The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers

The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers PDF Author: A. Asa Eger
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607328771
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
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

The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers

The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers PDF Author: A. Asa Eger
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607328771
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book

Book Description
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

Mapping Frontiers Across Medieval Islam

Mapping Frontiers Across Medieval Islam PDF Author: Travis Zadeh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786721317
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
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.

The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier

The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier PDF Author: A. Asa Eger
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857726854
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
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.

Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography

Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography PDF Author: Ralph W. Brauer
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
ISBN: 9780871698568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
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)

Mapping Frontiers Across Medieval Islam

Mapping Frontiers Across Medieval Islam PDF Author: Travis E. Zadeh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780755692859
Category : Abbasids
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
"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.

The Archaeology of the Frontier in the Medieval Near East

The Archaeology of the Frontier in the Medieval Near East PDF Author: Scott Redford
Publisher: Archaeological Institute of America
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
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.

The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology

The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology PDF Author: Bethany Walker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199987882
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1024

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Book Description
Born from the fields of Islamic art and architectural history, the archaeological study of the Islamic societies is a relatively young discipline. With its roots in the colonial periods of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its rapid development since the 1980s warrants a reevaluation of where the field stands today. This Handbook represents for the first time a survey of Islamic archaeology on a global scale, describing its disciplinary development and offering candid critiques of the state of the field today in the Central Islamic Lands, the Islamic West, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The international contributors to the volume address such themes as the timing and process of Islamization, the problems of periodization and regionalism in material culture, cities and countryside, cultural hybridity, cultural and religious diversity, natural resource management, international trade in the later historical periods, and migration. Critical assessments of the ways in which archaeologists today engage with Islamic cultural heritage and local communities closes the volume, highlighting the ethical issues related to studying living cultures and religions. Richly illustrated, with extensive citations, it is the reference work on the debates that drive the field today.

Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700–c.1500

Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700–c.1500 PDF Author: Catherine Holmes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009021907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 706

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Book Description
This comparative study explores three key cultural and political spheres – the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from Central Asia to the Atlantic – roughly from the emergence of Islam to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers' interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean.

The Eastern Frontier

The Eastern Frontier PDF Author: Robert Haug
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178831722X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
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.

Everyday Cosmopolitanisms

Everyday Cosmopolitanisms PDF Author: Kate Franklin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520380932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
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.