Money Supply and Currency

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Fanny Bessard
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Money Supply ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Precious Metal ◽  
Near East ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
East Central ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Velocity Of Money ◽  
Money Circulation

In the Middle Ages, Arab-Muslims inherited the massive coin stocks struck by Byzantium and Iran to support their war efforts in the sixth and early seventh centuries. Up to the late seventh century, solidi and drachms continued to circulate, Arab-Muslims making use of the available stocks. The situation changed from the reign of ‘Abd al-Malik (685–705) and the second fitna. With the rise of the ‘counter-caliph’ Ibn al-Zubayr, ‘Abd al-Malik felt the need to assert the Umayyad’s imperial authority to keep the unity of the umma. His famous reform of coinage was used to impose the Umayyads’ ideology through the use of new Islamic currencies. This chapter examines how Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik’s monetary reforms in the late seventh century played a fundamental role in triggering exchange and increasing the velocity of money circulation. It also explores how, in the late eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, influxes of precious metal from the release of antique treasuries, the intensified exploitation of existing mines, and the discovery of ore veins and deposits in the Near East, Central Asia, and Africa, helped to sustain a developing culture of consumption.

Conclusion to Part I

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-100
Author(s):  
Fanny Bessard
Keyword(s):  
Urban Economy ◽  
Near East ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Investment Policy ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Trading Zones ◽  
Urban Market ◽  
Late Roman

In certain respects, the development of urban retailing and crafts in the Near East from 700 to 950 was a natural response to the Muslim conquests, which joined up the late Roman and Persian trading zones. Still, it was not a self-generated process. Archaeological and textual sources reveal the prominent role that Muslim imperial authority played in the patronage of urban market and production spaces, possibly from as early as the late seventh century. While literary testimonies unanimously depict ‘Abbāsid sovereigns as more coercive in provincial life and the patronage of urban economy to support imperial propaganda, we can extrapolate from earlier accounts orally transmitted that caliphs and governors pursued an active investment policy as early as the rule of ‘Abd al-Malik in the late seventh and early eighth centuries....

The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Significant Period ◽  
Oxford Dictionary

Over 5,000 entriesThe first comprehensive, multi-disciplinary reference work covering every aspect of history, culture, religion, and life in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East (including the Persian Empire and Central Asia) between c. AD 250 to 750, the era now generally known as Late Antiquity. This period saw the re-establishment of the Roman Empire, its conversion to Christianity and its replacement in the West by Germanic kingdoms, the continuing Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Sassanian Empire, and the rise of Islam.Consisting of more than 1.5 million words, drawing on the latest scholarship, and written by more than 400 contributors, it bridges a significant period of history between those covered by the acclaimed Oxford Classical Dictionary and The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, and aims to establish itself as the essential reference companion to this period.

scholarly journals PRE-MONGOLIAN GLASS ARTICLES FROM PENJIKENT AND ITS SUBURBS

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 103-118
Author(s):  
F. Aminov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Near East ◽  
Window Glass ◽  
Functional Classification ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
High Middle Ages

The period of High Middle Ages witnessed the development of glassmaking in Central Asia. The paper presents glass articles from pre-Mongolian Penjikent and its suburbs. The Penjikent col- lection contains all major groups of glass articles recognized in the functional classification tradi- tionally used in the region: table glassware (fig. 1; 2; 3, 1–7; 4, 1, 2; 5, 8; 6, 15, 17), perfume and drug jars (fig. 2, 13; 5, 4–7, 9, 10), chemical glassware (fig. 4, 7), household items (fig. 3, 6; 4, 3–5; 5, 1–3; 6, 16), adornments (fig. 5, 11–13) and window-glass (fig. 6, 1–14). The material under study can be dated to the X–XII cc. These glass articles find analogies in the materials from Samarkand, Tash- kent oasis, Bukhara, Fergana valley, Northern Tokharistan, as well as some synchronous urban centers on the territory of modern Kazakhstan. There is also a tendency to a certain uniformity (fashion) in the main types of glass articles that were produced during that period in both Central Asia and the Near East.

The Stigmata in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Introductory Overview ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Biblical Commentaries

Francis of Assisi’s reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs received, like the apostle Paul, in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages holy women like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) were more frequently described as having stigmata than their male counterparts. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants. This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata as expressed in theological discussions and devotional practices in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. It also contains an introductory overview of the historiography of religious stigmata beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to its treatment and assessment in the twenty-first century.

Secular Monograms, Social Status, and Authority in the Late Roman World and Early Byzantium

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Noble Identity ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter examines the use of monograms as graphic signs of imperial authority in the late Roman and early Byzantine empire, from its appropriation on imperial coinage in the mid-fifth century to its employment in other material media in the following centuries. It also overviews the use of monograms by imperial officials and aristocrats as visible signs of social power and noble identity on mass-produced objects, dress accessories, and luxury items. The concluding section discusses a new social function for late antique monograms as visible tokens of a new Christian paideia and of elevated social status, related to ennobling calligraphic skills. This transformation of monograms into an attribute of visual Christian culture became especially apparent in sixth-century Byzantium, with the cruciform monograms appearing in the second quarter of the sixth century and becoming a default monogrammatic form from the seventh century onwards.

Merovingian Meditations on Jesus

2020 ◽  
pp. 1070-1105
Author(s):  
Lynda Coon
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Lives Of Saints ◽  
External Influences ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Biblical Texts

The final chapter of this volume explores the conversation on Jesus held between material and textual sources, where monumental works of sculpture extend salvific themes found in the lives of saints and the verses of poets. Merovingian meditations on Jesus are multivocal, reflecting the cross-cultural rhythms of a world open to and receptive of external influences, whether originating in classical or biblical texts or hailing from Mediterranean or Northern lands. In order to prove this hypothesis on the Merovingian body and the embodied savior, three works of sculpture produced during the early Middle Ages serve as sounding boards for Jesus’ earthly ministry as enacted by human players: the crucified savior featured on the seventh-century Moselkern Stele; the eighth-century Hypogée des Dunes’s sculpted relief of the two thieves crucified along with Jesus; and the so-called Niederdollendorf “Christ,” carved most likely in the seventh century. Saintly actors, such as Radegund of Poitiers (d. 587), animate three themes expressed in the sculpted sources respectively: (1) absence, (2) torture, and (3) light. The three subjects—light, torture, and absence—all point to strategies of integrating the realm of humanity within the celestial spheres, and each motif tracks different styles of meditating on Merovingian Jesus.

The Fate of Small Towns, Hilltop Settlements, and Elite Residences in Merovingian-Period Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-640
Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Many

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.

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