Peter Webb Awarded ERC Consolidator Grant for groundbreaking research on Pre-Islamic Arabia
image: Peter Webb
Dr Peter Webb (LIAS) has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant for his project Geo-Poetic Analysis of Pre-Islamic Arabia (GeoPo).
This major achievement recognises Dr Peter Webb's pioneering approach to one of the most enduring historical puzzles: the social and political world of central Arabia on the eve of Islam. Although Islam’s rise is one of the most studied transformations in world history, the structure of the society from which it emerged remains poorly understood. GeoPo aims to change that.
The project introduces a transformative method that combines close literary analysis of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry with on-the-ground geographical and epigraphic fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, newly possible thanks to recent generous permissions that enable research in the region. Pre-Islamic poetry, consisting of tens of thousands of verses composed between 525 and 625 CE, contains an unparalleled density of place names, tribal boundaries, political relationships, and social details. Scholars have traditionally overlooked this vast corpus due to concerns about authenticity, but GeoPo will resolve this by matching poetic toponyms with real locations and landscapes across Arabia. This “geo-poetic” approach enables the poetry to be re-read with unprecedented precision, demonstrating its reliability and unlocking it as a major historical source.
This ERC award (€2,000,000) marks a major milestone for Dr Webb’s research and opens a new chapter in the study of pre-Islamic Arabia. By reopening what early Muslim scholars called the “Arabs’ Archive,” GeoPo promises to enrich our understanding of one of the most significant turning points in history.
GeoPo’s team and fieldwork will be funded by the ERC and facilitated by the permission and logistical support on the ground from the Heritage Commission of the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture. This major collaborative project will be hosted at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), Leiden University, and is set to commence in mid-2026.
Congratulations to Dr Webb on this outstanding achievement!