フロンティアと驚異 --11-13世紀イスラーム文獻におけるインドの表象を巡って--

Abstract

It has been variously argued how we can differentiate between "this side" and "that side" when considering the frontiers/boundaries between certain areas. One of the suggestive idea on this is that we can assume two kind of frontiers, namely frontiers as historical construct and frontiers between civilizations, the former of which is the products of military expeditions or diplomatic negotiations, and the latter being the boundaries between idealized cultural or civilizational spheres. In this paper it is aimed to consider whether such two kinds of frontiers can be observed between Islamic world and Indian world, especially on historical literatures, by means of focusing on the description of 'ajā'ib (wonders, marvels), the notion which is closely connected to what is beyond the frontier. To conclude, it is confirmed that the image of India as a land of 'ajā'ib continued in the minds of Muslim writers well into the 13th century, which is at variance with the actual historical events such as the Muslim conquest of north India since the 11th century. This variance may well be related to the duplicity of frontiers described above.