The Monastery as Tavern and Temple in Medieval Islam: The Case for Confessional Flexibility in the Locus of Christian Monasteries

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-77
Author(s):  
Brad B. Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Wine Consumption ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Religious Dimension ◽  
Medieval Islam

Abstract This article examines the diverse nature of Muslim interest in Christian monasteries during the medieval Islamic period. According to a variety of contemporary accounts, Muslim visitation to monasteries often involved wine consumption and licentious behavior on the part of the elites. While not dismissing this possibility, this research suggests that there was often a greater religious dimension to Muslim fascination with monastic sites. Sacred shrines throughout the late antique Levant had, after all, been held in esteem for their hospitality and miraculous powers long before the arrival of Islam. This examination contends that Muslim interest in such Christian shrines and monasteries represents a dynamic, flexible confessional environment at the dawning of Islam. The pious spirit of pilgrimage and ziyāra/visitation was simply transferred into a new religious context; one that was defined by its fluid character and amorphous sectarian lines.

Social Cohesion, Breaks, and Transformations in Italy, 535–600

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Pohl
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Ancient Society ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Classical Culture

When the Gothic War began in Italy in 535, the country still conserved many features of classical culture and late antique administration. Much of that was lost in the political upheavals of the following decades. Building on Chris Wickham’s work, this contribution sketches an integrated perspective of these changes, attempting to relate the contingency of events to the logic of long-term change, discussing political options in relation to military and economic means, and asking in what ways the erosion of consensus may be understood in a cultural and religious context. What was the role of military entrepreneurs of more or less barbarian or Roman extraction in the distribution or destruction of resources? How did Christianity contribute to the transformation of ancient society? The old model of barbarian invasions can contribute little to understanding this complex process. It is remarkable that for two generations, all political strategies in Italy ultimately failed.

Scribal Repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic Period

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
The People ◽  
Modern Egypt ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Point Of Departure

This volume deals with the possibility of glimpsing pre-modern and early modern Egyptian scribes, the people who actually produced ancient documents, through the ways in which they organized and wrote those documents. Breaking with the traditional conception of variation in scribal texts as ‘free’ or indicative of ‘corruption’, this volume reconceptualizes scribal variation in pre-modern Egypt from the point of view of contemporary historical sociolinguistics, seeing scribes as agents embedded in particular geographical, temporal, and sociocultural environments. This volume comprises a set of studies of scribal variation, beginning from the well-established domain of scribal variation in pre-modern English as a methodological point of departure, and proceeding to studies of scribal variation spanning thousands of years, from Pharaonic to Late Antique and Islamic Egypt. This volume introduces to Egyptology concepts such as scribal communities, networks, and repertoires, and applies them to a variety of phenomena, including features of lexicon, grammar, orthography, palaeography, layout, and format.

The Islamic East a millennium ago: Biruni’s world

Biruni ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
George Malagaris
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Complex World ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Historical Aspects ◽  
Medieval Islam

Biruni constantly investigated his complex world in its natural and historical aspects. He perceived his homeland of Khwarazm in the manner of a modern physical geographer while simultaneously maintaining awareness of its underlying cultural currents and far-flung connections with distant lands. He appreciated that the notion of a region depended on cultural and political factors; indeed, the modern usage of the terms Central Asia, Middle East, and South Asia implies a multiplicity of histories, as he doubtlessly would have understood. Biruni himself frequently commented on its significance and persistently sought to interpret its underlying tendencies throughout his writing. Whether he touched on the topics of ancient Iran, late antique Hellenism, or early medieval Islam, Biruni added to the knowledge of his contemporaries, and the survival of his works has augmented our own.

Re-frame

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron W. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Moses Maimonides

Chapter 6 seeks to re-frame or redescribe this so-called golden age by arguing that Islam provided the intellectual and religious context for the florescence of Judaism at a formative moment in its development. In this, the context was little different from what went on in the late antique period. The chapter argues that the border separating Jew from Muslim in this period may still be more retrofitted from the present than real. It examines some key Jewish thinkers—Judah Halevi, Baḥya ibn Paqūda, Abraham ibn Ezra, Moses Maimonides—with the aim of showing how they continued to destabilize the line between Judaism and Islam. Even in the late twelfth century, “Islamic Judaism” existed subsequent to that fact that rabbinic Judaism had been historically overdetermined as normative. Indeed, so much so that rabbinic Judaism continued to absorb many elements of Islam to change not only its margins but also its center.

The qamīṣ in Sūrat Yūsuf: A Prolegomenon to the Material Culture of Garments in the Formative Islamic Period

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
F.V. Greifenhagen
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Material Object ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Textual Data ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
Original Audience ◽  
The Relationship

Garments both reveal and cover. The recurring appearance of Yūsuf's qamīṣ, or shirt, in the twelfth sura of the Qur'an clearly functions as a literary device unifying the plot and signifying, in this case, the revelation of truth. However, behind the qamīṣ lies a material object, an actual article of clothing. This paper enquires into the relationship between the qamīṣ as a literary trope in the Qur'an and as a material object in first/seventh-century Arabia. By exploring a variety of comparative etymological, ethnographic, archaeological, iconographic and textual data, an attempt is made to ground the qamīṣ in the cultural and physical environment of the late antique world and as an element in the cultural imaginaire of the original audience of the story of Joseph in the Qur'an. While highly explorative and tentative, this paper strives to contribute to the evocation of the material world of the Qur'an.

“The Redeemer to Arise from the House of Dan”: Samson, Apocalypticism, and Messianic Hopes in Late Antique Galilee

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 553-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Grey
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Art ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
The Future ◽  
Liturgical Texts ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Late Roman

Abstract In the last five years, two mosaics depicting Samson’s biblical exploits have been discovered in Lower Eastern Galilee. Both mosaics were found in synagogues that date to the Late Roman/Byzantine period and are located in close proximity to Tiberias. Because of the rarity of Samson in ancient Jewish art and Samson’s lack of historical ties to the region, the significance of these mosaics requires explanation. This article explores this significance by considering the socio-religious context of the region in which the mosaics were discovered. Sources indicate that apocalyptic thought and messianic expectations flourished in Jewish Galilee throughout late antiquity, particularly in the vicinity of Tiberias. In addition, liturgical texts show that some Jews in this period viewed Samson as a biblical type of the future messiah—a redeemer of the past who foreshadowed Israel’s eschatological redemption. This confluence of evidence suggests that the Samson mosaics can be viewed as apocalyptic images reflecting messianic hopes that were popular in late antique Galilee.

“God’s Caliph” Revisited

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Marsham
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
God's Image ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Made In

This chapter reviews the evidence for the use of the title “God’s caliph” in the early Islamic period. It makes the case that the Islamic ruler’s titles closely resembled those of their Roman rivals and, like their Roman counterparts, should be understood as addressing diverse audiences, with the “protocollary” title “commander of the faithful” being used most commonly and in all contexts, and with “God’s caliph” being used less frequently and often in courtly or panegyric contexts. Intertextualities between the Qurʾān, the caliphal title, and wider Late Antique discourse around the idea of Man as being made in God’s image are placed in the context of conflict between Rome and the Umayyads.

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