Asia and the World

Mujeeb's doctoral and postdoctoral research projects share an important approach to historical studies: the application of comparative studies and area studies to complicate local narratives and develop transcultural histories. In his doctoral project, Mujeeb demonstrated the complicated nature of early Japan's medical literary tradition by investigating the complexities of medical literature on the continent. This ostensibly local Japanese tradition included both works traditionally part of the Sino-Korean tradition and those associated with other intellectual disciplines. In particular, Mujeeb was able to show the transcultural nature of medical knowledge during the medieval period, its manifestation in early Japan, and nature of appropriation. This theme, continued in his postdoctoral research, examined the concept of Japan and East Asia with the Islamic world and Europe/the Middle East/Central and South Asia (the extent of the Greco-Roman and Islamic worlds). His postdoctoral project therefore applies the same comparative and area studies frameworks in the examination of medical literary traditions during the medieval period. In this research, India serves as an important point of reference, as it influences both medicine in the Islamic world and early Japan, directly and indirectly. Therefore, this new project focuses not only on India, but also on different streams of knowledge in the nascent traditions of Japan and the Islamic world to understand how the medicine of neighbors is necessarily transcultural as a result of its cross-cultural origins. At the same time, it reveals broader connections between the two nascent traditions in their similar efforts to localize these cross-cultural traditions by understanding their use of foreign medical concepts and their inclusion of local concepts of health into these foreign systems.

Mujeeb intends to publish at least one monograph that considers the place of Asia within the larger world from the perspective of Japan in East Asia and then Japan and East Asia in the world as well as the Arab-Islamic world in Western Eurasia and the Islamicate world within the world.