Medieval Islamic History

"One of the almost forgotten and least known buildings in mediaeval al-Raqqa is its citadel. In the 1950s the citadel was completely removed. A citadel however, constitutes an important space defining complex for the historical development of a city. The citadel of al-Raqqa was located on a promontory of an elevated terrace formed by the Euphrates, situated at the southwestern corner of the citywall of al-Râfiqa.
Firstly, I will give a brief outline of the history of exploration of the citadel; secondly, some early references to a hisn al-Râfiqa; thirdly, some general remarks about the historical development of fortifications within northern Mesopotamia, the Jazîra, and fourthly, I follow the history of the citadel of al-Raqqa especially during the Ayyubid period according to the literary and photographic sources. The last and fifth point will be the exploration of the possible function of the citadel within the spatial organisation of the city. This point takes the position of the Bâb Baghdad at the southeastern corner of the city wall into consideration."

Abū Yaʻqūb al-Sijistānī’s works might be considered as some of the most clear examples of an Ismaī‘lī reading of the Neoplatonic doctrines. In his Kitāb al-Yanābīʻ there is a dichotomy: even if “mediation” is the main characteristic of the present reality, it seems that some kind of “direct” access to the spiritual dimension is possible for all humans at any moment. Both perspectives seem incompatible: if a human being can reach the universal dimension without any intermediation but his own soul, why would he need to “participate” in the daʻwa al-ʼismāʻīliyya?

‘[A] valid concept of “Islam” must denote and connote all possible “Islams,” whether abstract or “real,” mental or social’ (104)... Ahmed seeks to avoid two major pitfalls: (1) making Islam into a static essence or a category within an essentialist framework – such as proscription/prescription, ‘religion’,‘civilization’, ‘culture’, ‘orthodoxy’, etc., and (2) rendering Islam into a totally incoherent concept by conceding that there are as many islams as there are communities or individuals. Ahmed’s thesis (presented in Chapter 5) is that Islam is best conceptualized as a process of meaning-making or hermeneutical engagement in which the human agent engages with the Divine Revelation granted to Muhammad in one or more of this Revelation’s hierarchical dimensions – Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text – in order to constitute meaning for himself."

In Islam, most political and religious reform movements invoke a return to the Tradition supposedly initiated by Muḥammad in the Seventh Century. The Almohads are no exception to the rule, but they go further still: the Muslim West frees itself from the Eastern model of Islam. Legitimising his autoreferential sovereign power, ʿAbd al-Mu’min, the first Caliph of the Almohad Berber dynasty, deploys all the resources available to him: material, ideological and symbolic, regardless of mutual contradictions. Remaining faithful to the Omeyyad Caliphate tradition, he transfers the administrative capital of al-Andalus from Seville to Cordoba; he ascribes to the “unruly” Arab tribes their original mission: propagating Islam; and, most importantly, he invents a religious relic, a copy of the Qur’ān, attributed to ʿUṯmān b. ʿAffān, the third “well guided” Caliph of Islam and “writer” of the definitive Revelation text, a relic to which he reserves a genuine cult, crucial to the ideology of power which he is instigating. Henceforth, in an eschatological context, the entire Muslim West, centered on the Almohad dynasty, becomes the new cradle of the Divine Word.

Ce guide été conçu dans le cadre des travaux du Groupement d’intérêt scientifique (GIS) Moyen-Orient et mondes musulmans, pour recenser l'ensemble des bibliothèques et médiathèques françaises possédant des fonds utiles pour la recherche sur le Maghreb, le Moyen-Orient et les mondes musulmans.
Eric  Vallet  (Université  Paris  1  Panthéon-Sorbonne)  en  a coordonné  la  rédaction.

This article examines the merchant and commodity networks of Trebizond as well as routes at the regional, interregional, and international levels that connected the city to Constantinople, the rest the Black Sea, Armenia, the Near East and the Caucuses in the early Middle Ages. After a brief survey of the commercial history of Trebizond from the late antique period to the eleventh century, the economy of the Pontic region and its commercial exchanges with various regions are investigated in detail. The available evidence shows that the list of commodities exchanged between Pontos and its neighbours were longer, and the networks of merchants and routes were more complex than assumed thus far. Trebizond's advantage as a port town for landlocked territories to its south and east (especially the large Iranian and Iraqi markets at the end of the Silk/Spice Route), as well as its close ties with Constantinople and the rest of the Black Sea, established the Pontic capital as a vital emporium. Benefiting from the increasing economic development in Byzantium and its neighbours, the prosperity of the Pontic region and is main city Trebizond is most visible in the period from the mid-ninth to the mid-eleventh centuries.

A partir de l'étude du chapitre 38 de l'ouvrage du savant mecquois al-Fâsî (m. 1429), Shîfâ' al-gharâm bi-akhbâr al-balad al-harâm, consacré à l'histoire du hajj, cet article tente d'identifier les modes de représentation du pouvoir mecquois dans l'oeuvre d'al-Fâsî. Il suggère que le récit récurrent des fitnas qui déchirèrent la cité sainte au moment du pèlerinage était une manière de
mieux en neutraliser les effets et les traces, à un moment où s'affirmait un nouveau pouvoir local fort, autour du chérif Hasan b. 'Ajlân.

Muslims claim that Muhammad was born in Mecca and the earliest parts of the Qur’an were revealed to him there. Indeed, without Mecca the whole story of Muhammad would have to be re-evaluated and the very foundations of Islam would have to be questioned. However, recent archaeological and historical research calls into question whether Mecca even existed in the traditional time of Muhammad (570-632 AD). There are no archaeological artifacts from Mecca until the 8th century AD, the first direct mention of Mecca in external literature occurs in 741 AD, and the first time Mecca is listed on a map of the Middle East was 900 AD.  Indeed, if Mecca did not exist in the early 7th century, then who was Muhammad and from where did he come? 
This paper will consider the Muslim evidence for the existence of Mecca in light of the research of a number of recent scholars who have suggested that Mecca was probably neither a center of trade nor a religious center or pilgrimage site in the 7th century. One issue for consideration is that the geographical descriptions of the city of the prophet in the Qur’an do not match up with the barren landscape of Mecca. Furthermore, the qiblas, or the direction of prayer in the mosques, did not point to Mecca until 727 AD. The evidence also may indicate that Muhammad probably did not have anything to do with Mecca, especially since it may not have even existed at that time. Finally, a mounting body of evidence suggests that the Nabataean kingdom of Petra in Northeast Arabia might have actually been the center of the origin of Islam, and Muhammad a much different religious leader than the one traditionally portrayed by Islam.

This paper provides updated digital images of four Qurʾān fragments from Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum (OIM) that appeared in Nabia Abbott’s Rise of the North Arabic Script, and calls attention to features of their paleography and vocalization which are not apparent from her original black-and-white plates. In doing so, it demonstrates that these four fragments all belong to the same copy of the Qurʾān, which is also the same Qurʾān as nineteen leaves in Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) and two leaves in Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art (MIA). All twenty-five folios of this Qurʾān contain a unique vocalization system that represents /a/ and /u/ with miniature red forms of alif and wāw. This system of “letter-form” vocalization signs is unattested in other Qurʾān manuscripts and corresponds with a type of vocalization which medieval sources describe as shakl al-shiʿr: “the marking of poetry.” The subsequent discussion analyzes the features of this shakl al-shiʿr system and contextualizes it within the history of both this Qurʾān manuscript and Arabic writing as a whole.

Article is open access with full manuscript images available on the JNES site here: https://doi.org/10.1086/712876

The Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Bonn is advertising two Research Assistant/Teaching Assistant Positions which are attached to the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Islamic Studies (Prof. Dr. Judith Pfeiffer). Applicants should work towards a Ph.D. in a relevant field (e.g., Islamicate intellectual history of the late medieval and/or early modern period, history of Oriental Studies, Islamic historiography, or similar subjects). For more information please visit https://www.uni-bonn.de/de/universitaet/medien-universitaet/medien-arbeiten-an-der-uni/medien-personalmanagement/pdfs-stellenausschreibungen-wiss.ma/07-22-3-202_en.pdf

The pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica (hereafter PsAH) are a group of texts surviving in Arabic that claim to record conversations between Aristotle and Alexander the Great. In these conversations, Aristotle instructs Alexander about the cosmos, the comingto-be of everything in it, and astral magic-more precisely, talismanry, rituals for attracting the spiritual and planetary forces of the cosmos, the creation of amulets, and extensive astrological rules. The purpose of the instruction is to support Alexander's military career and personal life. Aristotle claims to have received this knowledge from Hermes Trismegistus. There are very few studies dedicated to these fascinating and influential texts; therefore, this article offers a preliminary study of the PsAH that introduces the texts and their contexts systematically.

Biographies contained in Ibn al-Abbar's Takmila that provide some relevant historical or geographical information. The study is referred to the manuscript of this work preserved in the library of al-Azhar (Cairo). Biographies are presented in full in Arabic with spanish translation of the part of interest.

Communiqué de presse relations presse : Atlas des migrations en Méditerranée de l'antiquité à nous jours
Cet ouvrage propose un panorama original des migrations en Méditerranée depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à nos jours.
Plus de 70 spécialistes, historiens, géographes, anthropologues, politologues, se sont donné comme objectif de montrer comment les migrations ont façonné les sociétés et les cultures méditerranéennes au cours de l’histoire. Ils rendent accessibles grâce à des textes courts, des phénomènes complexes, en mettant en lumière leurs particularités ou leur banalité ou en remettant en perspective les conditions de leur émergence. En regard, des extraits de sources historiques et des illustrations permettent de saisir les espoirs, les inquiétudes, parfois les drames qui accompagnent les mobilités d’hommes et de femmes de tous horizons.
Les 200 cartes produites jouent sur les échelles de représentation et varient les angles d’approche thématique : de l’observation des mouvements dans un port aux mobilités qui sillonnent l’ensemble des rivages méditerranéens, jusqu’aux projections mondiales des diasporas méditerranéennes, ou les mutations d’une métropole cosmopolite sous l’effet des arrivées successives de migrants.
L’atlas se structure en trois parties composées chacune de chapitres au sein desquels se succèdent, après une introduction, des doubles- pages thématiques, laissant ainsi le choix d’une lecture continue ou fractionnée. Il évoque d’abord les structures qui encadrent, contrôlent ou accompagnent les migrations (routes, frontières, lieux d’accueil, cadres politiques et juridiques, puis les différents acteurs (marchands, travailleurs, esclaves, religieux, intellectuels ou artistes) avant de porter attention aux modalités de contacts entre les migrants et les sociétés d’accueil (invasions, colonisations, transferts, cosmopolitisme, xénophobie).
Cet atlas s’adresse à un lectorat qui cherche à mieux connaître et comprendre une question qui, sous les feux de l’actualité, suscite des discours aux formules lapidaires et parfois outrancières.
ISBN : 978-2-330-14501-9
Prix indicatif : 35.00€

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo llamar la atención sobre una obra que ha pasado un tanto desapercibida. Considerada como un trabajo menor de un autor satírico, al-Jāḥiẓ, el Kitāb Fakhr al-Sūdān 'alā al-Bīḑān (La superioridad de los negros sobre los blancos), pese a su sugerente título, ha sido minusvalorado, pero es, en realidad, una obra seria y plenamente imbuida en el contexto y el debate político-social del siglo IX. Esta obra resulta fundamental para entender la complejidad que encierra toda sociedad, antigua o moderna. Frente a la imagen tradicional sobre la población negra como una grupo marginado, invisible y sin historia, el Kitāb Fakhr al-Sūdān 'alā al-Bīḑān les otorga el protagonismo de su obra, les saca de su invisibilidad dentro de la sociedad abbasí, y recupera y reelabora, y esto es interesante, una historia y una memoria que hunden sus raíces en la antigüedad.

Ever since man started to study systematically medicine for the first time he recognized the value of the knowledge of Anatomy in order to safely cut and treat the human body. However, over the centuries it has been proved that Anatomy is more than just a scientific field of medicine. The fact that Anatomy requires the use of human cadavers as an object to study brought to the surface many moral issues, which adumbrated its turbulent past. Additionally, Anatomy and its inextricable element, illustration, has many times been a source of inspiration for both the anatomists and the artists. This paper aims on the one hand to provide a condensed overview of the history of Anatomy and on the other hand to investigate the way Anatomy penetrates Art and, conversely, Art penetrates Anatomy.

Reseña de los libros publicados por Diego Melo Carrasco: Las alianzas y negociaciones del sultán: Un recorrido por la historia de las "relaciones internacionales" del sultanato nazarí de Granada (siglos XIII-XV), Murcia, Editum, 2015; Compendio de cartas, tratados y noticias de paces y treguas entre Granada, Castilla y Aragón, Murcia, Editum, 2016

İbn Haldûn, kendisinden 450 yıl önce yaşayan el-Mes'ûdî'yi "tarihçilerin önderi" olarak takdim eder. Kimi batılı kaynaklarda ise bu isim "Arapların Heredotos"u olarak kayda geçmiştir. El-Mes'ûdî, zamanını aşan bir tarihçi, coğrafyacı ve seyyahtır. Geniş sahaya yayılan merak ve tutkusuyla kaleme aldığı tarihler, kendisinden sonra gelenler için özellikle tarih ve coğrafya yazıcılığı ile tarih felsefesi alanlarında birer başvuru kaynağı olmuştur. Çünkü tüm diğer tarihçiler gibi, el-Mes'ûdî'nin eserlerinde de tarih ve gerçeklik konusunda bir takım eleştirel araçları nasıl kullandığı; hangi dinî ve aklî ölçütlerden faydalanmaya çalıştığı görülmektedir. Bu bağlamda el-Mes'ûdî'nin sadece "gece oduncusu" benzetmesi bile dikkate değer duruyor: O, yazdıklarında göz tanıklığına sahip olmayan tarih yazarını, geceleyin eline gelen her odun parçasını toplayan bir gece oduncusuna benzetir. Dolayısıyla el-Mes'ûdî'ye göre tarihsel bilgiye eleştirel bir zihinle yaklaşmak gerekmektedir.

Bu kitap, anılan bağlamda İslâm tarihyazımında eleştirel gerçeklik nasıl inşa edilmiştir sorusuna bir cevap bulma arayışıdır. Kitap aynı zamanda, İslâm kültüründeki birbirinden farklı geleneklerin gerçekliği nasıl yorumladığı ve algıladığına da yer vermektedir. İslâm öncesi toplumların geçmiş algısı, tarihe, dolayısıyla zamana bakışı ve bilgi (haber) ile kurdukları ilişki gözden geçirilmiştir. Aynı çerçevede el-Mes'ûdî'nin tavrı, iki ayrı eseri: Murûcu'z-Zeheb ve Me'âdinu'l-Cevher ile et- Tenbîh ve'l-İşrâf 'tan örnekler verilerek ele alınmıştır.

Bu çalışma belli bir terminoloji etrafında zengin bir kültürü inceliyor ve kayıp bir hafızayı bugün için yeniden canlandırıyor.

The International Conference The Impact of Arabic Sources on Divination and the
Practical Sciences in Europe and Asia was held in Erlangen (2014 January 21-23) at
the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities, in collaboration
with the Union Académique Internationale/International Union of Academies,
the Académie des sciences du monde islamique (Amman), the Centre for the
History of Arabic Studies in Europe (Warburg Institute, London) and Micrologus
(SISMEL, Florence)

Modern European genetic structure demonstrates strong correlations with geography, while genetic analysis of prehistoric humans has indicated at least two major waves of immigration from outside the continent during periods of cultural change. However, population-level genome data that could shed light on the demographic processes occurring during the intervening periods have been absent. Therefore, we generated genomic data from 41 individuals dating mostly to the late 5th/early 6th century AD from present-day Bavaria in southern Germany, including 11 whole genomes (mean depth 5.56×). In addition we developed a capture array to sequence neutral regions spanning a total of 5 Mb and 486 functional polymorphic sites to high depth (mean 72×) in all individuals. Our data indicate that while men generally had ancestry that closely resembles modern northern and central Europeans, women exhibit a very high genetic heterogeneity; this includes signals of genetic ancestry ranging from wester...

We have examined the remains of a Pilgrim burial from St Mary Magdalen, Winchester. The individual was a young adult male, aged around 18-25 years at the time of death. Radiocarbon dating showed the remains dated to the late 11th-early 12th centuries, a time when pilgrimages were at their height in Europe. Several lines of evidence in connection with the burial suggested this was an individual of some means and prestige. Although buried within the leprosarium cemetery, the skeleton showed only minimal skeletal evidence for leprosy, which was confined to the bones of the feet and legs. Nonetheless, molecular testing of several skeletal elements, including uninvolved bones all showed robust evidence of DNA from Mycobacterium leprae, consistent with the lepromatous or multibacillary form of the disease. We infer that in life, this individual almost certainly suffered with multiple soft tissue lesions. Genotyping of the M.leprae strain showed this belonged to the 2F lineage, today assoc...

1. JR Soc Med. 2009 Feb;102(2):78-80. Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine: 11th century rules for assessing the effects of drugs. Nasser M, Tibi A, Savage-Smith E. monalisa1n@gmail.com PMID: 19208873 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Publication Types: Biography; ...

As the published outcome of Christ’s PhD research, Trading Conflicts formulates extremely valuable insights into the Venetian presence in Alexandria, into late medieval Alexandrian socio-economic practice, and into local actors’ mediation “on the ground” in the many flows that connected Venice and Cairo in the early decades of the fifteenth century.

L’histoire de la comptabilité d’Etat en pays d’Islam jusqu’à la fin du Moyen Âge, telle qu’elle est décrite dans les rares travaux qui lui ont été consacrés, présente le récit d’une normalisation progressive, marquée notamment par le passage du rouleau au registre de comptes (daftar), du papyrus au papier, entre le VIIIe et le Xe siècle. Avec l’apparition des premiers manuels de comptabilité étatique au Xe siècle en Iraq, et le maintien de ce genre tout au long de la période médiévale, l’existence de pratiques normées au sein de l’administration islamique ne fait guère de doute. Celles-ci restent toutefois difficiles à étudier, faute de sources suffisantes issues de la pratique. A partir de l’étude du vocabulaire et des formes matérielles adoptées par la comptabilité étatique en divers points de l’Islam médiéval, la présente communication s’intéressera plus particulièrement à quelques moments charnières qui virent des évolutions significatives des pratiques comptables et développe le cas particulièrement éclairant de la comptabilité d’État du sultanat rassoulide du Yémen, conservée partiellement dans des archives des XIIIe-XVe siècles.

Tussen de 8ste en 20ste eeuw zijn miljoenen Europeanen als slaaf weggevoerd naar islamitisch gebied. Daaronder waren ook veel Nederlanders. De slavenjachten door Moren, Saracenen, Turken, Tataren en Barbarijse zeerovers hebben grote impact gehad op zowel de directe slachtoffers als op de achterblijvers die het konden navertellen. Hun verhalen hebben zich in de loop der tijd omgevormd tot volksverhalen en tradities.

This study identifies four miracle cures set in Orkney and Iceland in the 12th and 13th Centuries and recorded in the sagas of the earls of Orkney and the bishops of Iceland, in which the condition of the hand which was healed bears a resemblance to Dupuytren’s disease. The possibility that one hand was cured by traumatic rupture of this condition and another treated by palmar fasciotomy is discussed.