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Storia, religioni e filosofie dell'Asia meridionale e centrale
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI "L'ORIENTALE"
Dati Generali
Periodo di attività
Syllabus
Obiettivi Formativi
Critically assess primary sources (e.g., chronicles, inscriptions, artifacts) and secondary literature.
Evaluate the impact of transregional networks on state formation, identity, and cultural production.
Engage with debates about "medieval globalization" and its legacies.
Develop original research projects grounded in interdisciplinary approaches.
Prerequisiti
As this is a course taught entirely in English, a good command of the English language is essential.
Metodi didattici
Verifica Apprendimento
Testi
Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Bentley, Jerry H. Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Darwin, John. After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405. London: Penguin Books, 2008.
Findley, Carter V. The Turks in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Frankopan, Peter. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Green, Nile. The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019.
Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.
Parker, Charles H. Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Pollock, Sheldon, ed. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500–1800. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia. New Delhi: Primus Books, 2017. (Collection of his seminal essays, including the classic 1997 article.)
Contenuti
Intercultural Dynamics in Africa and Asia, from Late Antiquity to the Modern Era (6th–17th Centuries)
Module I – Africa and Asia in Late Antiquity: Political, Religious, and Commercial Landscapes (6 hours)
Lecture 1. Introduction: concepts of interculturality, connectivity, and global history. Africa and Asia between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
Lecture 2. The Byzantine, Sasanian, Aksumite, Gupta, and Tang worlds: political and cultural frameworks.
Lecture 3. The Silk Roads, the Indian Ocean, and trans-Saharan routes before Islam.
Module II – The Expansion of Islam and Afro-Eurasian Networks (8 hours)
Lecture 4. The rise of Islam and the transformation of Afro-Eurasian political geography.
Lecture 5. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates as centres of intercultural exchange.
Lecture 6. Trade, merchants, diplomacy, and mobility from the Mediterranean to China.
Lecture 7. Knowledge transfer: science, medicine, philosophy, technologies, and translation movements.
Module III – Nomads, Empires, and Cross-Cultural Contacts (8 hours)
Lecture 8. Turkic migrations and the formation of new political landscapes.
Lecture 9. Steppe societies and sedentary civilizations: cooperation, conflict, and mutual influence.
Lecture 10. The Mongol Empire as an Afro-Eurasian connector.
Lecture 11. The Pax Mongolica: trade, diplomacy, religious pluralism, and cultural circulation.
Module IV – Africa in Medieval Afro-Eurasia (8 hours)
Lecture 12. Christian Ethiopia and the Red Sea world.
Lecture 13. Islamisation and state formation in West Africa: Ghana, Mali, and Songhay.
Lecture 14. Swahili city-states and Indian Ocean commercial networks.
Lecture 15. Pilgrimage, diplomacy, merchants, and scholars between Africa and Asia.
Module V – Religious Encounters and Cultural Exchanges (8 hours)
Lecture 16. Christianity beyond Europe: Eastern Churches, Ethiopia, Armenia, and Asia.
Lecture 17. Buddhism across Central, South, and East Asia.
Lecture 18. Islam in Africa and Asia: local adaptations and transregional connections.
Lecture 19. Religious coexistence, conflict, conversion, and hybridity.
Module VI – The First Afro-Eurasian Globalization (15th–17th centuries) (8 hours)
Lecture 20. The arrival of the Portuguese in Africa and Asia.
Lecture 21. The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires in comparative perspective.
Lecture 22. Jesuit missions, diplomacy, and cultural mediation.
Lecture 23. Global interactions between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: continuity and change.
Source Analysis Workshops (8 hours)
Workshop 1 (2 hours). Reading and interpreting travel narratives (Xuanzang, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Marco Polo, Ibn Faḍlān).
Workshop 2 (2 hours). Diplomatic correspondence and legal texts (treaties, royal letters, commercial agreements).
Workshop 3 (2 hours). Religious and historiographical sources (chronicles, hagiographies, Arabic and Persian historical writings).
Workshop 4 (2 hours)
Material and visual sources: maps, coins, inscriptions, archaeological evidence, and manuscript illustrations.
Lingua Insegnamento
Altre informazioni
Non-attending students are required to agree on their examination syllabus with the instructor by emailing lpubblici@unior.it or by attending office hours. Office hours will be announced by the second week of September.