Al-MasāqPub Date : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1935811
Nicholas Morton
{"title":"Heretics, Schismatics, or Catholics: Latin Attitudes to the Greeks in the Long Twelfth Century","authors":"Nicholas Morton","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1935811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1935811","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126697010","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 : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1910783
Anna Chrysostomides
{"title":"“There is no harm in it”: Muslim Participation in Levantine Christian Religious Festivals (750–1000)","authors":"Anna Chrysostomides","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1910783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1910783","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores early Muslim participation in local and large Christian festivals through the lens of two discussions within a tenth-century legal responsa, the Ahl al-milal. The local festivals of Job at Dayr Ayyūb and the Epiphany at Ṭūr Tabūr, as well as the larger festivals of Palm Sunday, Holy Fire and Easter, provide evidence of shared attendance at festivals in the ʿAbbāsid period (750–1000). Islamic, and some Christian, legal, literary and geographical literature presents these events as Christian celebrations with shared narratives of venerated figures, which involved both practical and enjoyable aspects. Although the sharing of these celebrations was a common factor, there was a diversity in local practices. A trend developed amongst Muslim attendees to limit their participation to the market and activities outside the church building in some areas of the Levant, but not in Jerusalem. This seems to have occurred spontaneously in some areas and was not specifically due to a ruling by a jurist.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128570946","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 : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1899548
M. Rustow
{"title":"Jews and the Fāṭimid Caliphate","authors":"M. Rustow","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1899548","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1899548","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Why did medieval Islamic polities permit non-Muslims to develop their own institutions of communal governance, and even actively encourage those institutions’ autonomy from the state? The historiography on Jewish communal autonomy is particularly well-developed, so it can help advance inquiries into other religious communities. But that scholarship also tends to take Jewish communal autonomy – as well as Jewish officials’ influence over other Jews – for granted rather than explaining it. Documents from the Cairo Geniza offer a fine-grained view of both sides of the question of why the state permitted communal autonomy and what communities did in order to safeguard it. The documents this article considers include state decrees, petitions and other official records in Arabic script, as well as legal deeds and private letters in Hebrew script.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"104 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122420408","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 : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1935795
Christopher Heath
{"title":"Southern Italy as Contact Zone and Border Region during the Early Middle Ages: Religious-Cultural Heterogeneity and Competing Powers in Local, Transregional and Universal Dimensions","authors":"Christopher Heath","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1935795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1935795","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122125609","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 : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1935779
Valerie Gonzalez
{"title":"Friends of the Emir, Non-Muslim State Officials in Premodern Islamic Thought","authors":"Valerie Gonzalez","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1935779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1935779","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121087705","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 : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1935788
Valerie Gonzalez
{"title":"The Kaʿba Orientations, Readings in Islam’s Ancient House","authors":"Valerie Gonzalez","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1935788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1935788","url":null,"abstract":"attitudes. The most important turning point in this period is the Fourth Crusade and, even on this well-worn topic, Neocleous draws some important conclusions. Fourth Crusade watchers will be interested to note that this work advances the idea that the crusade’s diversion away from Alexandria and towards Constantinople was due in no small part to the agency of Boniface of Montferrat and Philip of Swabia (operating in close support to Alexius IV); an argument that has a great deal to recommend it. He also demonstrates that the sources for the crusade that were written by participants do notmanifest much anti-Greek religious enmity in their accounts of the campaign. Curiously, it is the non-participant authors based in Western Christendom who display a greater hostility. The events surrounding the conquest of Constantinople however reshaped this relationship, paving the way for more troubled times and steering a few Latin authors to claim that the Greeks should no longer be considered as co-religionists, or in some cases even as Christians. Even so, despite this rising friction, Neocleous observes that there were still many examples of collaboration between Greeks and Latins including many treaties and marriages in later years. Overall, this is a very strong piece of work that chimes well with several recent studies which, like Heretics, Schismatics or Catholics?, tend to break down the notion of entrenched rivalry between Latin and Greek communities. It likewise fits well with the findings advanced by art historians, specialists in material culture or economic historians whose studies tend to describe considerable freedom of movement – whether of ideas, items or individuals – across cultural boundaries in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. Having said this, there are still some historians who characterise the relationship between Byzantium and ‘the west’ as being far more conflictual, even a form of ‘clash of civilizations’, and it will be interesting to see how they respond to the findings offered here. Likewise, although this work does briefly discuss Byzantine attitudes towards Latins, there is clearly more to be said on this subject and it is to be hoped that future studies will help to add more detail on this point. In particular more research on the Byzantine Church and its engagement with western Christendom, coupled with an examination of the extent to which ecclesiastical attitudes were representative of secular attitudes (whether elite or non-elite), would be very interesting. In this way, and taken overall,Heretics, Schismatics or Catholics? offers a bold but plausible interpretation of one of the most important relationships to shape the development of the Mediterranean world.","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114939388","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 : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1910782
P. Wood
{"title":"The Treaty between Muḥammad and the Christians of Najrān in the Chronicle of Seert: Negotiating the Rights of the Conquered and the Re-writing of the Past","authors":"P. Wood","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1910782","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1910782","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article argues that the Chronicle of Seert preserves an ʿAbbāsid-era re-imagination of the correspondence between the Prophet Muḥammad and the Christians of the Arabian Peninsula. These narratives were responses to Muslim efforts to produce consistent rules for non-Muslims in the caliphate with regard to tax levels and political rights. They draw on knowledge of the Qurʾān and the Sīra to assert better rights for Christians that were rooted in alleged historical precedents","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114345534","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 : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1935816
Nicholas Morton
{"title":"Latin and Greek Monasticism in the Crusader States","authors":"Nicholas Morton","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1935816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1935816","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126239804","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 : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1935805
Nicholas Morton
{"title":"Crusading and Archaeology: some archaeological approaches to the Crusades","authors":"Nicholas Morton","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1935805","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1935805","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"73 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128963336","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 : 2021-05-03DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2021.1907523
Philip Wood
{"title":"Introduction: Group Formation and Maintenance in the ʿAbbāsid and Fāṭimid Caliphates, 750–1000","authors":"Philip Wood","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2021.1907523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2021.1907523","url":null,"abstract":"Much of the work on the minorities of the Muslim world has been concerned with making a value judgement about the tolerance or intolerance of the caliphs. The idea of the convivencia of Umayyad Spain rests on the presumption that Muslims, Jews and Christians were treated equally in law. The converse is true for the proponents of dhimmitude, for whom the point of interest in Muslim societies is their mistreatment of religious minorities, both across history and in the present. This kind of black-or-white comparison also holds sway in popular discussions, where the “tolerance” of Islamic societies towards their minorities serves as a proxy for judgements of Islam as a religion, or for comparisons of “Islam” and the West/ Christendom. The identification of “tolerance” before the seventeenth century is a problematic feature of these comparisons: this was a world before a formal discourse of tolerance, let alone human rights. Polytheists, apostates from Islam to other religions and the followers of other Arabian prophets during the ridda wars could all be subjected to religious compulsion. And the rights that were accorded to Jews and Christians were not simply intrinsic to their status as peoples of the book, but also contingent on the contracts allegedly drawn up between their ancestors and their Muslim conquerors. Their position as dhimmīs, as protected peoples, and the rights that came from this, were dependent on their continued acknowledgement of the Islamic conquests as legitimate and upon their continued acceptance of a subordinate political relationship. A further problem with the way that the argument about Islamic tolerance is framed is that it is nomocratic. It implicitly frames Islam as a set of legal norms that Muslims are expected to abide by. We see this framing in the debate when modern commentators who seek to defend Islam acknowledge the oppression of non-Muslims by medieval Muslim","PeriodicalId":112464,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masāq","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129681937","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}