Medieval History Commons^™

Ritual, Spectacle, And Theatre In Late Medieval Seville (Chapter 1), Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

From the fall of Islamic Išbīliya in 1248 to the conquest of the New World, Seville was a nexus of economic and religious power where interconfessional living among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was negotiated on public stages. From out of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies of faith, hybrid performance culture emerged in spectacles of miraculous transformation, disciplinary processionals, and representations of religious identity. Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville reinvigorates the study of medieval Iberian theater by revealing the ways in which public expressions of devotion, penance, and power fostered cultural reciprocity, rehearsed religious difference, and ultimately helped establish Seville …

The Battle Of Tours Reconsidered, Paul Aitchison

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

This paper examines the Battle of Tours/Poitiers in 732 between the Merovingian Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, and the Umayyad governor-general of al-Andalus in modern-day Spain, Abdul Rahman Al-Ghafiqi. Since the pivotal works of Sir Edward Gibbons were published in 1776, the battle has been seen as keeping Europe from falling completely to Islam. More recent scholarship highlights the battle as pivotal in Charles's quest to consolidate power in his ultimately successful bid to create a new power in western Europe, the Carolingian dynasty, which would eventually be created in the crowning as the Holy Roman Empire his grandson, …

Noble Pagans And Satanic Saracens: Literary Portrayals Of Islam In Medieval Italy And Iberia., John Spencer Jones

Honors Theses

The medieval Christian world is generally associated with a kind of religious zealotry that would seem to preclude the development of nuanced understandings of the religious Other. The heightened interreligious contact in regions such as Iberia and the Italian Peninsula, however, made room for relationships with members of other faiths that resulted in more developed ideas about these other creeds. This honors thesis examines the portrayal of Islam in the Christian literature of medieval Italy and Iberia, dating from the late 11th century to the middle of the 14th century. It categorizes a few types of the literary “use” of …

Mes 160: Classical Islamic Literature & Civilization, Kirsten Beck

Open Educational Resources

This open resource includes a syllabus, class schedule, grading rubrics, and guidelines/examples for digital poetry annotation.

The course website can be found here: http://mes160.social.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/

In this course, we will take a journey through history, literature, and ideas, traveling through Islamic civilization from 600-1250 CE. We will learn about and contemplate the major events and concerns of Islamic civilization, from the dawn of Islam through the expansions, transformations, and fragmentations of Islamic empires, up until the end of the 13th century. Works of Islamic literature from a variety of genres will fuel our journey. Along the way, we will learn how …

John Of Damascus’S Theological Methodology: An Effective Way To Answer Islamic Objections, Sherene N. Khouri

Eleutheria: John W. Rawlings School of Divinity Academic Journal

John of Damascus, who is considered one of the three pillars of the Eastern Orthodox church, was not known in the West for a long time. Few scholars studied his work in recent years and highlighted some aspects of his Summa, which is considered the first systematic theology work in the history of Christianity. This paper will have three sections: the first section shall discuss the life and the educational background of John. The second section shall discuss and evaluate John’s theological methodology. The third section shall discuss his methodology in answering the Saracen. This paper aims to highlight …

Lost & Found: New Harvest, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context.

Set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the 12th century, a great crossroads of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The Lost & Found games project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens …

Modern Intolerance And The Medieval Crusades [Excerpted From Whose Middle Ages?], Nicholas L. Paul

History

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the non-specialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where humans have dug for meaning into the medieval past and brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each author teases out the stakes of a history that has refused to remain past and uses the tools of the academy …

The Dark And Middle Ages, Edward Jayne

English Faculty Publications

For the most part only Plato's teachings supported by a limited version of Aristotelian cosmology supportive of Platonism survived the decline of ancient Greek philosophy during the Roman Empire. Christianity later prevailed, and toward the end of the Middle Ages Aristotle’s secular perspective was only taken into account by Arab philosophers such as Averroes and Avicenna. After the collapse of Arab civilization during the twelfth century, the secular concept of a double truth between belief and reason put philosophy on equal footing with religion in such universities as Cordoba and the University of Paris. After a large assortment of ancient …

The Transition Of Papal Politicization As Demonstrated Through Pope Gregory Ix And His Adversaries In The Thirteenth Century, Emily Northcutt

History ETDs

Gregory IX (pope 1227-41) asserted his papal authority over secular and religious leaders in an attempt to showcase the strength of the church. His pontificate took place between those of the famous Innocent III (1198-1216) and the powerful Innocent IV (1243-54), meaning that Gregory’s accomplishments are often overshadowed. This thesis aims to prove that Gregory is a worthy protagonist and a worthy subject of study in his own right. Comparing Gregory’s pontificate to those of his immediate predecessor and successor highlights the shifting nature of Gregory’s priorities. This work examines Gregory’s relationship with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II regarding crusades …

Tmg 4 (2018): Seals--Making And Marking Connections Across The Medieval World, Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

The Medieval Globe Books

This book is a publication of Arc Humanities Press and is available on ProjectMUSE. After March 31, 2022, this title will no longer be available on ScholarWorks at WMU.

Extensive geographic coverage, including China, South East Asia, Arabia, Sasanian Persia, the Muslim Empire, the Byzantine empire, and Western Europe allows the essays gathered in this volume to offer a well differentiated examination of seals and sealing practices between 400 and 1500 CE. Contributors expose rather than assume the inter-subjective, transnational, and transcultural connectivity at work within the varied processes mediated by seals and sealing – representation, authorization, identification, and …

The Edict Of King Gälawdéwos Against The Illegal Slave Trade In Christians: Ethiopia, 1548 -- Featured Source, Habtamu M. Tegegne

The Medieval Globe

This study explores the relationship between documentary-legal prescriptions of slavery and actual practice in late medieval Ethiopia. It does so in light of a newly discovered edict against the enslavement of freeborn Christians and the commercial sale of Christians to non-Christian owners, issued in 1548 by King Gälawdéwos. It demonstrates that this edict emerged from a dramatic and violent encounter between the neighboring Sultanate of Adal, which was supported by Muslim powers, and the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, which had the support of expanding European powers in the region. The edict was therefore issued to reaffirm and clarify the principles …

Mutilation And The Law In Early Medieval Europe And India: A Comparative Study -- Open Access, Patricia E. Skinner

The Medieval Globe

This essay examines the similarities and differences between legal and other precepts outlining corporal punishment in ancient and medieval Indian and early medieval European laws. Responding to Susan Reynolds’s call for such comparisons, it begins by outlining the challenges in doing so. Primarily, the fragmented political landscape of both regions, where multiple rulers and spheres of authority existed side-by-side, make a direct comparison complex. Moreover, the time slippage between what scholarship understands to be the “early medieval” period in each region needs to be taken into account, particularly given the persistence of some provisions and the adapatation or abandonment of …

The Geographic And Social Mobility Of Slaves: The Rise Of Shajar Al’Durr, A Slave-Concubine In Thirteenth-Century Egypt, D. Fairchild Ruggles

The Medieval Globe

Large numbers of outsiders were integrated into premodern Islamic society through the institution of slavery. Many were boys of non-Muslim parents drafted into the army, and some rose to become powerful political figures; in Egypt, after the death of Ayyubid sultan al-Salih (r. 1240–49), they formed a dynasty known as the Mamluks. For slave concubines, the route to power was different: Shajar al-Durr, the concubine of al-Salih, gained enormous status when she gave birth to his son and later governed as regent in her son’s name, converting to Islam after her husband’s death and then reigning as sultan in her …

The First Crusade, Was It Christian?, David C. Taylor Jr

David C Taylor Jr

On February 5th, 2015, President Barack Obama addressed the audience at the National Prayer Breakfast. During this breakfast he made comments about the Islamic State and the Crusades that sent waves throughout the religious world. In his speech, he claimed that just like the Islamic State is doing things, terrible things, in the name of Islam, we should remember that terrible things were done in the name of Christ during the Crusades. While it did not sit well with members of the church, the question must be asked. Was he right? This paper will examine the First Crusade, its cause, …

"Veiled With A Special Veil": Rabi'a Of Basra And The Ascetic Reconfiguration Of Identity, Olga Solovieva

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Inimitability Versus Translatability: The Structure Of Literary Meaning In Arabo-Persian Poetics, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

Power, Piety, And Rebellion In Al-Andalus: The Reception And Influence Of Al-Ghazali's Political Philosophy In Islamic Iberia, Patrick Harris

The Hilltop Review

Dissident Muslims have utilized discourses of pious rulership to justify their revolt against centralized authority at least as far back as the Kharijite rebellion in the 1st/7th century, which, in turn, resulted in the first major schism within the Islamic community. One may, indeed, interpret the very founding of Islam, in part, as a pietist response to a Meccan regime which fostered an environment of injustice and iniquity. Thus, the need for a pious rulership has been at the heart of Islamic political sensibility, if not from its very foundation, then at least from its first division. Rebels and reformers …

Leaving The House Of Memory: Post-Soviet Traces Of Deportation Memory, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

Imam Shamil (1797–1871), Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

Beyond Anti-Semitism, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

Focusing on internal contradictions within the Israeli left, this essay considers the impact of the historical legacy of anti-Semitism on everyday thinking about Israel and the Palestinian territories. Contesting the view that to criticize Israel is to engage in anti-Semitic defamation, it offers an historical account of how Israel's actions in the West Bank have come to be immunized from conscientious criticism. It also documents how progressive media outlets in contemporary Israel have silenced or otherwise marginalized Israel's most active critics.

Secularism And Belief In Georgia’S Pankisi Gorge, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

Review Of Islam And Sufism In Daghestan, Moshe Gammer, Ed. And Daghestan And The World Of Islam, Ed. Moshe Gammer And David J. Wasserstein., Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

The Modernity Of Premodern Islam In Contemporary Daghestan, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

“The Modernity of Premodern Islam in Contemporary Daghestan,” Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life 5.2 (2011): 161-183.

Transgressive Sanctity: The Abrek In Chechen Culture, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

The ancient tradition of the abrek (bandit) was developed into a political institution during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century by Chechen and other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus as a strategy for dealing with the overwhelming military force of Russia's imperial army. During the Soviet period, the abrek became a locus for oppositional politics and arguably influenced the representations of violence and anti-colonial resistance during the recent Chechen Wars. This article is one of the first works of English-language scholarship to historicize this institution. It also marks the beginning of a book project entitled A …