ERC Consolidator Grant, 2017-2022

This ERC-funded project (no. 724951) started off our Utrecht-based research on the sensory history of the Islamic world. Subprojects within “The Senses of Islam” looked at topics ranging from the senses in the Qur’an and Hadith, the senses in early Islamic ritual, the senses in Arabic belles-lettres, and the senses in early modern and modern Iran. Next to several articles, book chapters, international workshops, and a Ph.D. dissertation, this collaborative project resulted in an Open Access Special Issue of The Senses & Society (2022), as well as the multi-author reader, Islamic Sensory History, Vol. 2: 600-1500 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2024). Also in Open Access, this volume features a collection of translations and studies in Islamic sensory history covering the period from the 1st/7th to the 9th/15th centuries H/CE. Volumes 1 & 3 of the Islamic Sensory History reader are currently being prepared as part of the ongoing follow-up project, “Rosewater, Nightingale, and Gunpowder.”