Masayuki AKAHORI

From 1988 to 1991, I conducted a fieldwork among the settled Bedouins in the Western Desert of Egypt. Since then, I have been studying Arab tribal organizations, especially focusing on the ways how the various types of outsiders are incorporated into tribes.

As the descendants of saints, who became Bedouins, are typical examples of those outsiders, I set about studies on Islamic saint veneration, organizing a joint research group for on beliefs and practices which I named Sufism-saint veneration complex. In recent years, we have expanded our range of interests to include Christianity, covered beliefs in holy relics, and accordingly conducted researches in Turkey, Uzbekistan, China, Indonesia, and other countries.

In my first three-year stay in Egypt, I got acquainted with some archaeologists working in Luxor and Giza. Then, in 1996, I spent a month in the Jazira Region of Syria with an archaeological research team headed by Prof. Toshio Matsutani, late Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo. In 2009, I also participated in research in the same region as part of a research project led by Prof. Katsuhiko Ohnuma of the Institute for Cultural Studies of Ancient Iraq at Kokushikan University.

As to the concept of “tribe,” there is a gap between anthropology and archaeology, which I hope to bridge in this project.

Selected publications
・Akahori Masayuki (2017) “Relationship between God and People in the Three-Axis Framework of Sufism: A Comparison to Japan’s Traditional Religion, Shintō.” In The Bridge of Cultures: Potentiality of Sufism, edited by Tonaga Yasushi, pp. 31¬40. Kyoto: Kenan Rifai Center for Sufi Studies.
・Akahori Masayuki (2015) “Towards a Dynamic View of Sufism and Saint Veneration in Islam: An Anthropological Approach” Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Areas Studies 8: 57–68.
・Akahori Masayuki (2013) “Islamic Saints and the Islam of Saints: A Study of Popular Religion.” The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies 31: 3–16.
・Akahori Masayuki, Kuroki Hidemitsu, and Moriyama Teruaki (2010) “Geo-historical Survey of Ghanem al-Ali and Wadi al-Rahum.” Al-Rāfidān 31: 97–99.
・Akahori Masayuki (2010) “Preliminary Anthropological Survey of the Villages in Wādī Raḥūm and around Tall Ghānim al-‘Alī,” Al-Rāfidān Special Issue 2010: Formation of Tribal Communities: Integrated Research in the Middle Euphrates, Syria, pp. 91–96.