad perspective of this project. The establishment of Arab trade posts in seaports around the Indian Ocean was essential. There emerged an Arab diaspora bound together through trade links, marriage ties and travelling students and scholars. The uniting force of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca should also be included in the analysis. The Swahili culture on the east coast of Africa is one such result of Arab migration.

The overall aim of the project is to come to a better understanding of the connection between trade, migration and cultural change. Knowledge about commercial activities can be gained from archaeological evidence and written sources. We believe further that if one can reconstruct the trans-oceanic commercial links then one can also draw some conclusions about migration patterns. Then comes the question of who migrated, did they bring their families and how did they gain a living abroad. When we know the answers to these questions we may also be able to say something about the economic and cultural impact of migration.

The project will run 2001-2003.

Individual projects

Christian Meyer: 'Non-Greco-Roman networks in the Indian Ocean before Islam'.
Anders Bjørkelo: 'The financing and organisation of coastal and transoceanic trade in East Africa, South Arabia and India in the nineteenth century'.
Anne Bang: 'Integration or cosmpolitication? Family history and identity in East Africa and South Arabia c. 1850-1945'.
Eivind Seland: 'Indian Ocean in Antiquity: Trade and the emerging state'.
R.S. O'Fahey: 'Islamic Literature and Culture in Eastern Africa'.
Leif Manger.

THE INTERACTION OF ISLAM WITH SOCIETY

The study of 'Islamic societies' often takes one or the other as a given factor, focusing on its 'impact' on the other: Either seeing 'Islam' as an unchanging entity which social groups promote or reject; or inversely tracking the inevitable 'decline' of Islamic thought by a teleological 'historical development' of modernization.

The projects grouped together here instead take a dynamic approach to the relationship between the development of Islam as religion and ideas, and the evolution of society. Neither Islamic thought nor social forces are fixed entities, developments in one link to changes in the other. This is true as well of the mystical and political movements of Africa and the Middle East in the past as it is in the ideas of Muslim immigrants to Europe today.

These projects look at this relationship from various angles, historical and contemporary, in widely different geographical areas, from the margins of the Islamic world in the south to the Muslim minorities in the north, and from a number of different methodological approaches, from Islamology to Anthropology. By combining the study of ideas with the study of society, it is easier to see the Muslim world through the eyes of its actors.

The research focus currently consists of these individual projects and activities:

ISLAM AND SOCIETY IN AFRICA

The Sufi heritage of Ahmad b. Idris and his students

The study of Sufism has often followed one of two very different approaches: Either a 'classical' or 'literary' study of early Sufi theology or poetry, with a focus on particular authors. Or a sociological or anthropological study of a Sufi organzation in the contemporary world, most often with more emphasis on its social or political impact than on the ideas it propagates.

The informal program carried out in Bergen since the late 1980s has attempted to bridge this divide, by studying a circle of Sufi scholars of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries both in their social setting and organizational development and through their writings and ideas. The project has so far lead to five dissertations (three published to date) as well as several independent monographs and a number of articles, combining into what has been called a 'Bergen school' of Sufi studies.

The project focuses on the tradition established by the Moroccan Sufi Ahmad b. Idris (d. 1837: O'Fahey 1990), and follows the careers of his students Muhammad b. 'Ali al-Sanusi (d. 1859: Vikør 1995) and Muhammad 'Uthman al-Mirghani (d. 1852: Karrar 1992), and associate Muhammad al-Majdhub (d. 1831: Hofheinz 1996), as well as following the tradition to twentieth-century Yemen (Bang 1996) and to South-East Asia and beyond (Sedgwick 1998).

While these monographs have studied the intellectual as well as social context of these scholars and the organizations and traditions they set up or inspired, the group has also emphasized the study and publication of the writings of these Sufis. Two volumes of writings from Ibn Idris has been published (Thomassen & Radtke 1993 and Radtke &al 2000), as well as several articles presenting individual works from the Idrisi tradition. The project continues with further work on presenting writings from the tradition, and following its impact on a wider scale.

Books and monographs from the project to date:

R.S. O'Fahey, Enigmatic Saint: Ahmad Ibn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition, London 1990.
Ali Salih Karrar, The Sufi Brotherhoods in the Sudan, London 1992.
Einar Thomassen & Bernd Radtke (eds.), The Letters of Ahmad Ibn Idris, London 1993.
Knut S. Vikør, Sufi and scholar on the Desert Edge. Muhammad b. 'Ali al-Sanusi and his Brotherhood. London 1995.
Knut S. Vikør, Sources for Sanusi Studies, Bergen 1996.
Anne K. Bang, The Idrisi state in 'Asir, 1906-1934: Politics, religion and personal prestige as statebuilding factors in early twentieth-century Arabia, Bergen 1996.
Albrecht Hofheinz, Internalising Islam: Shaykh Muhammad Majdhub, scriptural Islam and local context in the early nineteenth-century Sudan, Dr. philos., Bergen 1996.
Mark J.R. Sedgwick, The Heirs of Ahmad Ibn Idris: The spread and normalization of a Sufi order, 1799-1996, Dr. philos., Bergen 1998.
Bernd Radtke, John O'Kane, Knut S. Vikør & R.S. O'Fahey, The Exoteric Ahmad Ibn Idris: A Sufi's Critique of the Madhahib and the Wahhabis: Four Arabic texts with translation and commentary, Leiden 2000.

A Muslim intellectual elite: Innovation and leadership in the Sudanese tradition

(part of project 'The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Africa', with Program of African Studies/ISITA, Northwestern University)

The study of Islam as a religion and as a system of thought and belief has been neglected by comparison with research on the history and sociology of African Muslim polities or movements. One explanation for this neglect is that most scholars of Muslim Africa have come to the field from the social sciences rather than philology-based disciplines such as Islamwissenschaft (Islamic studies).

The study of Islam as a religion involves a number of different aspects. There is a scholarly tradition, involving the study of the writings of African Muslim scholars at such historic centres as Timbuktu (Mali), Kano (Nigeria), Harar (Ethiopia) or Lamu (Kenya) and elsewhere. Such research requires the discovery, cataloguing and conservation of the very numerous private and public manuscript collections found throughout Muslim Africa. Most of these manuscripts are in Arabic, but African languages, such as Hausa and Swahili, written in the Arabic script, are well represented.

Beyond the primary stage of finding and preserving the manuscripts will be their study; who wrote them and why; what do they tell us about scholarly networks, the interaction between African and Muslim scholars elsewhere in the Muslim world, and the educational tradition. What topics were focused on? For example, in East Africa, there appears to have been an especial interest in herbal medicine. Linked to this is the structure of education; who taught whom? What was taught. How widespread was literacy? Related to this theme is the use of Arabic by traders, traditional healers, poets and other literate non-scholars.

A workshop in Bergen will be devoted to the study of one particular Muslim elite and their literary production, that of the northern Sudan. The formation of the elite, its patterns of education and social interaction will be examined, with an emphasis on what they wrote or write and its socio-political impact.

The Sudanese elite has been chosen because the writings of Sudanese intellectuals, both secular and religious, have played a disproportionately large role both in Muslim Africa and the Middle East. One has only to name such figures as Mahmud Muhammad Taha (religious thinker), Hasan al-Turabi (religious thinker and political leader), al-Tayyib Salih (novelist) and Abdallah al-Tayyib (poet and scholar) to illustrate this point.

Sources for the history of Islam in Africa

Arabic Literature of Africa

The project entitled Arabic Literature of Africa is designed to document the Arabic writings of sub-Saharan Africa and the Islamic literature of the region written in certain African languages. Its goal is to open up the intellectual history of the region's Muslims and to relate it to the intellectual history of the larger world of Islam; to explore the intellectual heritage of Islamic Africa, producing for the sub-Saharan regions a guide to their Islamic literature and scholarly production in Arabic and in certain African languages that goes beyond a mere enumeration of scholars and their writings.

The volumes are compiled and edited by John Hunwick (Northwestern University) and R.S. O'Fahey (Bergen). The volumes are:

1. The Writings of Eastern Sudanic Africa down to c. 1900 (published 1994)

2. The Writings of Central Sudanic Africa (published 1995)

3. The Writings of the Muslims of Ethiopia, the Horn and Eastern Africa (fasc. A published 2003).

4. The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa (published 2003).

5. The Writings of the Modern Sudan

6. The Writings of Western Saharan Africa [Mauritania]

Sudanic Africa: A Journal of Historical Sources

The journal Sudanic Africa, published annually at Bergen, presents historical documents from Islamic Africa and surrounding regions, with translation and comments as well as articles relating to this topic. See below for further detail.

Timbuktu manuscripts project

Timbuktu has from the Middle Ages attracted many scholars from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The objective of this project is to preserve and promote its literary heritage as reflected in its Arabic manuscripts. Through training and the upgrading of facilities, the project will increase the capacity of the Centre de Documentation et des Recherches Historiques Ahmad Baba in the restoration and conservation, and scientific exploitation and dissemination of the content of the manuscripts currently in its possession. It will also promote similar preservation and utilization of the many manuscript collections in private hands. The project is organized jointly between CNRT Research Council, Bamako; Northwestern University, and the University of Bergen, and has received funding from the Ford foundation and the Norwegian ministry of Foreign Affairs.

MUSLIMS IN EUROPE

Islams in Norway

This project under the Department of History of Religions consists of six scholars, one assoc. professor, two graduates and three (former) master's students working on projects related to Islam in Norway. The six are Richard Johan Natvig, Rune Endresen, Åsne Hallskau, Maria Mellegaard Lien, Hege Irene Markussen, and Kjersti Rogde Ness. The project is intended to lead to a joint publication.

Among the topics that will be discussed are,

The importance of Islam for identity construction among young Muslims in Norway
Muslim mission in Norway: The Ahmadiyya
Bektashis in Norway
Bergenese Islam
Female circumcision.

Individual projects under 'Islam and Society':

Knut S. Vikør, 'The development of Islamic law in the nineteenth and twentieth century: The theory of ijithad'
Anh Nga Longva, 'Apostasy in contemporary Muslim society'

The 'Shari'a network' connects scholars in Oslo and Bergen who are working on topics relating to Islamic law, past and present.

Some projects under the area 'Indian Ocean', above, are also linked to 'Islam and Society'.

Individual Research Projects

by country of interest.

Islamology / Middle East inter-regional

'Ahmad ibn Idris and the Idrisi tradition' (R.S. O'Fahey, History)
'Al-Daylami's treatise on mystical love (text and translation)', (with Hassan Abdel Latif el-Shafei, Cairo) (Joseph N. Bell, Arabic)
'Edition of Nag Hammadi Codex XI, 1' (Einar Thomassen, History of Religions)
'An introduction to the history of Islamic Law' (Knut S. Vikør, SMI)
'Islam and society (Islam in Local contexts)' (Leif Manger, Anthropology)
'The meaning of ijtihad in the 18-19th centuries: A study of al-Sanusi's Iqaz al-wasnan' (Knut S. Vikør, SMI)
'Valentinianism' (Einar Thomassen, History of Religions)
'Women's roles in in the process of Islamization' (Karin Ask, CMI)
>> See also Doctoral projects: Lied, Ådna, and Master projects: T. Pedersen. See also 'Research focuses', above.

Morocco

Palm

Libya / Sahara

'The letters of Muhammad b. 'Ali al-Sanusi (1787-1859)' (Knut S. Vikør, SMI).

West & sub-saharan Africa in general

Sudan:

O'Fahey

Nedrelid

Egypt

'Ethical and religious motifs in Egyptian sung narratives' (Joseph Bell, Arabic, with Bjørg Halvorsen, Oslo)
'Studies of institutional ways of dealing with water resource conflicts' (Terje Tvedt, CDS)
>> See also Sudan: Pierce; and Master projects: Kjosås.

Sudan

'Archaeology / Botany (The Sudan Programme II) (Anwar Magid, Archaeology)
'The cultural landscape of the Nile valley and hinterland. (Anwar Magid, Archaeology)
'Islamic Hegemonies in the Sudan' (R.S. O'Fahey, History; with G. Warburg, Haifa).
'Islamization, Arabization and modernization as factors in socio-cultural change in Liri, the southern Nuba mountains of the Sudan' (Leif Manger, Anthropology)
'The principles of native administration in the Sudan' (Anders Bjørkelo, History).
'Sources for the history of Nubia: Fontes Historiae Nubiorum' (Tomas Hägg, Richard H. Pierce &al, Classics.)
'State and land in Africa, with special reference to Darfur and Kanem-Borno' (R.S. O'Fahey, History; with J.O. Hunwick, Northwestern U. and H. Bobboyi, Kaduna, Nigeria)
'Theories on the relationship nature-society, focusing on fresh water issues' (Terje Tvedt, CDS).
>> See also Egypt: Tvedt; Doctoral projects: Lunde, Vezzadini; and Master projects: Njøs, Thune, Tønnesen.

Horn of Africa

>> See: Sudan: Tvedt; East Africa: O'Fahey.

East and South Africa / Indian Ocean

'Arabic Literature of Africa, vol 3: East and northeast Africa' (R.S. O'Fahey, History).
'The financing and organisation of coastal and transoceanic trade in East Africa, South Arabia and India in the 19th century' (Anders Bjørkelo, History)
'Integration or cosmopolitization? Family history and identity in East Africa and South Arabia, c. 1850-1945' (Anne K. Bang, SMI)
>> See also Palestine: Okkenhaug; Doctoral projects: Natvig; Seland. See also Research focuses, 'Indian Ocean', above

Yemen, Arabia

'Ecology and society in Yemen' (Leif O. Manger, CDS)
>> See also East Africa: Bjørkelo, Bang; and Master projects: Hausman Mathiesen.

Gulf countries

'Development without tears? The cases of Kuwait and Bahrain' (Anh Nga Longva, Anthropology)
'Democracy between tribalism, Islam and the welfare state: perspectives from Kuwait' (Anh Nga Longva, Anthropology).

Palestine / Israel

'Mission, education, gender and colonial history' (Inger Marie Okkenhaug, History)
>> See also Doctoral projects: Berg; and Master projects: Klungland, Ludvigsen, Sjvøold Nilsen, Nylkøken, Åmland.

Jordan

'Early planning history in the Jordan basin' [part of 'Lower Jordan Valley project'] (Terje Tvedt, CDS)
>> See also Egypt: Tvedt; and Doctoral projects: Anfinset.

Lebanon

Rundereim

Aanestad

Syria

Bjørge Pedersen

Stabrun

Turkey

'Marine knowledges in the Turkish Black Sea region and beyond. Further explorations into technology, power, and identity' (Ståle Knudsen, Anthropology)
>> See Doctoral projects: Fosshagen, Ter-Matevoysan; and Master projects: Pedersen, Weltzien Vik.

Balkans

Fosshagen

Jozelic

Afghanistan

'Gender differentiated assistance in situations of conflict. The case of Afghanistan' (Karin Ask, CMI, with Kate Halvorsen).
>> See also Master projects: Fedt.

Pakistan

'Processes of regional integration in northern Pakistan' (Tor Aase, Geography).

South Asia

East Africa:

Bjørkelo

Seland

Indonesia / South East Asia

'Enterprising Semarang: Value flow and economic adaptation in small-scale family businesses' [Semarang, Java] (Eldar Bråten, Anthropology)
'Migrants and entrepreneurs in Insular Southeast Asia': Negotiating globalisation and marginalisation' [joint project, director] (Eldar Bråten, Anthropology)

Norway - Muslim immigrants in Europe and Americas

Research aids

'Electronic storage and manipulation of literary, religious and ethical texts in Arabic and Turkish' (Joseph Bell, Arabic).

This list is based on the information received from the scholars and existing online surveys.

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Middle Eastern Studies in Bergen