| FT-265301-19 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Kristina Lynn Richardson | Race, Language, and Roma Culture in the Islamic Middle Ages | 6/1/2019 - 7/31/2019 | $6,000.00 | Kristina | Lynn | Richardson | | | | University of Virginia | Flushing | NY | 11367-1575 | USA | 2019 | Near and Middle Eastern History | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 | Research and writing leading to publication of a book on Roma culture and language in the Islamic Middle Ages.
Historians of the Roma (Gypsies) work under the assumption that the earliest written records about their subject were produced in fifteenth-century Europe. My recent work identifying the classical Arabic term for Roma and Roma-affiliated groups (ghuraba’), along with reconstructing their medieval sin dialect and translating sin prose and poetry, will add complexity to the constructions of medieval racial categories, demographic studies, historical linguistics, and the social history of nomads. Sin is still spoken in Egypt and Sudan today. My proposed project of translating the minority Gypsy community’s language and culture into broader historical contexts will fundamentally transform histories of the Roma and conceptions of minorities and race in the broader premodern Middle East. |