Why material culture?
Material culture is becoming progressively more important in the study of the history and culture of the Middle East in the Early and Middle Islamic periods. It is increasingly apparent that, literary sources, such as chronicles, biographical dictionaries, poetry, etc. only provide insights into certain aspects of historical societies and exclude many others. Many literary sources were written and copied long after the events they describe, and often offer an interpretation of the past biased in favor of a ruler, a dynasty, a theological approach, a region, or a city. Material documents, on the contrary, are themselves primarily parts of these events.
For the Middle East, especially for the period before 1500 CE, almost no primary archival material survived relative to the European Middle Ages, with very few easy to name exceptions. The large and still only superficially touched exceptions are several thousand Arabic documents in papyri and paper, almost all of them from Egypt, and to a lesser extent from Syria-Palestine and Spain. Material culture opens new avenues of research: the study of Arabic papyri or paper documents; coins with up to 150 words, revealing the hierarchy of power and religious orientation at a named place and a stated date, provide us with primary textual evidence from history as it unfolded; Calligraphy and epigraphy provide vital information. Objects tell us about the societies that produced them, in their form and content. Islamic archaeology reports on the condition, how people lived and organized their space, and how major political and environmental events and technological innovations changed their lives.
The information provided by the study of material culture cannot be fully understood without the simultaneous philological study of the texts. Together, these complementary sources provide new insights into the societies of the past. The study of material culture distinguishes itself by focusing on how objects reflect the societies that created them. Certainly, material culture overlaps with the study of Islamic art, which focuses primarily on aesthetic and artistic development. Furthermore, the materiality and visibility of papyri, papers, and coins, as bearers of textual messages, and to a much larger extent of objects and archaeological artefacts, means they are (metaphorically) agents themselves, as people created, used and interacted with them. Material culture broadens the perspective of modern historical research, providing a holistic view of the changes in human history, culture, and civilization.