European societies face rapid social changes, challenges and benefits, which can be studied with traditional tools of analysis, but with serious limitations. This rapid transformation covers changes in family forms, fertility, the decline of mortality and increase of longevity, and periods of economic and social instability. Owing to population ageing across Europe, countries are now the experiencing the impact of these rapid changes on the sustainability of their welfare systems.

The Caribbean is defined as a vertebrate, geopolitical space where economic, political, social, cultural and human contacts flow from one island to another and on to the American continent. Inter-colonialism made this space a scene for generating new ways of thinking and living, as well as new identities.

This project will examine the manuscripts of a biography of the Prophet Muhammad (d. ca. 632), written by the Maliki jurist Qadi ‘Iyad (d. 1149), in order to elucidate the historical context of the work’s enduring popularity with Muslim readers. The Kitab al-shifa’ fi ta‘rif huquq al-Mustafa (The book of healing concerning the recognition of the true facts about the chosen one) circulated widely both inside and outside the Islamic West. A large number of manuscripts, written between the 13th and the early 20th century, are known to be extant, but no autograph has been preserved.

What do we know about the earliest tool-making hominins? Over the last decade, scientific knowledge has increased, and hominin sites have been found in Africa and China, half a million years earlier than previously believed. A new research approach based on biogeography and adaptive behaviours is needed to understand the complex human colonisation processes across the Old World. The EU-funded BICAEHFID project will create a global synthesis of early human movement dynamics based on the comparison of the world’s longest timeline of early archaeological sites.

Human survival and success is substantially determined by the ability to move across the landscape and adapt. Consequently, ‘mobility’ is a crucial topic in historical and archaeological research. To overcome the seasonal scarcity of food and the related over-grazing of pastures, it is essential for animal husbandry to move across territories. However, the decision to allow or deny rights of way to mobile people and livestock depends on political judgements. How might these shape animal husbandry production, and society?

The aim of the project Knowledge, heresy and political culture in the Islamic west (eighth-fifteenth centuries) is twofold: 1) To publish (both in paper and online) a work of reference on the intellectual production of the Islamic West (eighth-fifteenth centuries) including bio-bibliographical information on authors and works (manuscripts, editions, translations and studies).

In an early sixteenth-century treatise Martín de Figuerola, a convert from Islam who sought to convince the Muslims of Valencia and Aragon to join him, reports a story he claims to have heard from the Muslim judge of Cocentaina (Valencia). The latter had told him that, in marriage contracts between local Muslims, it was customary for women to demand that their husbands take them to the capital city of Valencia for the springtime festivities of Corpus Christi and those of the Virgin Mary in August.

Investigador: MERCEDES GARCÍA ARENAL
Centro: INSTITUTO DE LENGUAS Y CULTURAS DEL MEDITERRANEO Y ORIENTE PROXIMO

Investigador: MERCEDES GARCÍA ARENAL
Centro: INSTITUTO DE LENGUAS Y CULTURAS DEL MEDITERRANEO Y ORIENTE PROXIMO