scholarly journals The ‘oldest dated document of the Cairo Genizah’ (Halper 331): The Seleucid era and sectarian Jewish calendars

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
EVE KRAKOWSKI ◽  
SACHA STERN
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Dating Methods ◽  
Marriage Contract ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Document ◽  
Cairo Genizah ◽  
Medieval Egypt

Abstract Halper 331 is the fragment of a codex that has been styled the ‘oldest dated document of the Cairo Genizah’. It preserves the opening of a Jewish legal document dated to the year 1182 (Seleucid era), which appears to have been copied into this codex, probably as a formulary, not long after this date, in the late 9th century. In this article, the text of this fragment, in Aramaic and Hebrew, is edited, and its identification as the beginning of a marriage contract (ketubbah) is evaluated. Its Egyptian provenance is questioned, partly because the earliest evidence for the introduction of the Seleucid era by Jews in Egypt dates from the mid-10th century. The article surveys the history of Jewish dating methods in early medieval Egypt and the Near East, in an attempt to clarify this question. The specific date of the document deviates from the rabbinic calendar, but agrees with that of the contemporary Jewish Near Eastern sectarian groups of Abū ʿImrān al-Tiflīsī and Ismāʿīl al-ʿUkbarī; this document could thus uniquely attest one of these sectarian Jewish calendars.

Factions in medieval Egypt

1986 ◽  
Vol 118 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Transmission And Distribution ◽  
Medieval Egypt

“If all you have to tell us is that one barbarian succeeded another barbarian on the banks of the Oxus or Jaxartes, what benefit have you conferred on the public?” Voltaire's question is an awkward one for anyone investigating the transmission and distribution of power in the XVth century Circassian Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria. Even so the question of factionalism and its role in succession crises and other crises in the history of the Islamic lands has to be tackled, for surely the prevalence of factions in the Near East and our lack of understanding of them does add a certain patina of dullness to much of Islamic history. Faction succeeds to faction as “Amurath to Amurath”, and though Macaulay could find the history of England and its latter part, the struggle of Whig and Tory, to be “emphatically the history of progress”, few people have felt similarly confident about the struggle of Ẓāhirī and Manṣūrī factions in medieval Egypt. It is hard to understand past events without imposing a pattern, and at the political level the gyrations of Egyptian factions do not lend themselves easily to the imposition of pattern.

Reconstructing the Rural Landscape of the Ancient Near East

1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Liverani
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Size And Shape ◽  
Ur Iii ◽  
Textual Data ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThe reconstruction of ancient Near Eastern history has mainly concentrated on urban (and especially palace) environments, leaving the rural landscape outside these analyses. Recent advances in archaeological and palaeobotanical fields greatly help in the recovery of the general outlines of rural exploitation in Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions; yet they cannot but miss the details of the individual exploitation units (fields and orchards), whose size and shape can be reconstructed on the basis of textual data such as cadastral texts (and other administrative recordings) and legal texts (related to the transfer of landed properties). Continuing the author's earlier work on the shape of fields in Ur III (ca. 2100-2000 B.C.), based on cadastral documents from Lagash province in lower Mesopotamia, this article examines, by way of ‘gross’ generalization and occasional exemplification, the entire history of the Mesopotamian landscape from the first administrative landscape in “late-Uruk” documents (ca. 3000 B.C.), down to the Neo-Babylonian documents of the Archaemenid period (ca. 500 B.C.).

scholarly journals The Storm-Gods of the Ancient Near East: Summary, Synthesis, Recent Studies Part I

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Schwemer
Keyword(s):  
Present Author ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Equal Space ◽  
First Time

AbstractIn many regions of the ancient Near East, not least in Upper Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia where agriculture relied mainly on rainfall, storm-gods ranked among the most prominent gods in the local panthea or were even regarded as divine kings, ruling over the gods and bestowing kingship on the human ruler. While the Babylonian and Assyrian storm-god never held the highest position among the gods, he too belongs to the group of 'great gods' through most periods of Mesopotamian history. Given the many cultural contacts and the longevity of traditions in the ancient Near East only a study that takes into account all relevant periods, regions and text-groups can further our understanding of the different ancient Near Eastern storm-gods. The study Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und Nordsyriens by the present author (2001) tried to tackle the problems involved, basing itself primarily on the textual record and excluding the genuinely Anatolian storm-gods from the study. Given the lack of handbooks, concordances and thesauri in our field, the book is necessarily heavily burdened with materials collected for the first time. Despite comprehensive indices, the long lists and footnotes as well as the lack of an overall synthesis make the study not easily accessible, especially outside the German-speaking community. In 2003 Alberto Green published a comprehensive monograph entitled The Storm-God in the Ancient Near East whose aims are more ambitious than those of Wettergottgestalten: All regions of the ancient Near East—including a chapter on Yahwe as a storm-god—are taken into account, and both textual and iconographic sources are given equal space. Unfortunately this book, which was apparently finished and submitted to the publisher before Wettergottgestalten came to its author's attention, suffers from some serious flaws with regard to methodology, philology and the interpretation of texts and images. In presenting the following succinct overview I take the opportunity to make up for the missing synthesis in Wettergottgestalten and to provide some additions and corrections where necessary. It is hoped that this synthesis can also serve as a response to the history of ancient Near Eastern storm-gods as outlined by A. Green.

The Power of Pigs

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Max D. Price
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Eastern Cultures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Environmental Process ◽  
Previous Scholarship

This introductory chapter outlines the themes of the book. Pigs have long played important roles in the cultures of the Near East, especially in times of ethnoreligious conflict. The mass cull in 2009 of swine owned by the Zabaleen in Cairo is one of the most recent examples. Examining pigs provides a lens into the past, a unique means of studying Near Eastern cultures. Whereas previous scholarship has been content to study the pig in specific cultural contexts, often attempting to explain its history with reference to a single cultural or environmental process, this book covers the history of the pig from before its domestication to the present day. By adopting this long-term, wide-reaching perspective, I advance the argument that pigs, and the taboos placed upon them, can be understood only as evolving cultural elements.

scholarly journals نصوص مسمارية لقروض غير منشورة من سلالة أور الثالثة

2019 ◽  
pp. 387-406
Author(s):  
Wafaa Hadi Zwaid
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
History Of

تناول البحث دراسة خمسة نصوص مسمارية لقروض غير منشورة من سلالة أور الثالثة وتحليلها وترجمتها وهي من مجموعة المتحف العراقي, يعود تاريخها الى زمن سلالة أور الثالثة (2012-2004ق.م) تحديدا الى زمن  الملكين شوسين (2037- 2029ق.م) وابي سين (2028-2004 ق.م), اما مضامينها فهي قروض بمادتي الشعير(ثلاثة نصوص) الفضة (نصان), والقروض على نوعين قروض بفائدة (ur5 - ra), وقروض بدون فائدة (maš2 - nu - tuk), وقد حددت نسبة الفائدة في القروض 1/3 33%  لمادة الشعير و20% لمادة الفضة.   (1) نقرأ النص الآتي: Œe - dnanŒe         Œe - dnin - gír - su - ka         1gur7 - am6         lœ - ummaki - ke4         ur5 - Œ  “ - kœ شعير الالهة نانشة      وشعير الاله ننكرسو     (بمعدل) كور واحد(فرض أنتمينا)     (على الفرد الواحد) من سكان أوما     كـ (دين ) (كان في أعناقهم) تنتفع منه لكش              ينظر: رشيد, فوزي, ترجمات النصوص السومرية الملكية ,بغداد,1985,ص25 و 50 وكذلك: Van de Mieroop,"A history of Near Eastern Debt'',Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East,Maryland,2002,p.62-63 (2) نقرأ النص الآتي:                                                                                                 Œu - níg̃in 21 Œe ul        in  œ - riki        a - na  Œe - ur5 - kam المجموع 21 اول مضعف من الشعير في مدينة أوري (أعطي) الشعير كقرض ذو فائدة ينظر: رشيد, فوزي, أقدم الكتابات المسمارية المكتشفة في حوض سد حمرين ,بغداد,1981,ص64 , 95,91

Conceptual History of the Near East

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Florian Zemmin ◽  
Henning Sievert
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Historical Factor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Near Eastern Studies

Conceptual history holds tremendous potential to address a central issue in Near Eastern Studies, namely the formation of modernity in the Near East, provisionally located between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The encounter with European powers, primarily Britain and France, was a decisive historical factor in this formation; and European hegemony is, in fact, inscribed into the very concept of “modernity,” which we take as an historical, rather than analytical, concept. The conceptual formation of modernity in Arabic and Turkish was, however, a multilayered process; involving both ruptures and continuities, intersecting various temporalities, and incorporating concepts from several languages. To interrogate this multilayered process, we suggest the metaphor of the Sattelzeit (Saddle Period) as a heuristic tool, precisely because of its being tied to modernity. Finally, the article will show what conceptual history of the Near East has to offer to conceptual history more broadly.

Placing Ancient Israel in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor H. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Historical Geography ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The focus of this chapter is on the methods employed in examining the history writing (historiography) of the biblical writers and editors, and of the task associated with writing a history of ancient Israel. In every instance an effort is made to place ancient Israel into its social, political, and economic context as part of the world of the ancient Near East. Also included is the current library of extrabiblical sources available to scholars that throw light on the history of ancient Israel. Attention is then given to the role of historical geography as it relates to a study of the history of the countries of the Levant, as well as an introduction to the values and limitations of archaeology.

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