Letters to the Sheikh: Political and economic transformations in the Indian Ocean World as reflected in the letters to the ʿAbriyin of al-Hamraʾ (Oman) during the long 19th century

该项目致力于在漫长的19世纪（这里定义为时间跨度1792-1920）中阿曼的社会，政治和经济史。它的主要来源是从一个当地精英家庭的信件档案中精选的文本，即al-Hamra - al- Abriyin。这些信件将通过系列分析和定性分析相结合的方式进行检验。在此基础上，个体研究将侧重于社会和政治网络、经济关系和历史语义学。该项目的总目标是在两个主要相互孤立的研究领域之间建立一座桥梁：阿曼和印度洋的宏观历史和作为一个重要部落群体的阿布里因人的微观历史。通过关注当地参与者的关注点和策略，该项目将从微观历史的角度补充现有的阿曼历史研究。研究的另一个重点是信件交流的语言，这将与概念历史和历史语义学的问题进行检查。该项目旨在促进在其跨区域框架中对阿曼作为一个历史区域的新理解。在这方面，我们将探讨这些信件的作者对印度洋政治和经济发展的反应。我们将进一步挑战研究文献中的基本假设，例如在此期间阿曼中部的孤立和停滞（与东非的阿曼领土形成对比）。该项目的一个特点是应用了迄今为止很少在历史研究中使用的数字工具，如网络分析和网络GIS（在线地理信息系统）。申请人可以建立在广泛的前期工作基础上，包括对谢赫·穆赫辛·本·扎赫兰·阿布里（生于1873年）作为政治行动者的研究，以及一个定制的关系数据库。对档案材料的分析主要集中在阿布里因与其他当地行动者之间的五封精选信件上，并将分三个步骤进行。我们将从连续分析开始，这将产生关于信件的强度和持续时间的资料，并允许进一步选择对我们所关注的问题具有特殊意义的信件。下面，将在三个专题案例研究的框架内对这些精选文本进行深入分析。最后，研究结果将在阿曼和印度洋历史的更广泛背景下进行讨论。

This project is devoted to the social, political and economic history of Central Oman during the long nineteenth century (here defined as the time span 1792-1920). Its main source is a selection of texts from the letter archive of a local elite family, the ʿAbriyin of al-Hamraʾ. The letters will be examined with a combination of serial and qualitative analysis. Based on this, individual studies will focus on social and political networks, economic relations and historical semantics. The general aim of the project is to build a bridge between two strands of research that have been largely pursued in isolation from each other: the macro-level history of Oman and the Indian Ocean and the micro-level history of the ʿAbriyin as an important tribal group. By focussing on the concerns and strategies of local actors, the project will complement the existing research on the history of Oman by a micro-historical perspective. Another focus of research is the language of letter communication, which will be examined with regard to questions of conceptual history and historical semantics. The project intends to contribute to a new understanding of Oman as a historical region in its trans-regional framework. In this regard, we will explore the reaction of the letters’ authors to political and economic developments in the Indian Ocean. We shall further challenge basic assumptions in the research literature, such as the isolation and stagnation of central Oman during the period (in contrast to the Omani territories in East Africa). A special feature of the project is the application of digital tools that have rarely been used in historical studies so far, such as network analysis and web GIS (online geographic information systems).The applicants can build on extensive preliminary work, including a study on Sheikh Muhsin bin Zahran al-ʿAbri (d. 1873) as a political actor as well as a custom-made relational database. The analysis of the archival material focuses on five select correspondences between the ʿAbriyin and other local actors and will proceed in three steps. We shall begin with a serial analysis, which generates information on the correspondences’ intensity and duration and allows for a further selection of letters with special significance for our concerns. In the following, these select texts will be subjected to in-depth analysis within the framework of three thematic case studies. Finally, the results will be discussed in the wider context of the history of Oman and the Indian Ocean.