Das vom FWF finanzierte Projekt Shahi – Cultural Formation and Transformation: Shahi Art and Architecture from Afghanistan to the West Tibetan Frontier at the Dawn of the Islamic Era, geleitet von Deborah Klimburg-Salter, wird am Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Documentation of Inner and South Asian Cultural History an der Universität Wien durchgeführt und sowohl vom Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien als auch vom ACDH unterstützt.

Das Ziel des Projekts “is to define a narrative cultural history of the Shahi kingdoms (7th to 10th century). Due to their extensive temporal and geographic parameters — extending from Afghanistan to the borders of the Tibetan empire — the kingdoms played a pivotal role in the history of Inner and South Asia. Despite its importance for the history of later Buddhist art and the formation of Islamic art, the cultural history of this almost 300-year period has never been the focus of dedicated research.

This research makes a major contribution to digital humanities through the innovative methods used to explain for the first time the cultural history of a vast area that is of tremendous geographic and temporal significance (today within the modern states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India). A central element of our research is to document and systematize comprehensive data, cross referencing the entire corpus of the material culture of the vast Shahi kingdoms. The resultant database will be linked to the Digital Maps of the Shahi kingdoms and the Bibliographic Database (BibDB). Modern digital methods will allow the quantitative and qualitative analysis of primary sources (texts; inscriptions; numismatic, art historical, and archaeological data) plus completely new data derived from the analysis of the materials and techniques of manufacture of three groups of artifacts.” (Quelle)

Ein weiteres FWF-Projekt finanziert die gleichzeitige analoge und digitale Publikation der Ergebnisse des Projekts.

Das ACDH-CH fungiert als Kooperationspartner über OpenAtlas, eine Datenbanksoftware, die die Sammlung, Verarbeitung und Verwaltung von Forschungsdaten ermöglicht und als Basis für die Webanwendung des Projekts dient.