Welcome to the website of the project TraIL. Tracing Labour in Islamicate Legal Traditions.

TraIL investigates the socio-legal history of labour in Islamicate societies from the 10th to the 20th century. Adopting a longue durée perspective, the project explores historical transformations of labour through the lenses of three intersecting fields: global labour history, gender studies, and Islamic legal studies.

By integrating conceptualizations of labour rooted in Islamicate legal traditions—with their distinct logics and dynamics—TraIL contributes to a deeper, more nuanced and less Eurocentric understanding of labour across historical periods and regions.

TraIL is an SNSF Starting Grant project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. It is hosted at the Middle East and Muslim Societies Unit within the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies.