Network Members: Stefanie Schmidt

 

Stefanie Schmidt

I am a PostDoc researcher at Freie University of Berlin where I am currently the Principal Investigator of the project “The economy of Byzantine and Early Islamic Aswan mirrored in papyri, ostraca, inscriptions and the archeological evidence” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG, project no. 421143221). The study aims at investigating economic change from a primarily Christian to a Muslim society and will be published in a monograph. I hold a PhD in Ancient History and developed a special focus in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic papyrology as well as Arabic epigraphy.

My research interests include the Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic economy (1^st to 10^th cent. CE) and are inspired by the interest to understand the economic and social drive behind transitional processes including which impact social norms and institutions may have had on these developments (e.g. City and Economy in Roman Egypt (transl.) (2014)). I published on the Muslim poll-tax in Egypt and proposed a new understanding of this hitherto as a Muslim institution understood tax (e.g. Schmidt, S., “Adopting and Adapting – Zur Kopfsteuer im frühislamischen Ägypten”, in: Proceedings of the 28^th International Congress of Papyrology, August 1–6, 2016, Barcelona, Barcelona 2019, 586–593).

My most recent study is a holistic analysis of the formulaic patterns of about 1.500 Arabic tombstones from the Museum in Cairo in which I identify standard formulas for tombstones from early Islamic Aswan and Cairo (Schmidt, S., “The problem of the origin of tombstones from Aswan in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo”, Chronique d’Egypte 96/192 (2021), 353-370).

More info at: https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/StefanieSchmidt