Arts and Crafts of the Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia

Author(s):  
Dobrochna Zielińska

After the collapse of the Meroitic Empire, three independent kingdoms arose within its former territory. Because of a lack of centralized political authority and artistic production, their early development, although based on the Meroitic inheritance, was determined by different sources of influence. From the 8th century two united northern kingdoms became a powerful state, which is also reflected in its art. Rising creativity from the 9th century onwards reflected local needs and ambitions. In the course of time, surrounded by Islamic neighbors, Nubian art on one hand remained independent in its forms of art, but on the other hand absorbed a new style and iconographic details, which is most visible in 12th-century wall painting. Most probably it reflected a changing lifestyle, inspired by the wider Middle Eastern world at that time. The late period, although characterized by much less activity and financial possibilities of individuals or communities, still shows flourishing activities of Nubian artists. Christian Nubian culture ended almost simultaneously with the Byzantine empire, leaving almost one thousand years of its unique heritage.

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 685-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Impey

The opening up of Japan to the west and the consequent influences of the west and of Japan upon each other are remarkable for many reasons, not least of which is the interchange of styles and techniques of the arts and crafts one to the other. The export of Japanese works of art, and the influence upon European artistic production during the Meiji period (though often of works produced during the Edo period) have all but obscured the remarkable effects Japanese export art had upon the west during the period of self-imposed semi-isolation. Of course Japan was also greatly influenced by western art; that is not the subject of this paper, but it is a subject of great interest, worthy of considerable attention.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 171-185
Author(s):  
Francesco Dall’Aglio

In the correspondence between Innocent III and Kalojan of Bulgaria (1197–1207), the title of the Bulgarian ruler is recorded both as rex and imperator. While the pope consistently employs the title rex, Kalojan refers to himself, in every occasion, with the title imperator. Some scholars have speculated that the use of this title was a deliberate political move: styling himself imperator, Kalojan was claiming a much greater political dignity than that of king of Bulgaria, putting himself on the same level as the emperor of Constantinople. On the other hand, while Innocent’s letters were obviously written in Latin, Kalojan’s letters were originally in Bulgarian, translated in Greek, and finally translated from Greek to Latin. Therefore, the use of the word imperator may be just an attempt at translating the term βασιλεύς, not in the sense of Emperor of the Romans but merely in that of autocrat, a ruler whose power was fully independent from any other external political authority. This recognition was of a fundamental importance for Kalojan, since the rulers of Bulgaria’s neighbouring states, the kingdom of Hungary, the Byzantine empire, and especially the Latin empire of Constantinople, were not willing to recognize his legitimacy as an independent sovereign.


2019 ◽  
pp. 134-142
Author(s):  
Mirosław J. Leszka

Samuel, the ruler of Bulgaria from the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries is without a doubt a significant figure in the history of his country, having left a clear mark on its relations with the Byzantine Empire. It was he who challenged the Byzantines, who occupied a considerable part of Bulgaria in 971. Over the course of several decades, he was first wrenching Bulgarian territories from the Byzantine hands and subsequently defended his possessions with great determination. It was only several years after his death (1014) that the Bulgarian state fell into Byzantine hands (1018), ushering an almost hundred and seventy yearperiod of its nonexistence – the time of Byzantine captivity. Information included in the 12th‑century Byzantine sources (Nicephor Bryennios, Anna Komnene, John Zonaras, Michael Glykas, The Life of Nikon Metanoeite”), analysed in the present article and relating to Samuel are focused on the two fundamental questions, specifically the circumstances in which he had taken the reins of power and the military activity he conducted against Byzantium. The portrayal of the Bulgarian ruler included therein was on the one hand influenced by the trend present in the Byzantine literature to diminish the successes of the Empire’s enemies by indicating their causes were to be found on the Byzantine side, and on the other by the fact that the Bulgarians became subjects of the Byzantine ruler. Some of them entered into the elite of the Byzantine society, sometimes through familial connections. In these circumstances, it was better to be related to Samuel the Basileus, rather than to Samuel the barbarian.


1987 ◽  
Vol 57 (01) ◽  
pp. 029-034 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Urdén ◽  
Joanna Chmielewska ◽  
Tomas Carlsson ◽  
Björn Wiman

SummaryPolyclonal antibodies have been raised against the inhibitor moiety in the purified complex between tissue plasminogen activator and its fast inhibitor (PA-inhibitor) in human plasma/ serum. A radioimmunoassay for quantitation of PA-inhibitor antigen was developed. The polyclonal antiserum and a previously described monoclonal antibody against the PA-inhibitor (14) have been used to study the immunological relationship between PA-inhibitors from plasma, serum, platelets, placenta extract and conditioned media from Hep G2 and HT 1080 cells. It was demonstrated that the ratio between PA-inhibitor activity and antigen varied considerably between the different sources. In the plasma samples studied, similar activity and antigen concentrations were found, suggesting that the PA-inhibitor in these samples mainly was in an active form. On the other hand the other sources seemed to contain variable amounts of inactive PA-inhibitor forms. Immunoadsorption experiments revealed that the PA-inhibitor (activity and antigen) from all the sources were specifically bound to the insolubilized antibodies (polyclonal and monoclonal). In no case, however, could active PA-inhibitor be eluted from the immunoadsorption columns. Also the competitive radioimmunoassays suggested that the PA-inhibitors from the different sources studied, were closely immunologically related.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
EUNJUNG CHOI ◽  
JONGSEOK WOO

AbstractWhile the importance of social and political trust has been well documented, there is a lack of scholarly consensus over where trust originates. This article tests three theoretical arguments – social-psychological, social-cultural, and political institutional – on the origin of political trust against three East Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan). The empirical analysis from the AsiaBarometer survey illustrates that political institutional theory best explains the origin of political trust in East Asian cases. Citizens of these East Asian democracies have a high level of political trust when they believe that their governments perform well in management of the national economy and political representation of elected officials. Meanwhile, social-psychological and social-cultural theories explain the origins of social trust, but not political trust. The evidence reveals that socially trusting people are not automatically politically trusting; social trust and political trust originate from different sources and do not transform from one to the other.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Flett

This article reviews the way in which the concept of precaution, as commonly referenced in EU law, is received in the WTO. It argues that precaution is not a principle, but one facet of a principle of making rational judgments based on available information, the other facet of which is “that risk is worth taking”. Systematically pursuing high cost measures in response to low risks is not a balanced approach, and has probably contributed to the scepticism with which the concept is viewed in the WTO. However, this article goes on to argue that, without needing to be a principle, precaution is the determining legal feature in the SPS Agreement, because, unlike in the European Union, there is no legislative harmonisation of SPS measures at international level, WTO Members being free to set their own appropriate level of protection. In fact, the concept of precaution is relevant in the context of many other WTO provisions and is in some respects quite close to the concept of subsidiarity. Notwithstanding this, the first WTO SPS cases, driven by regulatory exporters and an interventionist WTO, have excessively emphasised scientific issues, masking policy judgments that the WTO has neither the legal nor the political authority to sustain. The article concludes that the proper way forward necessitates closer political, legal and administrative links between the WTO and other relevant international organisations, and a move away from consensus in the latter.


1961 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 42-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Metcalf

The Byzantine coinage in the twelfth century was of three kinds. There were gold nomismata, with a purchasing power which must have been a good deal greater than that of a present-day five-pound note, and also nomismata of ‘pale gold’—gold alloyed with silver—of lower value; at the other extreme there were bronze coins, smaller than a modern farthing, which were the coinage of the market-place; intermediate, but still of low value, there were coins about the size of a halfpenny, normally made of copper lightly washed with silver. The silvered bronze and the gold were not flat, as are most coins, but saucer-shaped. The reason for their unusual form is not known. Numismatists describe them as scyphate, and refer to the middle denomination in the later Byzantine system of coinage as Scyphate Bronze, to distinguish it from the petty bronze coinage. Scyphate Bronze was first struck under Alexius I (1081–1118). Substantive issues were made by John II (1118–43), and such coinage became extremely plentiful under Manuel I (1143–80) and his successors Isaac II (1185–95) and Alexius III (1195–1203). After the capture of Constantinople in the course of the Fourth Crusade, the successor-states to the Byzantine Empire at Nicaea, Salonica, and in Epirus continued to issue scyphate bronze coinage, although in much smaller quantities, until after the middle of the thirteenth century.


PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Almond

In an examination of the varied responses to the Muslim Orient by the eighteenth-century German thinker Johann Gottfried von Herder, I try to locate the multiple identities he displayed in his treatment of Turks, the Koran, Arab thought, and the doctrines of Islam. What emerges is a series of different voices, employing different registers of language: a Christian response to Islam as a rival revelation-based monotheism (but, at the same time, a more sympathetic Protestant privileging of “Muhammadanism” as a belief system preferable to “papism”); a poetic register, in which “Muhammadans” move from spiritual ignorance to a status of aesthetic desirability; a philological response to the Muslim Orient, one whose emphasis on the Middle Eastern origins of European literature would assist Herder's project of the reprovincialization of Europe; and a nationalist vocabulary, one that would see the rise of Islam as a model for the emergence of Herder's German nation but that would also, paradoxically, express a Turcophobia that demonizes the Ottomans into the other of civilization.


Zograf ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 153-163
Author(s):  
Dragan Vojvodic

In the katholikon of the monastery of Praskvica there are remains of two layers of post-Byzantine wall-painting: the earlier, from the third quarter of the sixteenth century, and later, from the first half of the seventeenth century, which is the conclusion based on stylistic analysis and technical features. The portions of frescoes belonging to one or the other layer can be clearly distinguished from one another and the content of the surviving representations read more thoroughly than before. It seems that the remains of wall-painting on what originally was the west facade of the church also belong to the earlier layer. It is possible that the church was not frescoed in the lifetime of its ktetor, Balsa III Balsic.


Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy ◽  
Nicholas J. Wheeler

This chapter examines the role of humanitarian intervention in world politics. It considers how we should resolve tensions when valued principles such as order, sovereignty, and self-determination come into conflict with human rights; and how international thought and practice has evolved with respect to humanitarian intervention. The chapter discusses the case for and against humanitarian intervention and looks at humanitarian activism during the 1990s. It also analyses the responsibility to protect principle and the use of force to achieve its protection goals in Libya in 2011. Two case studies are presented, one dealing with humanitarian intervention in Darfur and the other with the role of Middle Eastern governments in Operation Unified Protector in Libya in 2011. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether the West should intervene in Syria to protect people there from the Islamic State (ISIS).


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