Chinese Studies

Dr. Alexander Jost 曹大龍

Associated Researcher of the project  "Translating Western Science, Technology and Medicine to Late Ming China", Senior Scientist (Salzburg University)
Academic Career

  • 2019- Senior Scientist, Department of History, Salzburg University
  • 2014-2019 Senior Lecturer, Department of Chinese Studies and Managing Director of the European Centre for Chinese Studies at Peking University
  • 2014 PhD Sinology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Tübingen
  • 2011 MA Sinology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Tübingen
  • 2007 MA Islamic Studies and Rhetoric, Faculty of Cultural Studies, University of Tübingen

Research Focus
Trained in Islamic as well as Chinese Studies, Dr. Jost specializes on topics related to the China and the Islamic world, such as the role of Muslims in Chinese society and the history of communication between China and the Middle East. Another research field is the history of Chinese science and technology, in particular aspects of invention, innovation and knowledge transfer.

Wet copper production facilities in Yongping 永平, Jiangxi. Facilities built to obtain copper from vitriol water with methods similar to the ones described in sources from the Song period. Picture taken during field research in March 2012.

Major Publications
Jost is author of From Secret Knowledge to Mass Production: The Wet Copper Industry of Song China (960-1279) (Brill, forthcoming), a thorough investigation into the rise and fall of hydrometallurgical technology in China. He has also published English and German translations of the Daye Fu 大冶賦, or "Rhapsody of the Great Smelting", an epic prose poem on minting and metallurgy from the Song period. His paper "'He Did not Kiss the Earth between his Hands' – Arabic Sources on the Arrivals of the Zheng He Fleet in Aden and Mecca (1419-1432)" is being translated into Chinese.

19th-century Chinese depiction of the Haram in Mecca. The Great Mosque and the Ka’aba in Mecca as depicted in Ma Dexin’s 馬德新 «Chaojin tuji» 朝觐途記 (Record of a pilgrimage journey) about his travels to Mecca and other places in the Middle East between 1841 and 1849, translated from arabic and published as a woodblock print in Chinese by his disciple Ma Anli 馬安禮 in 1861. Collected in «Huizu diancang quanshu» 中国回族典藏全书, Vol. 223, pp. 210-11.