About the FOI project
The ERC project The formation of Islam: the view from below is to write a history of the formation of Islam using the vastly important but largely neglected papyri from Egypt. Until the introduction of paper in the 10th c., papyrus was the Mediterranean world's primary writing material. Thousands of papyrus documents survive, preserving a minutely detailed transcription of daily life, as well as the only contemporary records of Islam's rise and first wave of conquests.