Posts Tagged ‘Middle East’

Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius of Caesarea : the eastern campaigns of Julian and Justinian, 4th and 6th centuries A.D

Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius of Caesarea : the eastern campaigns of Julian and Justinian, 4th and 6th centuries A.D

By Ian Kelso

MA Thesis, Dalhousie University, 1998

Abstract: Ammianus Marcellinus, a historian of the fourth century, and Procopius of Caesarea, in the sixth recorded their time in a way that left us two excellent accounts of eye witnesses. Ammianus’s Res Gestae record the actions of many, but none as well as those of the emperor Julian (361-363 AD). Especially Julian’s brief reign. More importantly his campaign against the Persians was recorded by Ammianus vividly, due to the fact that Ammianus was a staff officer in Julian’s headquarters. This gave him insight into the man and his methods and the ability to write a history that was of a higher quality than most. Ammianus’s classical education also assisted in his writing.

Procopius had a similar experience in his own time, but as a legal adviser on the staff of the leading general, Belisarius. Though he was not a soldier, he was well acquainted with soldiers and their ways. He was present at many of the major battles of the day, which gave him the knowledge he needed to write his works the Bella in 8 books(two on the Persian wars), the De AEdificiis and the Anecdota. All of these, when taken together, help to give a full picture of the people and events. He is the best historian for the emperor of the day, Justinian (527-565 AD), who had grand ideas of re-conquering the western half of the empire, but was delayed by wars against the Persians.

By using both of these historians it is hoped that the Persian campaigns of Julian and Justinian will be made clearer in the context of the emperors and their goals and flaws. The two historians will also be looked at to see what their abilities and skills were and where these skills originated. A source of their inspiration for writing their histories will be sought out as well.

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21 Feb 2010
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The Regicide of the Caliph al-Amīn and the Challenge of Representation in Medieval Islamic Historiography

The Regicide of the Caliph al-Amīn and the Challenge of Representation in Medieval Islamic Historiography

By Tayeb El-Hibri

Arabica, Vol. 42, No. 3, (1995)

Introduction: Fifty years after its founding in A.D.762 as the ideal political center of the Abbasid caliphate, Baghdad underwent its first destructive siege during the civil war between the two sons of Haruin al-Rasid, al-Amin and al-Ma’mun. Within the boundaries of the city, and for over a year, the caliph al-Amin held his last ground against the armies of al-Ma’mun, governor of the eastern province of Khuras-an and pretender to the throne. Defended throughout previous battles by the central Abbasid military elite, the Abna’, al-Amin found an unexpected source of popular support during the siege among the city’s commune. While al-Ma’mun continued to reside in Marw, his new capital on the eastern frontier, Hartama b. A’yan, Tahir b. al-Husayn, and Zuhayr b. al- Musayyab, the commanders who led the campaign on his behalf, found themselves unable to overcome or see the reason for the newly emerged resistance against them.

The stalemate was finally broken when Tahir b. al-Husayn succeeded in causing internal division by convincing the merchants of Baghdad to destroy the pontoon bridges that had served as critical communication routes between the resisting forces. This offered the assembled eastern armies the opportunity to attack by the Tigris inside the city. Probably suspecting such a maneouvre, al-Amin now listened to the advice of his associates that he stood a future chance of a counterstrike if he escaped the city to the north and then to Syria or Egypt, where he could reorganize a new power base.

Tahir, however, apparently having caught word of such a plan, sent a message to the Abna’ threatening to retaliate by destroying not only their property inside Baghdad but their estates (diya’) outside as well if they did not dissuade al-Amin from this decision. Al-Amin was soon afterwards convinced, again by his advisors, of the benefit of surrender. His reluctant agreement to take that choice was the beginning of a humiliating fall from power that culminated in a pitiful murder ordered by Tahir.

A cursory review of the narrative of the civil war might at first strike one as overwhelmingly supportive of al-Ma’mu-n, not a surprising feature given that the sources were written after his victory. This essay, however, shall argue that if we analyze the textual representation of al-Amin’s death closely, we can discern beneath the seemingly pro-Ma’munid historical narrative a complex historiographic attitude towards the regicide and the harvest of victory. Al-Amin’s capture and execution was an event that introduced a radically new dimension to the civil war, and critically transformed public perceptions of the caliphal office. For this was the first violent end to befall an Abbasid caliph since the founding of the dynasty. As such it left an indelible mark on the collective religio-political consciousness of a community that had perceived the dynasty to be the ultimate deliverant of stable caliphal rule in the aftermath of the revolution that overthrew the Umayyads in A.D. 750.

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6 Feb 2010
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The Development of Hindu-Arabic and Traditional Chinese Arithmetic

The Development of Hindu-Arabic and Traditional Chinese Arithmetic

By Lam Lay Yong

Chinese Science, Vol.13 (1996)

Introduction: Arithmetic is a branch of mathematics with which all of us are familiar. Irrespective of the countries we come from, we are taught the Hindu- Arabic numerals and their place value notation at a very early age. Thereafter we learn how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with the numerals. We are also taught how to write the common fractions and how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with them. It was from these basic techniques that arithmetic developed. Arithmetic is an important subject in our schools as its applications have become essential in our everyday life; from the man-in-the-street to the scientist, government officer, and businessman—all of us need to know arithmetic.

That arithmetic is useful is clear, but the history of the beginnings of the subject is still obscure. In recent decades, there have been some studies on Arabic texts related to early arithmetical procedures, and these have helped to shed some light. When we compare this knowledge with what we know about the arithmetic of ancient China, what is immediately and impressively apparent are certain strikingly similar features. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to these similarities and to show how vital they were in the development of arithmetic.

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27 Jan 2010
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Iran under Mongol domination: The effectiveness and failings of a dual administrative system

Iran under Mongol domination: The effectiveness and failings of a dual administrative system

By Denise Aigle

Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales, Suppl.57 (2008)

Introduction: At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Mongolia’s unstable nomadic clans were brought together by an energetic leader, the future Genghis Khan. He practiced a policy of intimidation towards the peoples that he wished to subject to his rule. Those who submitted were allowed to live. Resistance was considered an offence and punished by a general massacre . In less than twenty years, all the peoples of Central Asia had, willingly or by force, become part of the “Great Mongol State” (yeke monggol ulus) created by Genghis Khan in 1206. This new order contrasted greatly with the previous situation. Political equilibrium on the steppe had been unstable of its nature, as the various tribal chiefs vied for leadership in the region.

Genghis Khan’s successors extended the boundaries of the Mongol empire still further: at its height, it stretched from the Pacific to the plains of Hungary. The Mongols thus established an enormous “state” which, although governed in their traditional manner, rapidly acquired the administrative and judicial structures required to control the conquered territories effectively. The formation of the Mongol empire marked a break in the history of Eurasia, as countries with a long sedentary tradition, such as China and Iran, were made subject to a single people of the steppes for over a century.

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12 Dec 2009
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Courtly Patronage of Ancient Sciences in Post-Classical Islamic

Courtly Patronage of Ancient Sciences in Post-Classical Islamic

By Sonja Brentjes

Al-Qanṭara, Vol.29:2 (2008)

Abstract: In this paper I study evidence for courtly patronage for the ancient sciences in specific post-classical societies in the Arab and Persianate worlds. I show that there are plenty of historical sources for seriously challenging the widely held belief that courtly patronage for the ancient sciences disappeared in the post-classical period. I discuss similarities and differences between the classical and post-classical period at large and between specific post-classical dynasties in particular. I ask which disciplines courts sponsored, which products they privileged and which institutions and norms they used and mobilized for and through their patronage. I compare the relationship between patronage for scholars in two main settings —the court and the madrasa. I suggest that the proposed causal link between the disappearance or decrease of courtly patronage and the so-called decline of the ancient sciences needs to be revisited.

Introduction: Historians of science, medicine and philosophy in Islamic societies will agree without hesitation that courtly patronage was of extraordinary importance for the introduction, spread and maintenance of the ancient sciences, as well as for the many new results that scholars achieved in these fields in different Islamic societies. Despite this generally held conviction, there are no studies of the phenomenon and its various forms in specific Islamic societies. A second conviction, albeit less firmly held, is the belief that one of the major factors that led to what is usually called the decline of the ancient sciences was the disappearance of courtly patronage at some unclear point in time.  This vagueness results from disagreement about when the decline commenced, and from a lack of clear statements about when courtly patronage ended. Opinions on the matter vary greatly, some seeing the eleventh century as the starting point, others the fifteenth or sixteenth century.  Given the importance of these historiographical problems it is surprising that very little research has been done assessing the evidence for the disappearance of courtly support for all or some of the ancient sciences, and the link between this phenomenon (if it indeed can be shown to have happened) and changes in the content and innovative power of research that occurred in later Islamic societies.

In this paper I will focus on courtly patronage of the ancient sciences after 1200 in the territories between Egypt and India. I will show that courtly patronage of the ancient sciences did not disappear in this post-classical period. Several dynasties extended their support to scholars interested in a variety of ancient sciences. Such a claim finds clear substantiation in dedications and ownership marks attested in manuscripts; notes appearing in biographical dictionaries and historical chronicles about scholars at courts and their contacts with rulers, princes, emirs, viziers, other court officials and powerful women at courts; and courtly protocol and official honorific titles specified in administrative sources. The more challenging problems arise from the limitations of these materials and the need for non-trivial interpretations of the information they offer. Since courtly patronage continued after 1200 under several major and minor dynasties, the changes in scientific activities and the decrease in new results cannot be ascribed to lacking “state” support as such. The changes themselves, their character, scope, disciplinary, spatial and temporal occurrences as well as the modes in which they appear and the values they reflect, will not be discussed here. Neither will I offer suggestions about the factors contributing to such changes. All this goes far beyond the purpose and possibilities of this paper. But even more important, these issues are deeply steeped in prejudices and assumptions characteristic of scientific activities in our own days. There are no in-depth studies of specific cases that contextualize such changes in the value system of their times and places. In addition, the rigorous questioning of the assumptions underlying our judgments and of the suitability of our methods has only begun recently.

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4 Dec 2009
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Christian Europe and Mongol Asia: First Medieval Intercultural Contact Between East and West

Christian Europe and Mongol Asia: First Medieval Intercultural Contact Between East and West

Guzman, Gregory

Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 2 (1985)

Abstract

Between approximately 400 and 1000 A.D., Christian Europe was an isolated and inward looking civilization due to an almost continuing series of invasions by Germans, Huns, Muslims, Avars, Vikings, and Magyars. Western Europe represented a civilization on the defensive a civilization fighting for her life. But after a century or two of peace and prosperity, Christian Europe’s population and self-confidence grew; Europe was soon on the offensive in Spain, the Western Mediterranean, and the Crusades in the Middle East. Western Europe thus began to enter into the large Asian world of which she knew little or nothing at all.

Medieval Europe was especially ignorant of the Far East of Asia beyond the Muslim Middle East. The Christian West still accepted many old classical myths and legends about far off places and peoples and still tried to find a Biblical explanation and/or niche for everything and everyone. Muslim defeats in the East at the hands of the Kara-Khitans and later the Mongols were attributed to the legendary Christian priest-king, Prester John, and later to his son, King David. Thus Christian Europe was slowly becoming aware, in a vague and hazy way, of the peoples and activities of Central and East Asia. But in this early stage, the West was not receiving an entirely accurate view. At first Western Europe viewed the Mongols as enemies of Islam, and thus as friends of all Christians. However, this early Western hope and expected friendship soon changed to fear and terror, as the Mongols conquered all of Christian Russia by 1240. The Mongols were too cruel and too vicious to the Russian Christians to be either Prester John or his son, King David.

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3 Dec 2009
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The Byzantines in Medieval Arabic Poetry: Abu Firas’ “Al-Rumiyyat” and the Poetic Responses of al-Qaffal and Ibn Hazm to Nicephore Phocas’ “Al-Qasida al-Arminiyya al-Malʿuna” (The Armenian Cursed Ode)

The Byzantines in Medieval Arabic Poetry: Abu Firas’ “Al-Rumiyyat” and the Poetic Responses of al-Qaffal and Ibn Hazm to Nicephore Phocas’ “Al-Qasida al-Arminiyya al-Malʿuna” (The Armenian Cursed Ode)

By Nizar F. Hermes

BYZANTINA SYMMEIKTA/ BYZANTINA SYMMEIKTA, Vol. 19 (2009)

Abstract: Up until the Crusades, it was al-Rūm who were universally seen by Arab writers and Arab poets in particular as the Other par excellence. Nowhere is this more conspicuous than in the sub-genre of Al-Rūmiyyat (poems about the Byzantines), namely as found in the Rūmiyyat of Abu Firas al-Hamdani(d.968), and in the poetic responses of al-Qaffal(d. 946) and Ibn Hazm(d. 1064) to what was described by several medieval Muslim chronicles as Al-Qasida al-Arminiyya al-Malʿuna (The Armenian Cursed Ode). By exploring the forgotten views of the Byzantines in medieval Arabic poetry, this article purports to demonstrate that contrary to the impression left after reading Edward Said’s groundbreaking Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (1978) and other postcolonial studies, Orientals have not existed solely to be ‘orientalized’. Perhaps even before this came to be so, they too had ‘occidentalized’ their Euro-Christian Other(s) in a way that mirrored in reverse the subject/object relationship described as Orientalism.

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18 Nov 2009
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The Muhtasib as Guardian of Public Morality in the Medieval Islamic City

The Muhtasib as Guardian of Public Morality in the Medieval Islamic City

By Abbas Hamdani

Digest of Middle East Studies, Vol.17:1 (2008)

Introduction: the ancient institution of market supervision, as under the Greek, Agoronomos and the Roman, Aedile continued to be an important governmental function in medieval Islamic cities. We begin to hear of a sāhib al-sūq (the Master or Inspector of the Market) in the eighth century when the Islamic empire stretched from the frontiers of France to those of China, resulting in tremendous commercial activity, proliferation and expansion of cities, and consequently of their sūqs, or marketplaces. In the late ninth century, we find that the office of the Market Inspector begins to be regarded as a religious office and the Inspector is now called Muhtasib, a person who takes count of the right and wrong deeds of the people and brings them to book.

In his previous role as Şāhib al-sūq, the market inspector had mainly material, not spiritual considerations. He looked after the maintenance of standard weights and measures; he checked whether the coins used were genuine or counterfeit; he saw to it that the buildings, walls and streets were kept in good condition and that the water was supplied unpolluted; he supervised the maintenance of public baths and places of entertainment. Additionally, he performed the functions of a nightwatchmen (‘asas or ţuwwāf al-layl) in which he was concerned with preventing crimes that usually occured at night, such as theft, burglary or murder, drunkenness, adultery, prostitution and homosexuality. Some of these functions did border on questions of morality and religion, yet on the whole his role remained secular.

When, later, the Market Inspector was transformed into a Muhtasib, his office was described as a dīnī (or religious) office concerned primarily with the Qur’ānic precept of “enjoining the good and preventing the bad” (al-amr bi’l-ma‘rūf wa’n-nahy ‘an al-munkar). His material functions of market inspection remained, but they were looked upon as steps toward a religious goal.

The question arises whether this change in the market inspector’s role stemmed from the general policy of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate to Islamicise all institutions, or whether it had a more practical purpose of suppressing religious and political opposition. It is to this question that this paper will address itself. The crucial period is the tenth and eleventh centuries, although it took time in order to explain the change. Baghdad and the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate will be the focus of our attention, although what happened there could not be understood without the background of what was happening in the western lands of Islam. Moreover, since the market inspector was concerned with the life and activity of the market-place it would be useful, by way of brief introduction, to say a few words about the commercial and artisan classes in early Islam.

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3 Aug 2009
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When did Islamic science die (and who cares)?

When did Islamic science die (and who cares)?

By Jamil Ragep

Viewpoint: Newsletter of the British Society for the History of Science, No.85 (2008)

Introduction: Imagine waking up one day and finding out that a Nobel Laureate has declared that the subject of your life’s work doesn’t amount to a hill of beans (or in less Bogeyesque terms, isn’t worth mentioning). Such was the jolt I received from the hallowed pages of the Times Literary Supplement, when I read Steven Weinberg’s review of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (17 Jan 2007). Weinberg had held forth that ‘After al-Ghazzali [d. 1111], there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries’.

Since my colleagues and I have certainly found a lot to mention, I sent a letter to the editor listing a number of accomplishments by Islamic scientists post-Ghazali (24 Jan 2007). To my surprise, Professor Weinberg’s response conceded little, compounding his earlier statement with long-discredited claims about the lack of influence and significance of late medieval Islamic science (31 Jan 2007). One always finds oneself in an odd position when challenged by someone with no credentials in one’s field, and in general the response should be to ignore the uninformed.

But because Weinberg’s views have larger implications beyond our narrow scholarly concerns, I will attempt to explain in what follows why they are indeed incorrect, why these views have had a remarkable persistence, and why this debate matters in the hypercharged post- 9/11 political environment.

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31 Jul 2009
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The Human in the Monster: Images of Divs (Demons) in 14th to 16th Century Shahnamas

The Human in the Monster: Images of Divs (Demons) in 14th to 16th Century Shahnamas

By Francesca Leoni

The Monstrous Identity of Humanity: Monsters and the Monstrous, Proceedings of the Fifth Global Conference, edited by Marlin C. Bates (2007)

Abstract: In the Shāhnāma (The Book of Kings, ca 1010) – an epic poem that relates the history of ancient Iranian kings – fantastic encounters are very frequent and take many forms. Legendary heroes and kings are described as fighting enormous dragons, as well as meeting extraordinary beings, such as talking phoenixes and animal-headed trees. Their most significant deeds, though, are those accomplished against dīvs (demons), hideous creatures that threaten the human order. While hybridity and monstrosity constantly characterize the representations of these beings in illustrated versions of the poem, we assist to a significant transformation – and progressive humanization – of their imagery from the 16th century on. These monsters change from impassive half-human/half-animal creatures to deformed humanoids with disproportioned limbs and caricaturized physiognomies. At times, they almost look more “human” than the men fighting them, which are instead shaped according to well-established, but rather artificial iconographic conventions. My paper reconstructs the changes in the imagery of dīvs between the 14th and the 16th century and discusses the artistic implications and the historical factors underlying them. It also raises questions about the cultural values attached to specific visual choices, aiming to prove that precise notions of personal and social appropriateness shaped the protagonists of such artful compositions. The case of demonic imagery – and its tension with other figurative types – offers the opportunity to challenge the derivative role traditionally attributed to miniature painting in the Islamic world. In fact, it proves that the pictorial space was a locus for the articulation of relevant historical and cultural issues and not only a way to embellish classical works of Persian literature.

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17 Jun 2009
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