This blog documents reflections, progress, and some results of my 2-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship at the University of Copenhagen. The goal of my project is to develop a Digital Humanities standard to record and exchange knowledge in the research field of Christian-Muslim religious encounters, and to test it on selected examples. The Christian-Muslim religious discourse centres on some vital works and topics: The Bible, the Qur'an, Muhammad, Jesus, Mary, and so on. Consequently, works from these traditions always refer to these shared nodes. In addition, as knowledge is scarce, they frequently "borrow" (read: steal) text from each other. Making these connections explicit will reveal the connectivity of the discourse and allow to assess assumptions like the "Orientalism" hypothesis. This hypothesis states, more or less: From the 7th century until the 20th, the Western picture of Islam was a stale caricature, which showed no development or real relation to Islam. My approach will, hopefully, make it possible to test this thesis - and others - against more data, and will also allow to exchange knowledge between researchers of the field.
I will publish regular updates on my work that concerns interesting questions, design decisions, and preliminary results.