- Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, 20146 Hamburg
Peter Verkinderen
Aga Khan University, ISMC, Post-Doc
- Near Eastern Studies, Middle East History, Arabic Language and Linguistics, Assyriology, Historical Geography, Landscape Studies, and 24 moreSatellite Remote Sensing (Archaeology), Manuscript studies, codicology, palaeography, medieval paper, Chaucer, circulation of texts and books, history of the book, electronic editing and digital humanities, Digital Humanities, Trade and travel in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Travel Literature, Literatures of Voyaging, Discovery, Travel & Colonialism, Historical and Cultural Geography, Landscape and Memory, Toponymy, Historical Geography, Historical Cartography, Environmental History, Iraqi History, Ottoman Iraq, Abbasid History, Umayyad and Abbasid History, Economic History, History of Cartography, Medieval Cartography, Islamic Codicology, Arabic Manuscripts, Islamic manuscripts illumination, Arabic/Persian Manuscripts, codicology, Islamic philosophy, early Islamic history and thoughts, Sasanian History, Sasanian Archaeology, Islamic Numismatics, Early Islamic Archaeology, and History of Iranedit
<strong>Co-PIs</strong>: Matthew Thomas Miller (University of Maryland, College Park), Maxim G. Romanov (University of Vienna), Sarah Bowen Savant (Aga Khan University—ISMC, London). <em>Open Islamicate Texts... more
<strong>Co-PIs</strong>: Matthew Thomas Miller (University of Maryland, College Park), Maxim G. Romanov (University of Vienna), Sarah Bowen Savant (Aga Khan University—ISMC, London). <em>Open Islamicate Texts Initiative</em> (<strong>OpenITI</strong>, see https://openiti.github.io/) is a multi-institutional effort to construct the first machine-actionable scholarly corpus of premodern Islamicate texts. Led by researchers at the Aga Khan University (AKU), University of Vienna (UV), Leipzig University (LU), and the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland (College Park) and an interdisciplinary advisory board of leading digital humanists and Islamic, Persian, and Arabic studies scholars, <strong>OpenITI</strong> aims to provide the essential textual infrastructure in Arabic, Persian and other Islamicate languages for new forms of textual analysis and digital scholarship. In the process, <strong>OpenITI</strong> will enable new synergies between Digital Humanities and the inter-related Islamicate fields of Islamic, Persian, and Arabic Studies. In addition to support from the researchers' home institutions, it is supported by funding from the European Research Council and the Qatar National Library. Currently, <strong>OpenITI</strong> contains almost exclusively Arabic texts, which were first assembled into a corpus within the <strong>OpenArabic</strong> project, developed first at Tufts University (at <em>The Perseus Project</em>, 2013–2015) and then at Leipzig University (at the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Digital Humanities, 2015–2017)—in both cases with the support and under the patronage of Prof. Gregory Crane. The much more limited number of Persian texts were compiled during 2015-2016 in the Persian Digital Library (PDL) pilot (see: https://persdigumd.github.io/PDL/) at Roshan Institute for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland. These texts have not been made fully compatible with OpenITI mARkdown yet and will be made fully available in next releases. <strong>Note on R [...]
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Data in humanities, especially historical data, is characterized by a strong presence of vague information and uncertainty. The available Content Management Systems and annotation tools have often disregarded the requirements of research... more
Data in humanities, especially historical data, is characterized by a strong presence of vague information and uncertainty. The available Content Management Systems and annotation tools have often disregarded the requirements of research projects dealing with fuzzy data, languages with non-concatenative morphologies and scripts of non-Latin writing systems. Additionally, data encoding standards often overstress the importance of mere standardization at the expense of human readability and efficiency in terms of storage and parsing performance. Similarly, morphological tag sets and natural language processing frameworks primarily based on Indo-European languages are presented as universal solutions, but fail to meet some of the linguistic phenomena characteristic of other languages.
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The waterways of ancient Iraq were crucial to its prosperity. While they were maintained, Iraq and neighbouring Khuzistan, in southwest Iran, were the richest and most productive agricultural areas of the Middle East, supporting the... more
The waterways of ancient Iraq were crucial to its prosperity. While they were maintained, Iraq and neighbouring Khuzistan, in southwest Iran, were the richest and most productive agricultural areas of the Middle East, supporting the Sasanian, Umayyad and Abbasid empires. When the waterways changed or fell into decay, both the prosperity and the political role of Iraq largely disappeared. Understanding the course of the rivers and how they changed is therefore pivotal to understanding the history of the region. Peter Verkinderen s important book provides the first major re-examination of the waterways of early Islamic Iraq in almost seventy years. Combining a close reading of early Arab geographical and historical sources with analysis of modern satellite imagery, the author reconstructs the course of each of the major rivers the Euphrates, Tigris, Karun, Jarrahi and Karhe from the 7th to the 12th centuries, showing how they changed over the intervening five hundred years. His extens...
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Research Interests: Ancient History and Islam
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The Mesopotamian alluvial plain is dominated by large aggrading river systems that are prone to avulsion. Early civilizations depended on the position of rivers for their economic survival and were thus very sensitive to channel shifts... more
The Mesopotamian alluvial plain is dominated by large aggrading river systems that are prone to avulsion. Early civilizations depended on the position of rivers for their economic survival and were thus very sensitive to channel shifts that could be devastating. On the other hand, such shifts could also provide new opportunities for settlements and expansion (Wilkinson 2003; Morozova 2005; Heyvaert & Baeteman 2008). Evidence also points to periods of centralized power and technological advancement (Parthian, Sasanian and again in modern times) that enabled societies to not only adapt to dynamic environmental conditions of their surroundings, but also to manipulate and control natural processes. Research in the lowlands of present-day Iraq (Diyala alluvial fan) and Iran (Khuzestan region) has demonstrated incidences of deliberate human action (the construction of dams and extensive irrigation networks) that have either triggered or obstructed natural alluvial processes that control f...
Research Interests: Economic History, Geography, Historical Geography, Geoarchaeology, Hittitology, and 15 moreHistorical maps, Ancient Near East, Fluvial Geomorphology, Hurrian, Elamite, Geomorphological Mapping, Alluvial fans, Ancient Irrigation Systems, Human impact, Channel Shifting, Floodplain History, CORONA Imagery, Jarrahi River, Assyriologie, and IT In Humanities
Inhoud. Inhoud Inleiding. I. De naam van de stad. A. bàd.an† = D®r. B. Lezing van het logogram bàd.an†. II. bàd.an† = D®r = Badra. A. De locatie. B. De naam Badra: D®r > B‰tD®rªja > Badra. C. Archeologische vondsten in de tells rond... more
Inhoud. Inhoud Inleiding. I. De naam van de stad. A. bàd.an† = D®r. B. Lezing van het logogram bàd.an†. II. bàd.an† = D®r = Badra. A. De locatie. B. De naam Badra: D®r > B‰tD®rªja > Badra. C. Archeologische vondsten in de tells rond Badra. III. D®r en naamsverwante steden ...
ABSTRACT Walstra, J., Heyvaert, V. M. A. &amp; Verkinderen, P. 2008. Remote sensing for recording past landscapes of the Mesopotamian alluvial plain. 1st International EARSeL Workshop on Advances in Remote Sensing for Archaeology and... more
ABSTRACT Walstra, J., Heyvaert, V. M. A. &amp; Verkinderen, P. 2008. Remote sensing for recording past landscapes of the Mesopotamian alluvial plain. 1st International EARSeL Workshop on Advances in Remote Sensing for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management, 30 September – 4 October 2008, Rome, Italy, pp. 379-382 (ISBN 978-88-548-2030-2).
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ABSTRACT For many thousands of years the alluvial plains of Khuzestan (SW Iran) have been subject to intensive settlement and agriculture. Ancient societies depended on the position of major rivers for their economic survival and hence,... more
ABSTRACT For many thousands of years the alluvial plains of Khuzestan (SW Iran) have been subject to intensive settlement and agriculture. Ancient societies depended on the position of major rivers for their economic survival and hence, there is ample evidence of human activities trying to control the distribution of water. Throughout the plains ancient irrigation and settlement patterns are visible, although traces are rapidly disappearing due to expanding modern land use. Aim of this study is to unlock and integrate the rich information on landscape and archaeology, which only survives through the available historical imagery and some limited archaeological surveys. A GIS-based geomorphological mapping procedure was developed, using a variety of imagery, including historical aerial photographs, CORONA, Landsat and SPOT images. In addition, supported by the evidence from previous geological field surveys, archaeological elements were identified, mapped and included in a GIS database. The resulting map layers display the positions of successive palaeochannel belts and extensive irrigation networks, together indicating a complex alluvial history characterized by avulsions and significant human impact. As shown in several case-studies, integrating information from multiple disciplines provides valuable insights in the complex landscape evolution of this region, both from geological and historical perspectives. Remote sensing and GIS are essential tools in such a research context. The presented work was undertaken within the framework of the Interuniversity Attraction Pole &quot;Greater Mesopotamia: Reconstruction of its Environment and History&quot; (IAP 6/34), funded by the Belgian Science Policy.
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Research Interests: Geography, Near Eastern Archaeology, Geoarchaeology, Mesopotamian Archaeology, Quaternary Geology, and 15 moreHistorical maps, Fluvial Geomorphology, Image Interpretation, Geomorphological Mapping, Ancient Irrigation Systems, Landscape Evolution, Human impact, Historical Imagery, Landform Change, Channel Shifting, Floodplain History, CORONA Imagery, Khuzestan, Landsat Imagery, and Karun River
This paper describes the role of cartographic sources and remote sensing data within the multidisciplinary research on fluvial landscape evolution of the Lower Khuzestan plain, SW Iran. The presented work demonstrates the use of satellite... more
This paper describes the role of cartographic sources and remote sensing data within the multidisciplinary research on fluvial landscape evolution of the Lower Khuzestan plain, SW Iran. The presented work demonstrates the use of satellite images for geomorphological mapping and the ...
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Research Interests: History, Middle East History, Medieval Islam, Prosopography, Islamic Studies, and 14 moreHistory of Elites, Abbasid History, Social History, Islamic History, Umayyads (Islamic History), Early Islam, Medieval Islamic History, Courts and Elites (History), Umayyad History, Early Islamic History, Elites and Society, Elites, Umayyad and Abbasid History, and Medieval Prosopography
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Final preprint of the article published in Hannah-Lena Hagemann, Stefan Heidemann, Transregional and Regional Elites: Connecting the Early Islamic Empire, Berlin: De Gruyter.
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pre-publication copy of the article in Alain Delattre, Marie Legendre and Petra Sijpesteijn (eds.), Authority and Control in the Countryside: From Antiquity to Islam in the Mediterranean and Near East (6th-10th Century), Leiden Studies... more
pre-publication copy of the article in Alain Delattre, Marie Legendre and Petra Sijpesteijn (eds.), Authority and Control in the Countryside: From Antiquity to Islam in the Mediterranean and Near East (6th-10th Century),
Leiden Studies in Islam and Society 9, Leiden: Brill, 2018.
Leiden Studies in Islam and Society 9, Leiden: Brill, 2018.
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Recent advances in the fields of remote sensing and GIS provide the techniques to establish a firm geomorphological framework to the historical and archaeological studies in the Mesopotamian region. This study presents a practical... more
Recent advances in the fields of remote sensing and GIS provide the techniques to establish a firm geomorphological framework to the historical and archaeological studies in the Mesopotamian region. This study presents a practical approach for the mapping of the semi-arid, alluvial landscapes of Lower Khuzestan. Like elsewhere in Mesopotamia, the landscapes here are strongly affected by anthropogenic processes, most evidently expressed by widespread irrigation patterns. The image interpretation key and map legend are therefore designed explicitly to reflect these typical alluvial and human-induced landforms. The working procedure is based on easily accessible and inexpensive source material, notably Landsat and CORONA imagery, SRTM elevation data, and readily available topographical maps, and was successfully applied in a case-study on the evolution of the Jarrahi River. The resulting map, together with information from other disciplines, provided insights in the complex landscape evolution of the study area, and a useful base for further research.
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Walstra, J., Heyvaert, V. M. A. & Verkinderen, P. 2008. Remote sensing for recording past landscapes of the Mesopotamian alluvial plain. 1st International EARSeL Workshop on Advances in Remote Sensing for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage... more
Walstra, J., Heyvaert, V. M. A. & Verkinderen, P. 2008. Remote sensing for recording past landscapes of the Mesopotamian alluvial plain. 1st International EARSeL Workshop on Advances in Remote Sensing for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management, 30 September – 4 October 2008, Rome, Italy, pp. 379-382 (ISBN 978-88-548-2030-2).
""Book content: In December 2009, an international congress was held at Ghent University in order to investigate, exactly 20 years after the 36th RAI “Mésopotamie et Elam”, the present state of our knowledge of the Elamite and Susean... more
""Book content:
In December 2009, an international congress was held at Ghent University in order to investigate, exactly 20 years after the 36th RAI “Mésopotamie et Elam”, the present state of our knowledge of the Elamite and Susean society from archaeological, philological, historical and geographical points of view. The multidisciplinary character of this congress illustrates the present state of research in the socio-economic, historical and political developments of the Suso-Elamite region from prehistoric times until the great Persian Empire. Because of its strategically important location between the Mesopotamian alluvial plain and the Iranian highlands and its particular interest as point of contact between civilizations, Susa and Elam were of utmost importance for the history of the ancient Near East in general.""
In December 2009, an international congress was held at Ghent University in order to investigate, exactly 20 years after the 36th RAI “Mésopotamie et Elam”, the present state of our knowledge of the Elamite and Susean society from archaeological, philological, historical and geographical points of view. The multidisciplinary character of this congress illustrates the present state of research in the socio-economic, historical and political developments of the Suso-Elamite region from prehistoric times until the great Persian Empire. Because of its strategically important location between the Mesopotamian alluvial plain and the Iranian highlands and its particular interest as point of contact between civilizations, Susa and Elam were of utmost importance for the history of the ancient Near East in general.""
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The working paper contains a detailed manual of how to use Jedli, a toolbox developed by the two authors to help scholars make use of digitized Arabic texts more quickly and efficiently. Scholars working with Arabic texts are often... more
The working paper contains a detailed manual of how to use Jedli, a toolbox developed by the two authors to help scholars make use of digitized Arabic texts more quickly and efficiently.
Scholars working with Arabic texts are often confronted with an extraordinary number of sources at their disposal. Manually researching these texts can take an inordinate amount of time. Although many of the primary sources in Arabic have been available in digital form for some time now, the potential inherent in this development has not been fully realized yet. Inspired by the advent of digital humanities, the project team have started developing a number of tools for text mining and data analysis that more fully take advantage of the digitization of Arabic sources.
Jedli is a toolbox that currently contains three distinct search functions: the indexer, the highlighter, and the context search. The indexer enables you to produce a custom index of any word in a text (or any number of words in any number of texts at the same time), complete with references to the specific volume and page number of each occurrence, and a user-defined amount of context around the search word. The highlighter marks any number of search terms in different colors according to a user-defined color scheme, to help you identify relevant text segments more quickly. The context search allows you to restrict search results to contexts pertinent to your research through the combination of customized (lists of) search terms.
The current version of Jedli can now be downloaded for free from our website at https://www.islamic-empire.uni-hamburg.de/en/publications-tools/digital-tools/jedli.html. We also provide a directory containing a collection of digitized Arabic texts that we have already converted into the format required for Jedli to work (.txt).
Scholars working with Arabic texts are often confronted with an extraordinary number of sources at their disposal. Manually researching these texts can take an inordinate amount of time. Although many of the primary sources in Arabic have been available in digital form for some time now, the potential inherent in this development has not been fully realized yet. Inspired by the advent of digital humanities, the project team have started developing a number of tools for text mining and data analysis that more fully take advantage of the digitization of Arabic sources.
Jedli is a toolbox that currently contains three distinct search functions: the indexer, the highlighter, and the context search. The indexer enables you to produce a custom index of any word in a text (or any number of words in any number of texts at the same time), complete with references to the specific volume and page number of each occurrence, and a user-defined amount of context around the search word. The highlighter marks any number of search terms in different colors according to a user-defined color scheme, to help you identify relevant text segments more quickly. The context search allows you to restrict search results to contexts pertinent to your research through the combination of customized (lists of) search terms.
The current version of Jedli can now be downloaded for free from our website at https://www.islamic-empire.uni-hamburg.de/en/publications-tools/digital-tools/jedli.html. We also provide a directory containing a collection of digitized Arabic texts that we have already converted into the format required for Jedli to work (.txt).
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This paper presents a multidisciplinary approach for studying the evolution of an alluvial fan system in Lower Khuzestan (SW Iran). The study draws on previously collected data from geological and archaeological field campaigns and new... more
This paper presents a multidisciplinary approach for studying the evolution of an alluvial fan system in Lower Khuzestan (SW Iran). The study draws on previously collected data from geological and archaeological field campaigns and new data derived from the interpretation of satellite imagery and historical textual sources. Three alluvial fans were identified, successively deposited by the Jarrahi river in progressively downstream/westward direction. Judging from archaeological and historical evidence, the successive phases appear to coincide with a relocation of settlement and irrigation activities. The distributary system of the present-day fan developed over a period of less than four centuries. It is suggested that management of levee breaks by man played a key role in such rapid fan development and in maintaining extremely low gradients. Judging from the extensive patterns of ancient irrigation canals, human activity also played an important role in the formation of the earlier fans.
Research Interests: Near Eastern Archaeology, Geology, Geophysics, Remote Sensing, Geoarchaeology, and 22 moreMesopotamian Archaeology, Quaternary Geology, Fluvial Geomorphology, Geomorphological Mapping, Alluvial fans, Ancient Irrigation Systems, Landscape Evolution, Case Study, SRTM, Human impact, Satellite Imagery, Human Activity, Multidisciplinary Approach, Landform Change, Channel Shifting, Floodplain History, CORONA Imagery, Khuzestan, Jarrahi River, Landsat Imagery, Crevasse Splays, and Megafans
This study is concerned with the Late Holocene floodplain history of the Karkheh River in Lower Khuzestan, and in particular with the role of human action upon its channel shifts. The research was conducted in a multidisciplinary way, in... more
This study is concerned with the Late Holocene floodplain history of the Karkheh River in Lower Khuzestan, and in particular with the role of human action upon its channel shifts. The research was conducted in a multidisciplinary way, in which resources and approaches from different research fields were combined: (1) geomorphological mapping based on the interpretation of Landsat and CORONA satellite imagery, (2) analyses of geological sequences, including the identification of sedimentary facies and radiocarbon dating of organic material, (3) an archaeological field survey of ancient settlements, and (4) consultation of historical documents, mainly Arabic texts from the 9th–14th century and European travel literature from the 16th-early 20th century. Three main channel belts of the Karkheh were identified (labelled Kh1, Kh2 and Kh3), corresponding to successive stages in the evolution of the floodplain. Two river shifts are documented in the datasets, both taking place within the last 2000 years. The first avulsion regards a shift from channel belt Kh1, once a tributary of the Karun, to the straight river bed of Kh2, taking place at least after 1240–1310 cal BP/710–640 AD. The second avulsion, from Kh2 to Kh3, is clearly documented in historical sources and happened in a single night event in the year 1837/113 cal BP. Reactivation of the Kh2 river bed and its irrigation canals can be attributed to the recent construction of an artificial canal bypassing the second avulsion point. Both river shifts were strongly influenced by human interference, whereby an artificial irrigation canal took over the entire river flow from the main channel belt. Most likely, a combination of human-induced factors, such as weakening of the river levees, high sedimentation rates and disadvantageous channel gradients, led to a situation prone to avulsion.
Research Interests: Archaeology, Geology, Geoarchaeology, Mesopotamian Archaeology, Quaternary Geology, and 15 moreFluvial Geomorphology, Quaternary, Radiocarbon Dating, Field Survey, Late Holocene, Avulsion, Human impact, Satellite Imagery, Quarternary Geology, Channel Shifting, Floodplain History, CORONA Imagery, Khuzestan, Karkheh River, and Sedimentation Rate
Recent advances in the fields of remote sensing and GIS provide the techniques to establish a firm geomorphological framework to the historical and archaeological studies in the Mesopotamian region. This study presents a practical... more
Recent advances in the fields of remote sensing and GIS provide the techniques to establish a firm geomorphological framework to the historical and archaeological studies in the Mesopotamian region. This study presents a practical approach for the mapping of the semi-arid, alluvial landscapes of Lower Khuzestan. As elsewhere in Mesopotamia, the landscapes here are strongly affected by anthropogenic processes, most evidently expressed by widespread irrigation patterns. The image interpretation key and map legend are therefore designed explicitly to reflect these typical alluvial and human-induced landforms. The working procedure is based on easily accessible and inexpensive source material, notably Landsat and CORONA imagery, SRTM elevation data and readily available topographical maps, and was successfully applied in a case study on the evolution of the Jarrahi River. The resulting map, together with information from other disciplines, provided insights into the complex landscape evolution of the study area and a useful base for further research.