Al-MasāqPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2159692
Edmund Hayes
{"title":"Comparing “Acts of Excommunication” in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Middle East","authors":"Edmund Hayes","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2159692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2159692","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This introduction suggests an approach to the study of excommunication that is comparative (here highlighting Jewish, Christian and Islamic cases) and carefully contextual, taking note of specific institutional dynamics and processes of historical memory formation. Moreover, excommunication should be not be understood as a clearly defined category, but part of a broader network of acts of boundary enforcement which share certain features, including cursing, ostracism, banishment, oath-breaking, and execution. Meanwhile, studying individual “acts of excommunication” gives us a sharpened sense of how authority is practically constructed and threatened at particular moments. By studying acts rather than ideal conceptions or purely legal definitions, it is argued that excommunication can be seen not merely as a hierarchical tool for top-down discipline, but also a communal arena in which authority and boundaries are contested within wider communities of believers.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130553432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Al-MasāqPub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2159691
A. Usta
{"title":"Commercial Deceit: Fraudulent Trade from the Ports of Cilicia and Cyprus to the Mamlūks","authors":"A. Usta","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2159691","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2159691","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127989437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Al-MasāqPub Date : 2022-12-29DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2159685
Carlo Virgilio
{"title":"A Dwarf Among Giants: A Diplomatic and Political Reading of Florence’s First Commercial Expedition to Ottoman Constantinople","authors":"Carlo Virgilio","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2159685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2159685","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article investigates the start of Florence’s approach to Ottoman Constantinople. It analyses the elements that enticed the Florentine Signoria to reconsider its commercial interest in Constantinople by highlighting the political role of the Ottoman sultan. In addition, this study intends to shed light on the difficulties the Florentine establishment faced in its diplomatic effort to successfully establish a profitable state trade route with the former Byzantine capital. The Signoria’s diplomatic groundwork has never been extensively studied, but doing so reveals how an apparently routine matter of administration, the negotiations over the safe-conduct with the Kingdom of Naples, became a salient political issue that took nearly three years (1455–1458) to resolve. The article also aims to make an original contribution to the history of the Florentine Mediterranean thanks to material from previously unconsulted sources.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"106 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134429262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Al-MasāqPub Date : 2022-12-29DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2154564
Mohammed Ibraheem Ahmed
{"title":"Islam and Judaism: Religious Attitudes and Identity in the Medinan Era","authors":"Mohammed Ibraheem Ahmed","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2154564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2154564","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For two centuries, Orientalists have consistently questioned the role of Judaism in the early development of Islam. This has resulted in an array of scholarship that attempts to unpack a more accurate relationship of early Islam with Medinan Jews than is found in much of the historiographically tenuous sīra and taʾrīkh literature. This article contributes to this strand of revisionism by assessing religious identity in the Medinan period, utilising what this article argues to be the only two relevant, reputable and proven documents from the early seventh century – the Qurʾān and the Constitution of Medina. Religious attitudes and identities can be derived from a comparative assessment of the semantics of these documents, analysing their implications, including how views on key words and notions can enable us to reorientate early Medinan interreligious attitudes between Muslims and Jews.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125133861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Al-MasāqPub Date : 2022-12-18DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2154090
Ana B. Cano-Carrillo
{"title":"A Fifteenth-century Fatwa Issued by al-Wansharīsī on the Fate of Christian Prisoners: Death, or Captivity?","authors":"Ana B. Cano-Carrillo","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2154090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2154090","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article presents a translation and analysis of a fatwa belonging to one of the most important and extensive compilations of legal opinions in Mālikī Islamic law, gathered together in the fifteenth century by al-Wansharīsī. We explore the fatwas in this compilation on the subject of captives, and focus in particular on one whose main point of interest is its exhaustive analysis of the possible fates that might await Christian prisoners who fell into Muslim hands, specifically those classified as “weak” – that is, women, children, the elderly and even religious figures.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132964142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Al-MasāqPub Date : 2022-11-17DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2133210
Edmund Hayes
{"title":"“Smash His Head with a Rock”: Imāmic Excommunications and the Production of Deviance in Late Ninth-Century Imāmī Shīʿism","authors":"Edmund Hayes","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2133210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2133210","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, I study how Imāmī imams ʿAlī al-Hādī (d. 868 CE) and al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī (d. 874 CE) attempted to police boundaries. While their excommunications have hitherto been treated through the lens of doctrinal discipline, I argue that we should not situate doctrine within practice. Religious leaders like the Imams used the politics of boundaries in order to meet challenges to their authority. By studying acts of excommunication we get a more precise sense of where the practical power of the imams lay: their ability to mobilise figures of localised authority in the far-flung communities that recognised the imamate. Such mediatory figures were needed to gain assent for imamic commands within their networks. Conversely, local actors were also constantly constructing their own sense of deviance autonomously. This could conflict with imamic commands, or could be confirmed by an imamic imprimatur. The construction of deviance was a multi-polar process.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"384 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114048679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Al-MasāqPub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2118504
G. Leube
{"title":"Resolving Ambivalence through (Claimed) Excommunication: The Depiction of al-Ashʿath b. Qays in Early and Classical Arabic-Islamic Historiography","authors":"G. Leube","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2118504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2118504","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This contribution approaches the Kindī aristocrat al-Ashʿath b. Qays as a case-study for a contested figure in Muslim cultural memory. Al-Ashʿath is portrayed in a wide variety of conflicting reports, suggesting a spectrum of interpretations ranging from him being remembered as a 'villain' excommunicated by Muḥammad to having been one of the main 'heroes' of the divine miracle of the early Islamic conquest of Iraq. Beginning with the only claim that al-Ashʿath was indeed excommunicated through cursing (laʿana) within the corpus of early and classical Arabic-Islamic historiography, this article proceeds to disentangle the polarized narratives surrounding this ambivalent figure.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"134 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116337126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Al-MasāqPub Date : 2022-10-28DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2135849
Francesco Migliazzo
{"title":"City-republics of Northern Italy and the Sicilian Vespers: The Perception of the Revolt in the Urban Chronicles","authors":"Francesco Migliazzo","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2135849","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2135849","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The revolt of the Vespers was immediately perceived around the Mediterranean and Europe as a turning point that threatened one of the greatest potentates in Europe: the Angevin Kingdom of Sicily. In central-northern Italy, these events jeopardised the Guelph hegemony supported by the Angevins and so the Italian city-republics experienced the consequences of the revolt, but its political and cultural impact on the city-republics has yet to be examined. This article will focus the analysis on the urban chronicles written in Italy outside the Kingdom of Sicily, to investigate how the revolt and war of the Vespers were perceived in central-northern Italy. It will also explore how the chroniclers’ prior political beliefs conditioned their interpretation of these events and will attempt to retrace when the conspiracy theory of John of Procida originated within the Guelph chronicles.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115658082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Al-MasāqPub Date : 2022-10-28DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2135850
John Latham-Sprinkle
{"title":"The Late Mamlūk Transition of the 1380s: The View from the North Caucasus","authors":"John Latham-Sprinkle","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2135850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2135850","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article argues that the transition between the early and late Mamlūk Sultanate in Egypt in the 1380s was partially caused by political developments in the Northwest Caucasus. The transition from “Turkish” to “Circassian” mamlūk dominance was facilitated by the rise of new princely elites in the Northwest Caucasus during the bulqaq civil wars in the Ulūs of Jochi (Golden Horde) (1359–1381). These new elites justified their rule through their access to the wider Mediterranean world and its material products. With the end of the bulqaq, these princes lost access to the imperial centres of the Ulūs of Jochi, important sources of these prestige goods. In order to maintain their position in the Mediterranean market, they increasingly raided, enslaved and sold other Northwest Caucasians, which led to a rise in the number of Circassian slaves becoming available in Egypt and Italy.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129839014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Al-MasāqPub Date : 2022-10-25DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2022.2133479
Inês Lourinho
{"title":"Military Jihād against Muslims: ‘Abd Allāh b. Yāsīn and the Foundation of a Saharan Political Unit that Would Conquer the Maghreb and al-Andalus (Eleventh Century)","authors":"Inês Lourinho","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2022.2133479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2022.2133479","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Urban II delivered a speech that roused the crowds against the infidels. 1 1 Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), pp. 13–30. Soon thereafter, the Christian sovereigns rallied the troops, targeting Jerusalem. Even in the Iberian Peninsula, the population went into raptures at the prospect of taking up arms, 2 2 William J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia (c. 1095–c. 1187) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), pp. 120–38. and had to be appeased by the Pope so as not to undermine the military efforts against Muslims. Urban II viewed the First Crusade as a triptych composed of the conquest of Sicily (1091), the successes in Iberia, which included the taking of Toledo (1085) and Lisbon (1093), and the conquest of Jerusalem (1099). 3 3 Paul E. Chevedden, “‘A Crusade from the First’: The Norman Conquest of Islamic Sicily, 1060–1091”, Al-Masāq 22/2 (2010): 91–225, p. 292. However, the winds of war changed in 1086, when the Almoravids won the Battle of Zallāqa. 4 4 Javier Albarrán Iruela, “Una reconquista de la reconquista: La reacción ideológica islámica al avance cristiano (ss. XI–XIII)”, in La Reconquista: Ideología y justificación de la Guerra Santa peninsular, ed. Carlos de Ayala Martínez, Isabel Cristina Ferreira Fernandes and J. Santiago Palacios Ontalva (Madrid: La Ergástula Ediciones, 2019), pp. 233–57, esp. 238–44. The Berbers, who expanded their power over al-Andalus until 1095, 5 5 Inês Lourinho, Fronteira do Gharb al-Andalus: Terreno de confronto entre Almorávidas e Cristãos (1093–1147) (Lisbon: Centro de História da Universidade de Lisboa, 2020), pp. 179–92. saw themselves as defenders of the community against Christians. However, in the foundation of their movement they engaged in military jihād against Muslims.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122021161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}