This is the second part of my investigation on the Muslim governors (or rulers) in Sicily.
Slavery and Identíty in Mozarabic Toledo: 1201-1320
October 7, 2012 By
Román Iberia became thoroughly Romanized early in its existenec. Spain adopted the law, the language, the culture, and eventually the religión of clas- sicat Rome. Moreover, Hispania produced some truly stellar figures in the arena of Latin scholarship, including Séneca, Lucían, Quintilian, Columella, and Prudentius.
Moors and Saracens in Europe: estimating the medieval North African male legacy in southern Europe
October 2, 2012 By
Our results confirm a general correlation between historical and genetic data: Iberia and Sicily are the regions with the highest MNA male legacy.
Sailing with the Mu’allim: The Technical Practiceof Red Sea Sailing during the Medieval Period
September 30, 2012 By
The status of the Red Sea as a lane of communication be-tween the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean has beenwidely commented upon…The medieval period was no exception to this. The establishment of Mecca as a centre of pilgrimage and theincreasing importance of Cairo both served to provide further motives for seafaring activity along and across theRed Sea.
Through the Eyes of a Crusader: An Intensive Study Into the Personal Involvement of Two Men in the Fourth Crusade
September 21, 2012 By
What was going through the minds ofthese men who were fighting for the cross when they attacked a Christian city, which was one oftheir allies?
On the Making of Holy Places Along the Sea Routes of the Eastern Mediterranean
September 1, 2012 By
The connection with the Holy Land was frequently made visible by the dissemination of both site-relics (such as stones from the holy sites) and body-parts of saints being especially worshipped by Holy Land pilgrims, such as Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara.
A Spectacle of Great Beauty: The Changing Faces of Hagia Sophia
August 28, 2012 By
For Constantine, Justinian, Sultan Mehmed II, and Atatürk, Hagia Sophia served as a model for the changing political and religious ideals of a nation. To use the useful phrase coined by Linda Young, Hagia Sophia is a building that is “in between heritage.”
The Black Road – Trade and State-building in Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa
August 26, 2012 By
By the early fourteenth century, the Mediterranean was approaching maturity as a commercial structure. Various arteries of exchange brought into its scope the full range of European, African and Asian commodities.
‘Images of the Other: Venice’s Perception of the Knights of Malta’
August 15, 2012 By
The hostile perception which Venice generally entertained of the Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes and Malta was not an attitude which the Republic secretly assumed and secretly endeavoured with much effort to disguise.
Plague And Changes In Medieval European Society And Economy In The 14th And 15th Centuries
August 5, 2012 By
Standards of hygiene in the Middle Ages appeared high enough to prevent diseases as medieval Europeans, contrary to popular beliefs, bathed quite often. However, contact with domestic animals, which were frequently kept in the part of the house reserved for human activity, exposed people to animal-related diseases passed to humans via insects.
Horse and cargo handling on Medieval Mediterranean ships
July 29, 2012 By
Art from Venice and Ravenna in north-east Italy and the Topkapı Museum in Instanbul, Turkey, offers keys to understanding several questions of Medieval ship-loading practices in the Mediterranean, including cargo loading, and where the war-horse entered his Crusader’s ship.
“For the Honor of God and of the Holy Roman Church:” Understanding Venetian Motivations and Involvement during the Fourth Crusade
July 24, 2012 By
This thesis will attempt to unravel how it came to be that men who claimed to fight in the name of the cross had come to attack one of the most important cities in all of Christendom. It shall focus particularly on the motivations and actions of the Venetians, a people whose involvement in this crusade and the crusading movement in general has often been misunderstood.
Economy of Ragusa, 1300 – 1800: The Tiger of Mediaeval Mediterranean
July 24, 2012 By
An economist is indeed tempted to think of Ragusa as the “Adriatic Tiger “ of yesteryear, an early example of a small open economy with strong fundamentals, and to hypothesize further that, in analogy to the current consensus about what it takes to minimize the impact of external crises, these strengths also allowed Ragusa to mitigate the effects of the many external shocks and financial crises in Medieval Europe.
Pervenimus Edessam: The Origins of a Great Christian Centre Outside the Familiar Mediaeval World
July 17, 2012 By
This is the meeting place of the western and eastern worlds, for near here passed the movements between Palestine and Mesopotamia associated with Abraham, near here the Assyrians made their last stand after their capital fell in 610 B.C., and near here Crassus ill-advised attempt to press eastwards came to an end.
Honor, Verbal Duels, and the New Testament in Medieval Iceland
July 1, 2012 By
Honor and shame are considered pivotal values of both early Mediterranean and medieval Scandinavian society.
Mapping Metageographies: The Cartographic Invention of Italy and the Mediterranean
June 10, 2012 By
This article discusses the emergence of Italy as a discrete object in the Mediterranean in the history of Western cartography. In particular, it focuses on different coexisting Renaissance mapping traditions that rested on two opposed spatial understandings and experiences of the basin
Living the middle life, secular priests and their communities in thirteenth-century Genoa
June 10, 2012 By
It has long been known among medievalists that secular priests, like Pagano, standing in front of their churches, rubbing elbows with the other clerics and lay people walking past,occupied a central place within medieval society. Not only did they carry out important duties within the institutional Church, but they also participated in the community life of both city and countryside.
The Medieval Town in Bulgaria, thirteenth to fourteenth century
May 31, 2012 By
In my study, the town in late medieval Bulgaria is conceptualized as an explanandum, not as an explanans, as part of the social and economic environment rather than some distinctive entity.
Byzantine Pilgrimage Art
March 18, 2012 By
Who were these pilgrims? Literally, they were hoi polloi; they came from every stratum of society, from all vocations (including the indigent and sick), and from every corner of the Christian world.
Great Sites: Hamwic
March 12, 2012 By
Helena Hamerow on excavations at Southampton, which reshaped our views of the origins of English towns and of long-distance trade in the 8th/9th centuries.
Greeks in Early Medieval Barcelona?
December 18, 2011 By
The aim of this article is to draw attention to a group of persenal names which occurs almost exclusively in the city of Barcelona in tilese decades around the year 1000, which may throw some additional llght on the range of externa1 cgntacts. The name in question is that of Greco.
Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History
December 18, 2011 By
Modern historiography has not fully appreciated the ecological complexity of the Silk Roads. As a result, it has failed to understand their antiquity, or to grasp their full importance in Eurasian history.
Byzantines, Goths and Lombards in Italy: Jewellery, Dress and Cultural Interactions
December 5, 2011 By
The temptation is naturally to seek differences or contrasts from one power to another, to reinforce the conflict and tension identified in contemporary historians.
Fiat lux: climatic considerations in medieval stained glass aesthetics
December 4, 2011 By
Shelters have always been integral elements of human society; people have relied on them since prehistoric times to provide vital protection from the outside world.
Colophoned Hebrew Manuscripts Produced in Spain and the Distributionof the Localised Codices
November 28, 2011 By
The mobility of individual Jews, by cholee or by economic necessity, and of entire
communities by forcé, made them agents of cross-cultural contacts and influences
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