The Archaeology Of Medieval Islamic Frontiers

Author : A. Asa Eger
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2019-05-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781607328773

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The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers by A. Asa Eger Pdf

The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers demonstrates that different areas of the Islamic polity previously understood as “minor frontiers” were, in fact, of substantial importance to state formation. Contributors explore different conceptualizations of “border,” the importance of which previously went unrecognized, examining frontiers in regions including the Magreb, the Mediterranean, Egypt, Nubia, and the Caucasus through a combination of archaeological and documentary evidence. Chapters highlight the significance of these respective regions to the emergence of new sociopolitical, cultural, and economic practices within the Islamic world. These studies successfully overcome the dichotomy of civilization’s center and peripheries in academic discourse by presenting the actual dynamics of identity formation and the definition, both spatial and cultural, of boundaries. The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers is a rare combination of a new reading of written evidence with results from archaeological studies that will modify established opinions on the character of the Islamic frontiers and stimulate similar studies for other regions. The book will be relevant to medieval Islamic studies as well as to research in the medieval world in general. Contributors: Karim Alizadeh, Jana Eger, Kathryn J. Franklin, Renata Holod, Tarek Kahlaoui, Anthony J. Lauricella, Ian Randall, Giovanni R. Ruffini, Tasha Vorderstrasse

Author : A. Asa Eger
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2014-11-18
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780857726858

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The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier by A. Asa Eger Pdf

The retreat of the Byzantine army from Syria in around 650 CE, in advance of the approaching Arab armies, is one that has resounded emphatically in the works of both Islamic and Christian writers, and created an enduring motif: that of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier. For centuries, Byzantine and Islamic scholars have evocatively sketched a contested border: the annual raids between the two, the line of fortified fortresses defending Islamic lands, the no-man's land in between and the birth of jihad. In their early representations of a Muslim-Christian encounter, accounts of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier are charged with significance for a future 'clash of civilizations' that often envisions a polarised world. A. Asa Eger examines the two aspects of this frontier: its physical and ideological ones. By highlighting the archaeological study of the real and material frontier, as well as acknowledging its ideological military and religious implications, he offers a more complex vision of this dividing line than has been traditionally disseminated.With analysis grounded in archaeological evidence as well the relevant historical texts, Eger brings together a nuanced exploration of this vital element of medieval history. In this way, Eger's volume contributes to a more complex vision of the frontier than traditional historical views by bringing to the fore the layers of a real ecological frontier of settlement and interaction. For Eger, exposing the settlements and communities of the frontier constitutes a crucial gesture for understanding the interaction of two civilizations in a contested yet connected world. This work is thus vital for students of not only the medieval period and Byzantine and Islamic studies, but also for readers attempting to understand the ways in which frontiers and borders shape the construction of identity while functioning outside the traditionally understood state.

Author : Travis Zadeh
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 564 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2017-02-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9781786721310

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Mapping Frontiers Across Medieval Islam by Travis Zadeh Pdf

The story of the 9th-century caliphal mission from Baghdad to discover the legendary barrier against the apocalyptic nations of Gog and Magog mentioned in the Quran, has been either dismissed as superstition or treated as historical fact. By exploring the intellectual and literary history surrounding the production and early reception of this adventure, Travis Zadeh traces the conceptualization of frontiers within early 'Abbasid society and re-evaluates the modern treatment of marvels and monsters inhabiting medieval Islamic descriptions of the world. Examining the roles of translation, descriptive geography, and salvation history in the projection of early 'Abbasid imperial power, this book is essential for all those interested in Islamic studies, the 'Abbasid dynasty and its politics, geography, religion, Arabic and Persian literature and European Orientalism.

Author : Ralph W. Brauer
Publisher : American Philosophical Society
Page : 84 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : History
ISBN : 0871698560

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Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography by Ralph W. Brauer Pdf

Contents: Section 1: The Geographical Concepts: Boundaries in Arabo-Islamic Cartography; and Boundaries in the Arabo-Islamic Geographic and Historical Texts; Section 2: Travelers' Experiences at Internal Boundaries, the Area Concept in Arabo-Islamic Geography, and the Relation of Zone-Boundaries to Basic Tenets of Arabo-Islamic Culture; Boundaries in the Writings of Travelers in the Islamic Empire; The Concept of Area in Muslim Geographic Thought; and Boundary Characteristics as a Consequence of Embedded Attidues of the Culture: Section 3: Genesis of Boundary Zones Involving non-Arab Muslim States; Section 4: Summary and Conclusions. Illustrations. A reprint of the American Philosophical Society Transactions 85-6 (1985)

Author : Scott Redford,Gil Stein,Naomi Frances Miller
Publisher : Archaeological Institute of America
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015049712030

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The Archaeology of the Frontier in the Medieval Near East by Scott Redford,Gil Stein,Naomi Frances Miller Pdf

Excavations that begain in 1981 in Gritille, Turkey, were in search of Bronze and Iron Age material but, instead, archaeologists discovered important evidence for the medieval boundary between Islam and Christianity.

Author : Travis E. Zadeh
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Abbasids
ISBN : 0755692853

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Mapping Frontiers Across Medieval Islam by Travis E. Zadeh Pdf

"The story of the 9th-century caliphal mission from Baghdad to discover the legendary barrier against the apocalyptic nations of Gog and Magog mentioned in the Quran has been either dismissed as superstition or treated as historical fact. By exploring the intellectual and literary history surrounding the production and early reception of this adventure, Travis Zadeh traces the conceptualization of frontiers within early 'Abbasid society and re-evaluates the modern treatment of marvels and monsters inhabiting medieval Islamic descriptions of the world."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Author : Robert Haug
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2019-06-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9781788317221

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The Eastern Frontier by Robert Haug Pdf

Transoxania, Khurasan, and ?ukharistan – which comprise large parts of today's Central Asia – have long been an important frontier zone. In the late antique and early medieval periods, the region was both an eastern political boundary for Persian and Islamic empires and a cultural border separating communities of sedentary farmers from pastoral-nomads. Given its peripheral location, the history of the 'eastern frontier' in this period has often been shown through the lens of expanding empires. However, in this book, Robert Haug argues for a pre-modern Central Asia with a discrete identity, a region that is not just a transitory space or the far-flung corner of empires, but its own historical entity. From this locally specific perspective, the book takes the reader on a 900-year tour of the area, from Sasanian control, through the Umayyads and Abbasids, to the quasi-independent dynasties of the Tahirids and the Samanids. Drawing on an impressive array of literary, numismatic and archaeological sources, Haug reveals the unique and varied challenges the eastern frontier presented to imperial powers that strove to integrate the area into their greater systems. This is essential reading for all scholars working on early Islamic, Iranian and Central Asian history, as well as those with an interest in the dynamics of frontier regions.

Author : Kate Franklin
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2021-09-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520380936

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Everyday Cosmopolitanisms by Kate Franklin Pdf

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Widely studied and hotly debated, the Silk Road is often viewed as a precursor to contemporary globalization, the merchants who traversed it as early agents of cultural exchange. Missing are the lives of the ordinary people who inhabited the route and contributed as much to its development as their itinerant counterparts. In this book, Kate Franklin takes the highlands of medieval Armenia as a compelling case study for examining how early globalization and everyday life intertwined along the Silk Road. She argues that Armenia—and the Silk Road itself—consisted of the overlapping worlds created by a diverse assortment of people: not only long-distance travelers but also the local rulers and subjects who lived in Armenia’s mountain valleys and along its highways. Franklin guides the reader through increasingly intimate scales of global exchange to highlight the cosmopolitan dimensions of daily life, as she vividly reconstructs how people living in and passing through the medieval Caucasus understood the world and their place within it. With its innovative focus on the far-reaching implications of local practices, Everyday Cosmopolitanisms brings the study of medieval Eurasia into relation with contemporary investigations of cosmopolitanism and globalization, challenging persistent divisions between modern and medieval, global and quotidian.

Author : Valentina A. Grasso
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2023-02-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9781009252973

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Pre-Islamic Arabia by Valentina A. Grasso Pdf

This book delves into the political and cultural developments of pre-Islamic Arabia, focusing on the religious attitudes of the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and its northern extension into the Syrian desert. Between the third and the seventh century, Arabia was on the edge of three great empires (Iran, Rome and Aksūm) and at the centre of a lucrative network of trade routes. Valentina Grasso offers an interpretative framework which contextualizes the choice of Arabian elites to become Jewish sympathisers and/or convert to Christianity and Islam by probing the mobilization of faith in the shaping of Arabian identities. For the first time the Arabians of the period are granted autonomy from marginalizing (mostly Western) narratives framing them as 'barbarians' inhabiting the fringes of Rome and Iran and/or deterministic analyses in which they are depicted retrospectively as exemplified by the Muslims' definition of the period as Jāhilīyah, 'ignorance'.

Author : Panayiotis Panayides,Ine Jacobs
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 589 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2023-01-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781789258752

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Cyprus in the Long Late Antiquity by Panayiotis Panayides,Ine Jacobs Pdf

Cyprus was a thriving and densely populated late antique province. Contrary to what used to be thought, the Arab raids of the mid-seventh century did not abruptly bring the island’s prosperity to an end. Recent research instead highlights long-lasting continuity in both urban and rural contexts. This volume brings together historians and archaeologists working on diverse aspects of Cyprus between the sixth and eighth centuries. They discuss topics as varied as rural prosperity, urban endurance, artisanal production, civic and private religion and maritime connectivity. The role of the imperial administration and of the Church is touched upon in several contributions. Other articles place Cyprus back into its wider Mediterranean context. Together, they produce a comprehensive impression of the quality of life on the island in the long late antiquity.

Author : Eberhard Sauer,Jebrael Nokandeh,Hamid Omrani Rekavandi
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 928 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2023-03-13
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781789254655

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Ancient Arms Race: Antiquity's Largest Fortresses and Sasanian Military Networks of Northern Iran by Eberhard Sauer,Jebrael Nokandeh,Hamid Omrani Rekavandi Pdf

Which ancient army boasted the largest fortifications, and how did the competitive build-up of military capabilities shape world history? Few realise that imperial Rome had a serious competitor in Late Antiquity. Late Roman legionary bases, normally no larger than 5ha, were dwarfed by Sasanian fortresses, often covering 40ha, sometimes even 125-175ha. The latter did not necessarily house permanent garrisons but sheltered large armies temporarily – perhaps numbering 10-50,000 men each. Even Roman camps and fortresses of the Early and High Empire did not reach the dimensions of their later Persian counterparts. The longest fort-lined wall of the late antique world was also Persian. Persia built up, between the fourth and sixth centuries AD, the most massive military infrastructure of any ancient or medieval Near Eastern empire – if not the ancient and medieval world. Much of the known defensive network was directed against Persia’s powerful neighbours in the north rather than the west. This may reflect differences in archaeological visibility more than troop numbers. Urban garrisons in the Romano-Persian frontier zone are much harder to identify than vast geometric compounds in marginal northern lands. Recent excavations in Iran have enabled us to precision-date two of the largest fortresses of Southwest Asia, both larger than any in the Roman world. Excavations in a Gorgan Wall fort have shed much new light on frontier life, and we have unearthed a massive bridge nearby. A sonar survey has traced the terminal of the Tammisheh Wall, now submerged under the waters of the Caspian Sea. Further work has focused on a vast city and settlements in the hinterland. Persia’s Imperial Power, our previous project, had already shed much light on the Great Wall of Gorgan, but it was our recent fieldwork that has thrown the sheer magnitude of Sasanian military infrastructure into sharp relief.

Author : A. Asa Eger
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2014-11-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780857736741

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The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier by A. Asa Eger Pdf

The retreat of the Byzantine army from Syria in around 650 CE, in advance of the approaching Arab armies, is one that has resounded emphatically in the works of both Islamic and Christian writers, and created an enduring motif: that of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier. For centuries, Byzantine and Islamic scholars have evocatively sketched a contested border: the annual raids between the two, the line of fortified fortresses defending Islamic lands, the no-man's land in between and the birth of jihad. In their early representations of a Muslim-Christian encounter, accounts of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier are charged with significance for a future 'clash of civilizations' that often envisions a polarised world. A. Asa Eger examines the two aspects of this frontier: its physical and ideological ones. By highlighting the archaeological study of the real and material frontier, as well as acknowledging its ideological military and religious implications, he offers a more complex vision of this dividing line than has been traditionally disseminated. With analysis grounded in archaeological evidence as well the relevant historical texts, Eger brings together a nuanced exploration of this vital element of medieval history.

Author : Geoffrey Khan
Publisher : Open Book Publishers
Page : 856 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2024-05-06
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9781805112327

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Arabic Documents from Medieval Nubia by Geoffrey Khan Pdf

This volume presents an edition of a corpus of Arabic documents datable to the 11th and 12th centuries AD that were discovered by the Egypt Exploration Society at the site of the Nubian fortress Qaṣr Ibrīm (situated in the south of modern Egypt). The edition of the documents is accompanied by English translations and a detailed analysis of their contents and historical background. The documents throw new light on relations between Egypt and Nubia in the High Middle Ages, especially in the Fatimid period. They are of particular importance since previous historical studies from the perspective of Arabic sources have been almost entirely based on historiographical sources, often written a long time after the events described and distorted by tendentious points of view.

Author : Nikolas Bakirtzis,Luca Zavagno
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 719 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2024-01-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9780429515750

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The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City by Nikolas Bakirtzis,Luca Zavagno Pdf

The Byzantine world contained many important cities throughout its empire. Although it was not ‘urban’ in the sense of the word today, its cities played a far more fundamental role than those of its European neighbors. This book, through a collection of twenty-four chapters, discusses aspects of, and different approaches to, Byzantine urbanism from the early to late Byzantine periods. It provides both a chronological and thematic perspective to the study of Byzantine cities, bringing together literary, documentary, and archival sources with archaeological results, material culture, art, and architecture, resulting in a rich synthesis of the variety of regional and sub-regional transformations of Byzantine urban landscapes. Organized into four sections, this book covers: Theory and Historiography, Geography and Economy, Architecture and the Built Environment, and Daily Life and Material Culture. It includes more specialized accounts that address the centripetal role of Constantinople and its broader influence across the empire. Such new perspectives help to challenge the historiographical balance between ‘margins and metropolis,’ and also to include geographical areas often regarded as peripheral, like the coastal urban centers of the Byzantine Mediterranean as well as cities on islands, such as Crete, Cyprus, and Sicily which have more recently yielded well-excavated and stratigraphically sound urban sites. The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City provides both an overview and detailed study of the Byzantine city to specialist scholars, students, and enthusiasts alike and, therefore, will appeal to all those interested in Byzantine urbanism and society, as well as those studying medieval society in general.

Author : Pamela A. Patton,Maria Alessia Rossi
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2023
Category : Art, Medieval
ISBN : 9780271095868

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Out of Bounds by Pamela A. Patton,Maria Alessia Rossi Pdf