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Persian in Documents (PersDoc): Language and Islamisation in the pre-Mongol Eastern Islamic Lands

Lead Research Organisation: UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Department Name: Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Abstract

This project is a groundbreaking new study, based on the earliest known Persian documents written in the Islamic East's Bamiyan Valley. For the first time, we will study the earliest form of Persian writing provided in ca. 200 Afghan geniza documents, which were purchased in 2013 and 2016 and are now held in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. Pre-Islamic Bamiyan, together with Balkh, were the centres of Buddhist monastic and temple activity in late antique Afghanistan. Bamiyan's giant buddhas were the largest standing buddhas built in antiquity, and became the symbols of Islamic fundamentalist violence when the Taliban bombed them in 2001. While much of the public attention has been on the question of why the buddhas were so tragically bombed, our fascination is with their survival for 1400 years prior; that is, since the arrival of Islam to the Balkh-Bamiyan area. Thus, through an in-depth study of the 'Afghan geniza' documents, PersDoc offers major new insights in two key areas: 1) the development of written Persian and its importance in the creation of a cultural identity, and 2) the consolidation of Islam and Islamization in the eastern Islamic lands.

While a significant number of these documents were written by Jews, and within a particular family archive, it is, in fact, highly unlikely that they belonged to any sort of geniza, i.e. storage site for documents and written sources at a synagogue. However, they are now identified as such, and the term Afghan geniza has entered scholarly parlance. The documents as a whole more likely belonged to various family archives, some of which belonged to non-Jews as well. They are delightfully varied, including personal letters, business notes, loan receipts, and literary extracts. Many are dated, ranging between the 11th to the early 13th century C.E. The documents attest to the daily economic, political, judicial and cultural lives of residents in the Bamiyan Valley. This is completely new, matchless, and eye opening.

The story that the Afghan geniza documents tell is one of cooperation and collaboration on economic and business transactions between Jews and Muslims, and one of adoption and adaptation in religions and legal matters. Their story is one we never hear: a story of a multicultural society, in which people of different religions thrived and collaborated, adopted cultural ideas and practices from one another, and underwent dynamic changes.

These documents deserve attention and analysis: they must be identified in detail, systematically categorised (in rubrics of content, form, date, and style), and analysed by language and historical content. For the latter, we will cross-reference with the literary record in medieval Islamic and Chinese historiography, as well as with recent archaeological survey findings in the Bamiyan Valley (including radio carbon dating of the paintings in the niches behind the Bamiyan buddhas, which point to the continued patronage of the Buddhist site long after the Islamic conquests). The documents also need to be made as widely available as possible to maximise dissemination about their rich significance: that Muslims and non-Muslims co-existed and thrived together, and that multiculturalism is possible and positive in the Islamic world. Thus the project has as its tertiary aim the facilitation of dialogue between scholars and wider public circles to counter the very sustained campaign by neo-conservative essayists and polemicists to discredit the Islamization narrative as solely one of violence and intolerance, and inhibit any serious discussion of it. We will do this by producing short videos with scholars, by designing an educational tool for adults and young adults worldwide that will be made publically accessible through our website, and by engaging with major media outlets to discuss our project and its findings.

Planned Impact

Users and beneficiaries of the PersDoc research who are outside the academic research community can be grouped into five:

1. Policy-makers and bilateral partners and donors that are interested in supporting cultural heritage work in Afghanistan and the region with a peacemaking and development agenda. They will see how an interdisciplinary project on the history of religion in Afghanistan can send positive messages and counter neoconservative narratives that stymie any serious discussion of Islam and Islamization.

2. International organisations, such as UNESCO, can report how their conservation efforts in Bamiyan are enabling historical research, and thus acquire more support for their efforts to maintain funding for cultural heritage work in Bamiyan.

3. Cultural heritage practitioners and professionals in Afghanistan and Bamiyan can better understand the historical relevance of their work, and link it into a contemporary narrative and make it relevant to present political debates.

4. The media will run stories on topics related to the Project, drawing on our recorded interviews, but also interviewing PersDoc team member live for commentary on the historical findings and questions of the project.

5. The wider public in general will include MOOC learners worldwide (we are targetting 10,000) who register to take our MOOC and learn about the history of Bamiyan, Buddhism and Islamisation at an important crossroads of medieval cultural and trade routes about which little was known prior to PersDoc. We also aim to draw our net widely to users of our web pages in Europe and the West, but also Afghanistan and the wider Persian-speaking world (through the Persian language entries on our web pages), and beyond.

All five audiences will benefit in largely similar ways, but by different means (see Pathways to Impact). This research challenges scholarly, official and popular perceptions that Islam and Islamization is 'un-European' and incompatible with 'western ideals' because it is inherently violent and culturally intolerant. By drawing attention to the everyday interactions between diverse actors in a pre-modern Islamicate region, we raise the idea that religions widely regarded as fundamentally distinct may have been more similar and inter-connected than we thought. We provide important historical context for a present-day situation in which neoconservative rhetoric finds limited push-back from a balanced, academically-sound discussion. Our work suggests, for instance, more nuanced approaches to reports of the Bamiyan's buddhas as being part of "Buddhist history" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/mar/03/afghanistan.lukeharding) when they are a part of Islamic and Afghan history. Such events are routinely presented by Islamic fundamentalists and western media as a religious conflict between Muslims and 'the infidel' non-Muslims. Articles including images of buddhas in Afghanistan invoke preconceived notions about Buddhism as Far Eastern and Islam as "Arab" and may even suggest that this is a conflict between western (Hellenistic) and eastern (Muslim) worlds. Our activities with all of our audiences will show the value of reducing the emphasis on issues such as religion and Arabism and competing ways of life, and instead considering a combination of other dimensions, including government policy, inter-religious cooperation and collaboration, and economic factors. The impact of our work will be to highlight that people of different cultures, languages and ethnic identities, and practising different economic activities, engaged in a complex set of interactions that is reflected in documentary and material remains even though it is stereotyped in the written record.
 
Title The Real Jafar 
Description Based on a translation of a manuscript on the Barmakid family carried out by team members Arezou Azad and Pejman Firoozbakhsh, a children's book has been produced by children's book writer Siobhan Templeton, with artistic productions (illustrations and cartoons) by Emily Selove and Nicolas Oberlin. The book will be published by Theran Press. 
Type Of Art Creative Writing 
Year Produced 2024 
Impact Publication still pending. 
 
Description 1. A "people's history" or history of "the little people" in the medieval countryside in what is today Afghanistan and the wider Central Asian region.
2. A better understanding of the documentary and archival history of the region: people kept copious notes, retained detailed archives of administrative letters, legal documents and personal letters and notes, far more than was ever imagined.
3. To study this rich historical material requires training and support for a corps of scholars.
4. The digitisation of these documents, making them publicly accessible, has a democratising effect on the information which is now readable and digestable to all.
5. Public engagement with this topic has been far greater than we expected. Our twitter account now has more than 2.5K followers. We also use other channels such as Instagram and Facebook (1.5K followers). Our blogs generate much interest, including guest writer blogs.
6. Deciphered previously unknown documents, and shared our findings through our website, social media and forthcoming publications.
Exploitation Route 1. Once our digital corpus is published later this year, any scholar or anyone in the wider public can use our data for analysis, further coding, and digital processing.
2. The monograph publications is in press, and once published it will allow scholars to expand on the new area of research we have developed: on rural administration, agricultural and economic history in the medieval Islamicate East.
3. Our outreach efforts with schools have enabled pupils to build this important part of history into their (non-core) parts of the curriculum, and the upcoming children's book will hopefully lead to further support from us to schools wishing to integrate the book in their libraries and teaching curricula.
4. This grant has already inspired further funding bids in this growing field.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Education

Government

Democracy and Justice

Culture

Heritage

Museums and Collections

Security and Diplomacy

URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/home
 
Description We have had much interest in our social media accounts with almost one thousand followers on Twitter already (handle: invisible_east). We have run about 10 Webinars so far that were open to the general public and were well attended by between 45 and 200 participants each. Nine of them were of a cultural nature (focussed on history and language), and one was focussed on international policy (peackeeping, security, and justice making).
First Year Of Impact 2020
Sector Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Security and Diplomacy
Impact Types Cultural

Policy & public services

 
Description Persian in Documents MPhil Module at University of Oxford
Geographic Reach Multiple continents/international 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
 
Description Training of teachers at Shamsa orphanage in Afghanistan
Geographic Reach Asia 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to new or improved professional practice
Impact Teachers feel empowered to share important new findings that point to a multicultural history of Afghanistan under Muslim rule with their students: a hugely important topic in the current climate in Afghansitan with a Taliban government in place.
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/school-outreach
 
Description War Criminals I have known" - On making humanitarian action in today's world multilateral, legitimate and safe A Film Journey and Conversation with Experts hosted by Arezou Azad
Geographic Reach Multiple continents/international 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
URL https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/war-criminals-i-have-known-on-making-humanitarian-action-in-todays-...
 
Title Creation of DMS for the Bamiyan documents 
Description Creation of DMS (document management sheets) to further develop the inventory of Bamiyan documents. We have produced more than 100 DMS out of 200 Persian documents. We also produced DMS for the documents in Arabic. A glossary and a paleography guide have been completed and a gazetteer of geographical names is in preparation. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact TO CHECK 
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/resources-1
 
Title Digital corpus of Persian documents 
Description The IE Digital Corpus now contains 292 Persian documents, which is well beyond our initial target of 200 Persian documents. AHRC post-doc Zeini developed a strategy and piloted an initial corpus tools which was subsequently revised by our software developer from AHR Softwares and populated by our digitisation officers with meta-data in all instances, and in a smaller set, full transcriptions, translations, and commentary. The Corpus is now publicly accessible at https://invisible-east.org. Some basic inventories and a storymap with information on the data are also available on our project website at: https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Colleagues and the wider public can see, in one place, the full corpus of documents that have been collated during the course of the project. Scholars and lay historical associations have learned about these, and contacted the team for further information, engagement and knowledge exchange. 
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/resources-1#tab-3292171
 
Title GitHub repository of texts 
Description AHRC Post-doctoral researcher Arash Zeini created a GitHub repository where the team stores the documents which are being studied and translated and for which DMSs are created. The GitHub repository is currently private as it also includes texts which are not yet ready for publication, but it will be soon made public and the texts ready for publication will be automatically uploaded to the open access platform Zenodo. When the repository will be made available to the public, it will provide researchers with sets of texts of publishable standard, whose readings have been reviewed several times inside the team and with the support of external collaborators, including texts' meta-data, full transcriptions and translations. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact The repository has been so far used internally to the team to collect and review the several versions of the translations of Bactrian, Arabic, and Persian texts. 
 
Title Persian original writing timeline 
Description We have produced a visualisation tool that shows the earliest texts written in Persian in the original handwriting thus paving the way for a major and important revision in the way Persian literature is understood. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The timeline has shifted academics' understanding of the development of Persian writing. 
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/timeline-landing-page
 
Title StoryMap creation 
Description A storymap was developed and provides important links to the digital corpus. Users can zoom down to street level and better appreciate the geographical context of the documents studied in the project. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Colleagues are become more familiar with the documents. 
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/map
 
Title Invisible East Digital Corpus 
Description At Invisible East our mission is to digitise an expansive corpus of texts which have long been overlooked. The corpus is a combination of various caches of texts dating from the 8th-13th centuries and originating from Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. Together these texts present a new and exciting history of the region. A history which is not told through kings and courts, but rather through the day to day lives of regular people - their families, their communities, their professions and their faith. Written in languages, like New Persian, Judeo-Persian, Middle Persian, Arabic, Bactrian, Sogdian, Khotanese and Sanskrit, these manuscripts show an immense variety - from deeds of sale, legal proceedings, decrees and petitions to wedding certificates and personal letters. Our goal is to unite this vast range of texts in a single, publicly accessible database. By doing so, we hope to shed new light on a region, era and population that has remained 'invisible' for far too long. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Google Analytics data show that the corpus website has had more 1,600 active users between its launch on the 9th of August '24. Our users span a large geographic spread across four continents, with growing numbers especially in Iran and Afghanistan. We have Academics have contacted us to say that they are using the data for their research. We have also had significant engagement from academics and lay people on the data through our social media accounts. 
URL https://invisible-east.org
 
Description Collaboration of Invisible East programme with University of Oxford's Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Faculty (formerly, the Oriental Institute) 
Organisation University of Oxford
Department Oriental Institute
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution The Invisible East programme is directed by the PersDoc PI. PersDoc's processing of the Afghan Geniza documents will be linked and made inter-operable with the processing of other documents that are funded by the ERC Go.Local project through interlinked datasets.
Collaborator Contribution The PI Arezou Azad and postdoc and consultant Pejman Firoozbakhsh and Majid Montazer Mahdi are all processing the Afghan Geniza documents.
Impact Still too early.
Start Year 2020
 
Description Collaboration with Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, University of Maryland 
Organisation University of Maryland
Country United States 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Working with Matthew Miller on his Persian text digitisation project funded by the Carnegie Mellon Fund and National Endowment for the Humanities and providing input on which historical texts to OCR with the aim of offering an important data set for historians in the field around the world.
Collaborator Contribution The partner has hosted the PI to the first workshop held in November 2022 in which the new OCR software was presented and trialled.
Impact Yes, it involves colleagues covering the disciplines of philology, history, documentary research, and literary studies.
Start Year 2022
 
Description Collaboration with Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, University of Maryland 
Organisation University of Maryland, Baltimore
Country United States 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Working with Matthew Miller on his Persian text digitisation project funded by the Carnegie Mellon Fund and National Endowment for the Humanities and providing input on which historical texts to OCR with the aim of offering an important data set for historians in the field around the world.
Collaborator Contribution The partner has hosted the PI to the first workshop held in November 2022 in which the new OCR software was presented and trialled.
Impact Yes, it involves colleagues covering the disciplines of philology, history, documentary research, and literary studies.
Start Year 2022
 
Description Collaboration with the Bodleian Library's Afghan Fellowships Programme 
Organisation University of Oxford
Department Bodleian Library
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution We were able to benefit from invaluable inputs by Bodleian Afghan Scholar Nabi Saqee, who was seconded to our team by the Bodleian Library.
Collaborator Contribution Nabi Saqee joined our document reading and translation workshops and helped us review our readings up to publishable level.
Impact The digital corpus data that will appear in our platform (invisible-east.org) are direct outputs that have benefit from Nabi Saqee's input into our multidisciiplinary reading and translation teams.
Start Year 2022
 
Description Collaboration with the Bodleian Library's Afghan Fellowships Programme 
Organisation University of Oxford
Department Bodleian Library
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution We were able to benefit from invaluable inputs by Bodleian Afghan Scholar Nabi Saqee, who was seconded to our team by the Bodleian Library.
Collaborator Contribution Nabi Saqee joined our document reading and translation workshops and helped us review our readings up to publishable level.
Impact The digital corpus data that will appear in our platform (invisible-east.org) are direct outputs that have benefit from Nabi Saqee's input into our multidisciiplinary reading and translation teams.
Start Year 2022
 
Description Collaboration with the KITAB project and OpenIT platform 
Organisation Aga Khan University
Department Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution We started a collaboration with KITAB hosted at Aga Khan University-Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) and led by Sarah Savant. Invisble East is contributing a machine-readable corpus of its documentary sources to the KITAB project to be hosted by the OpenITI, and to be made freely available to all via GitHub and Zenodo open access platforms.
Collaborator Contribution The KITAB project collaborates with the OpenITI platform, which will help us to distribute our digital files through GitHub and Zenodo platforms.
Impact Hosting our files on GitHub and have an arrangement for joint uploads to Zenodo for ensuring public access to our digital files.
Start Year 2022
 
Title Website to access the digital corpus 
Description The Invisible East project has funds committed to the develpoment of a website from which the digital corpus of texts will be accessible. The website will provide a user friendly interface and a search tool which will allow specialists and non-specialists to easily survey and search the material uploaded to the website. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact A first draft of the website is due by the end of March 2023. 
URL http://invisible-east.org
 
Description Children book on the Barmakids 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Work has begun towards the publication of an illustrated children book on the Barmakids, featuring drawings from the series of drawings mentioned in our earliest report. The book is now in the final stages of editing and will soon be ready for publication.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description Engage with World Zoroastrian Organisation charity 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact 5 June 10:30
Feltham, London
The Invisible East Team will present its programme, and its findings so far on the lives of Zoroastrians living in early Islamic and medieval Iran and the wider Islamicate East region.

Team members prepared, organised and presented at a full-day of talks on Zoroastrianism shortly after the arrival of Islam to Iran:
1. The Invisible East programme - Arezou Azad (PI)
2. Zoroastrians under Muslim rule in the early Caliphate - Hugh Kennedy (co-I)
3. Zoroastrian Life in early Islamic Iran - Tommy Benfey (colleague form Invisible East, presented in absentia by PI Azad)
4. The Birth of the Abestag from the Spirit of Philology - Arash Zeini (PersDoc Research officer)
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/event/wzo-event
 
Description Format, Style and Politeness Strategies in Middle Persian Official Letters from 7th-Century Egypt 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A blog published on the Invisible East website on Format, Style and Politeness Strategies in Middle Persian Official Letters from 7th-Century Egypt.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/article/format-style-and-politeness-strategies-in-middle-persian-...
 
Description Initiated cartoon series on the Barmakids 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The set of cartoons aims to introduce young children to history of Afghanistan via one of the most famous families of the 8th cantury, the Barmakids, which is part of the popular culture of modern Afghanistan. The aim of the cartoons is to help children to familiarise with some of the most important actors of the history of Afghanistan using an accessible and appealing medium.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/school-outreach
 
Description Interreligious dialogue in medieval Bamiyan 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Publication of a blog on the Invisible East website on interreligious dialogue in medieval Bamiyan.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/article/interreligious-dialogue-in-medieval-bamiyan
 
Description Invisible East Website, Twitter and Instagram 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact As part of the Invisible East programme, the AHRC PersDoc project has been engaged with writing blogs on research findings, writing tweets and twitter threads as well as making Instagram updates on findings and events.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/
 
Description Islamicate Manuscripts and Texts Colloquium 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact This Islamicate Manuscripts and Texts (IMaT) colloquium focuses on literary and documentary letters from the Islamicate world and adjacent areas in space and time, written in various languages including Arabic, New Persian, Middle Persian, and Sogdian. Issues explored so far have included: the relationship between literary and documentary/private letters; the transmission of epistolary formulae and topoi over time, and between political units, languages, and religious communities; the various ways letters can be useful as sources for historians.

16 sessions have been held so far, 8 in 2020 and 8 in 2021, all virtual.
Each session had 2 parts. 1) Speakers in the first 45 minutes give a historiographical, historical, and/or literary context to the texts. Participants do not need to know the primary source language. 2) The subsequent 45 minutes are devoted to a close group reading of the text(s) by participants familiar with the source language. Participants need not attend both parts, and can join whichever part they prefer.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020,2021
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/event/imt-reading-colloquium
 
Description Jews in old Ghor and Bamiyan 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A two-parts blog in Persian published on the Invisible East webiste on the Jews in old Ghor and Bamiyan.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/article/jews-in-old-ghor-and-bamyan
 
Description MOOC: Afghanistan from Buddhism to Islam 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact In this series of five lectures, speakers discussed various aspects of the life and culture of Afghanistan between the 8th and 13th century. A total of 596 attendees took part in the online lectures which were held on Zoom. After each session, attendees were able to ask questions and in many cases insightful discussions took place between the invited speaker, the Invisibel East team, and the online attendees.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/event/mooc-afghanistan-from-buddhism-to-islam
 
Description New social media page (Facebook, to add to Instagram and Twitter) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A new Facebook page has been created to communicate the activites and results of the project. The page, started in July 2022, has over 700 followers and reached over 1,700 accounts over the last 28 days.

The link below leads to the Invisible East Campsite.bio profile from which all our social media platforms can be accessed. It is important to note that the link below is present on all our social platforms and is used regularly to redirect users to the social media profiles and website of the project. The CTR of the Campsite.bio profile is close to 50%, indicating that almost half of the visits to the profile generate a click on one of the listed resources, which include social media pages, webiste, and a selections of videos and latest news from the project that are kept constantly updated.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://campsite.to/invisibleeast
 
Description Rethinking History: Returning to Archives and Documents series 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Series of monthly webinars organised and run in collaboration with the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto, featuring speakers from several universities and research institutes around the world.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023,2024
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/event/rethinking-history-returning-to-archives-and-documents
 
Description Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture delivered by William Dalrymple, entitled "The Barmakids - A bridge between Islamic and Indic Worlds" 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact This was a hybrid event hosted at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and on Zoom, with the multiple award-winning author, William Dalrymple.
The Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture Series connects individual stories to larger questions on the history and contemporary issues of the Middle East. The series aims to recognise and promote, in particular, microhistories, oral and documentary history, and fieldwork analysis.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/event/william-dalrymple-talk
 
Description School sessions 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact The Invisible East team delivered a series of sessions in schools in the UK and Afghanistan. The students engaged are secondary school pupils. With the support of an Education Advisor, the team delivered 90 minute sessions during which pupils work closely with a primary source, discuss the ethics of working with primary sources, explore the day-to-day working of historians, and curate a museum exhibition.

The sessions have been delivered in person in the UK-based schools and online, via Zoom, in the schools based in Afghanistan.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/school-outreach
 
Description Tabakat-i Nasiri manuscript at Oxford University 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Blog in Persian published on the Invisible East website.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/article/the-abakat-i-nasiri-manuscript-at-oxford-university
 
Description Thinking about Caravants 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Emeritus Professor Richard Bulliet spoke about caravan transport in the premodern Islamic world, and how it impacted on society.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://invisibleeast.web.ox.ac.uk/event/thinking-about-caravans-talk-by-richard-bulliet