Editor’s introduction: Beyond Arabic in premodern Islamic worlds

Writing a history of multilingualism in the premodern Islamic world(s)Footnote1is very challenging; it requires our limited vision and methods to go beyond traditional area studies and overcome long-established prejudices related to race and ethnicity rooted in religious chauvinism. The task also compels us to confront the limitations of national, linguistic, religious, and cultural perspectives produced in both the modern and premodern Islamic world(s). I would argue that a theoretical frame for studying Arab-Islamic multilingualism, even in premodern periods, must draw from the insights of Postcolonial Studies, which takes into account the epistemic and ontological consequences of colonization or imperialism. Though colonizers, in premodernity and modernity alike, have tried to impose certain languages or ideologies on the colonized, the result has always been multilingualism, hybridity, and the co-existence or clashing of languages and cultures. This special issue of postmedieval, ‘Beyond Arabic: Multilingual poetics in premodern Islamic worlds,’ starts from the premise that, despite the obvious dominance of the Arabic language in religious, cultural, and political life, premodern Islamic worlds were fundamentally multilingual and engaged deeply in comparative practices across a range of languages and literary traditions that co-existed for a long time in harmony.