Round Towers of the Andalusi-Catalan Borders (8th–10th centuries)

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramon Martí ◽  
Mª Mercè Viladrich

This article reviews the subject of early medieval fortifications in Catalonia. In particular, we focus on the free-standing round towers, a type of construction that presents many variants. Academic disputes abound as to their origins; some of them are ascribed to the Roman period, whereas others are thought to belong to the time of the Catalan Counts (from the middle of the 10th century until the middle of the 12th century). These towers are common in wide areas of al-Andalus, where their Islamic origin is usually not disputed. Here, we explore the oldest samples found in the territories of Catalonia, by cross-checking archaeological and monumental data with textual sources, in order to test the hypothesis of an Andalusi origin of these very early constructions. This study covers a large geographical area, more than 300 km straight along the Catalan coastline and neighbouring territories. On this stretch of land there were as many as three different frontiers in the period under study between the lands under Christian or Islamic rule. We discuss up to 50 towers, each one built with the purpose of surveillance and control of the territory. This mission reflects a strategy of defence, which makes sense in the Islamic era if the enemy is coming from the north. Furthermore, the successive borders are linked to different styles of towers, which show the transformation from the 8th to the 10th centuries. We identify some of their builders among the Arab governors of the period. Initially relatively low buildings, these towers took on a notably monumental character in the days of Sulayman al-A'rabi. During the 9th century, the Carolingian intrusions sparked a rapid change, with the construction of much higher towers with battlements on the roofs, such as the ones that are predominant in the area around the city of Tortosa at the beginning of the 10th century.

1886 ◽  
Vol 39 (239-241) ◽  
pp. 394-404

The question of the geological age of the yellow sandstones of the district lying to the north of the city of Elgin has been, as is well known, the subject of very animated discussions among geologists. Some have even gone so far as to assert that the evidence on the question, which has been adduced by palaeontologists, is absolutely incapable of reconciliation with that relied upon by stratigraphists.


1958 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 30-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Goodchild ◽  
J. M. Reynolds ◽  
C. J. Herington

Cyrene's largest religious building, the great Temple of Zeus on the north-eastern hill of the city, has been the subject of several explorations. Its cella was partially dug out by Smith and Porcher in 1861, and was completely cleared of soil by the late Giacomo Guidi in 1926, in the excavation which brought to light the famous head of Zeus, pieced together from over a hundred fragments. Then, in the years 1939–1942, fuller work was carried out by Dr. Gennaro Pesce, who published a detailed report with admirable promptness. Despite the interruptions caused by the North African campaigns of the World War, Pesce was able to clear the greater part of the Temple and its fallen peristasis. At the conclusion of his work only the opisthodomos remained unexcavated, although much fallen stone still encumbered the pronaos and the eastern portico.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 940-949
Author(s):  
Tarig Faisal ◽  
Moath Awawdeh ◽  
Anees Bashir

In cities where a large geographical area of the city is densely populated, the process of waste collection is cumbersome, tiresome and expensive. Often, the burden of manually tracking and collecting of waste causes waste management companies enormous wasted effort and get them involved in tasks that are not necessary. No doubt, a digital interaction between waste management companies and targeted waste collection areas could ensure the process becomes fast, efficient and traceable as they become aware of the states of the wastes, aptly. It will considerably reduce any discrepancies that may occur due to the lack of information available during a particular time. Accordingly, this paper proposes a novel approach towards waste management combined with the internet of things to reduce the problems that would occur due to the accumulation of wastes and hence improvise waste collection/management process. Additionally, an innovative feature which generates revenue and creates business opportunities for waste management companies is introduced via advertisement solution based on network-attached storage technology.


Author(s):  
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fomenko

The subject of this research is the toponyms Yessentuk, Yessentuchok, Yessentuki. The goal is ti determine their origin. The author leans on the data of explorations of the remains Golden Horde mausoleums of the XIV century, which were conducted in the late XX and early XXI centuries on the outskirts and in the area of the city of Yessentuki of Stavropol Krai. The article considers the previously revealed connection between mausoleums of the XIV century, Podkumok River Valley, and the Kabardian-Abazin tombstones of the XVIII century located here. It is worth noting that at the time of construction of the Yessentuki reduit at the end of the XVIII century, the general population of the area were Kabardians and Abazins. The application of comprehensive approach alongside various methods of historical and philological sciences allowed determining the origins of the toponyms Yessentuk, Yessentuchok, Yessentuki, as well as carrying out further reconstruction of the history of the Central Fore-Caucasus of pre-Russian and Russian eras. The conclusion is made that the name Yessentuk (in later versions – Yessentuchok and Yessentuki) stems from the Kabardian word combination Yesen tlygu – the edge, area, or border) of Yesen. The personal name Yesen is of Turkic-Mongolian origin and can be occasionally seen in the anthroponymy of the Adyghe and neighboring peoples. The obtained results can be used in studying history of the North Caucasus, toponymic research, museology, creation of science education films.


1967 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Alcock

South Cadbury Castle (N.G. ST 6225) occupies a free-standing hill, some 500 feet high, towards the Somerset-Dorset border. The hill itself is principally, if not entirely, of yellow sandstone belonging to the Jurassic series. To the west there are wide views across the low-lying Somerset basin centred on Glastonbury, an area of great importance in the early post-Roman centuries. To the east, a scarp marks the western edge of the higher ground of Wessex. In cultural terms, South Cadbury lies within the north-western limits of the coins of the Durotriges, but is only a dozen miles from the Glastonbury Lake Village. In the post-Roman period, it is one of the most easterly sites to produce imported pottery of Tintagel type, as well as one of the most inland.


1992 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 99-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lutgarde Vandeput

The theatre of Sagalassos lies to the north-east of the city, high up the mountain. It is undoubtedly one of the best preserved monuments on the site (Pl. XXV (a)), although some parts of it have collapsed as a result of successive earthquakes. The southwestern part of the cavea, which was built on artificial substructures, and the free-standing stage building are particularly badly damaged, but even there the blocks still lie scattered in the vicinity and very few pieces are missing. Despite this, opinion concerning the reconstruction of the scaenae frons, and even some details of the cavea, differs widely (see below).During the 1991 season at Sagalassos we started a study of the building and its decoration. Even though this has not been completed, some results have already arisen, which I would like to discuss in this article. A close examination of the fallen blocks of the stage building, gave clear indications for the reconstruction of the scaenae frons. Their decoration supplies clues for the dating of the monument. New study of the theatre façade allows a one-stage reconstruction, as proposed originally by G. Niemann in Ch. Lanckoronski's work concerning the cities of Pisidia and not the two storeys, proposed by D. de Bernardi Ferrero, and a date in the last quarter of the second century A.D.


Archaeologia ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 151-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. L. Myres

The group of medieval and seventeenth-century buildings which forms the subject of this paper lies in the centre of academic Oxford, between the site of the city wall on the north, Exeter College and its garden on the west and south, and the old Schools Quadrangle on the east. It constitutes indeed the heart of the medieval university. In writing to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, on 14th July 1444 the authorities described the site as eminently suitable for a library because it was somewhat remote from secular noises. In spite of a marked increase in secular noises over the past 500 years in traffic-ridden Oxford, this description remains substantially true today. The buildings, erected then and later, remain in external appearance almost exactly as they are depicted in David Loggan's Oxonia Illustrate. of 1675 (pl. xxvii). They comprise the Divinity School, for which the university was already collecting money and laying the foundations in 1423 ; Duke Humphrey's Library, built over it in the forty-five years following the letter to Duke Humphrey of 1444; Arts End and the Proscholium added at right angles to the east by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1610–12; and Selden End with the Convocation House below, attached similarly to the west in 1637–40. The three upper rooms, Duke Humphrey, Selden End, Arts End, form the core of the ancient buildings of the Bodleian Library: they have been continuously in use for library purposes for between 320 and 360 years.


Millennium ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-232
Author(s):  
Paul Dräger

AbstractThe principal purpose and nucleus of the article is the publication of a Latin text of highly demanding qualities in terms of philological principles which, in connection with its first abundantly annotated translation into German, has hitherto scarcely been noticed by researchers. The only literary collection which bears witness to the existence of the manuscript is a folio edition which presumably came into being in the middle of the 12th century, i. e. during the time of the crusades (conquest of Jerusalem in 1099) and is kept in the municipal library of the city of Treves. The dialogue between the anonymous author and a Greek, who hates the Saracens, forms the content. When, in the centre of the text, the author asks about Mohammed, the ‘monster’ (monstrum), the Greek relates the life of the hater of all Christians in the darkest colours. He begins wit Mohammed’s youth when he was a swineherd, continues with his devil-initiated encounter with the heretic Nestorius and the general development of a new common ‘faith’ as well as its spreading among the desert tribes by means of sorcery and deceipt and the student’s treacherous murder of his teacher. The assassin is then married to a Babylonian royal widow and, finally, meets his contumelious death caused by a pigs’ attack. The repeated comparison of our text with poetical ‘western’ scripts of the 11th and 12th centuries (Embricho of Mayence, Guibert of Nogent, Walter of Compiègne) as regards the subject matter leads us to the conclusion that our manuscript is likely to be of a most Islam critical tendency.


1996 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 111-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. S. Hall ◽  
N. P. Milner ◽  
J. J. Coulton

Among the many tombs still to be seen in the necropolis surrounding the site of Oinoanda, in northern Lycia, the mausoleum built by Licinnia Flavilla for her parents and ancestors enjoys a special distinction, which it owes both to its size and to the vast genealogical inscription, comprising twelve generations of the ancestors and connexions of Licinnia Flavilla and her younger kinsman Flavianus Diogenes, which once covered its eastern façade. The aim of this paper is to present new epigraphic evidence which indicates a second major genealogical inscription on the west end of the mausoleum, and to consider the relation of the inscriptions to the underlying building, to each other, and to the aims of Licinnia Flavilla and her kinsman Diogenes.The mausoleum of the Licinnii lies in rubble (Pl. XV (a)) amid a group of smaller tombs at the southern end of the site, in square Lr of the B.I.A.A.'s site-plan (AnSt XLV (1995) 74, Fig. 1) about 40 m. below an isolated stretch of the Hellenistic southern wall overlooking the saddle at the southern end of the ridge on which stand the main buildings of the city. There is an easy ascent to this point from both the western and eastern sides of the ridge, and thence to the city; the mausoleum will have been conspicuous to visitors and travellers. Since antiquity all the tombs in this area have been plundered or overthrown, especially close to the wall. Three types of tomb are visible: rock-cut tombs, some with lion covers; large, free-standing sarcophagi of various designs; and sarcophagi on high, stepped platforms. An example of this last type (Pl. XV (b)) stands close by the east end of the mausoleum, a few metres to the north.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-181
Author(s):  
M. V. Kvitnitskiy

For a long time the localization of Yuriev (now Bila Tserkva — the city in the Kyiv region of Ukraine) has been the subject of discussions connected to the attempts to find a stone temple. Excavations in 1980-s, made by Ruslan Orlov, have discovered the remains of the temple and put the end to debate. The temple was interpreted as a four-pillar three-apsed structure and dated to the late 12th — first half of the 13th century. Further comprehension of the materials made the authors of the study to question this interpretation. In 2011 and 2014, in connection with the idea of a museum foundation and architectural reproduction the foundations of temple were discovered. Two outbuildings of the first half of the 12th century and the first half of the 13th century have been found. The outbuilding of the 12th century contained the building materials of the 2nd half of the 11th century. In the outbuilding of the first half of the 13th century bar bricks were found. After the excavations it was cleared that the foundations were significantly damaged and the apse was completely destroyed in 2008. New finds and materials allow to suggest that here two stone buildings have been existed. The first one was built in the second half of the 11th century and completely dismantled in the first third of the 13th century. From these materials the second temple was built with the participation of the builders of the Kyiv school and Western Europe. The latter have brought new masonry techniques and materials (brick and limestone sand mortar). There are good reasons to suggest that the new temple was a five-apsed.


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