scholarly journals Theodore Gabras and His Seals

Author(s):  
Andrey Yu. Vinogradov ◽  
◽  
Victor N. Chkhaidze ◽  

This publication examines the life of Theodore Gabras, one of the highest Byzantine dignitaries in the 1080–1090s. The early stage of his career is uncovered by a miniature from a manuscript residing in St. Petersburg which depicts a scene with ktetores, patrikios, and topoteretes Theodore Gabras and his wife Irene. The similarity of this miniature and an eleventh-century fresco in the Senty Church in Alania (modern Karachay-Cherkessia) indicates that Irene was probably of Alanic origin like his second wife. The account of Theodore Gabras appeared in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad and John Zonaras’ chronicle. In 1075, Theodore Gabras freed Chaldia from Seljuks, and when Alexios I Komnenos ascended to power and tried to make Theodore one of his supporters, he appointed the latter the doux of the theme of Chaldia. In the late eleventh century, Theodore Gabras was de facto independent ruler of Trebizond. In 1098, he died as a martyr for refusing to convert to Islam. Already in the twelfth century, Theodore Gabras was a locally venerated saint, and in the fourteenth century he was canonized. In the year of his death, Theodore held the title of sebastos, which was among the highest in late eleventh century Byzantium. This paper analyses four known seals of Theodore Gabras, which legends mentioned his title of sebastos and position of the doux (of Chaldia). The Appendix lists eighteen known seals from the eleventh and twelfth century which belonged to at least fifteen members of the aristocratic family of Gabrades.

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.O. Klar

This paper focuses on Q. 38:34 from the perspective of early and medieval works of Islamic historiography and collections of tales of the prophets: the early tenth century works of cUmāra b. Wathīma and Ṭabarī, the eleventh century Tales of the Prophets by Thaclabī, the twelfth century folkloric collection of Kisāↄī, along with Ibn cAsākir's History ofDamascus, the thirteenth century world history by Ibn al-Athīr, and the fourteenth century historiographical work by Ibn Kathīr. These various works are viewed not as any particular stage in the development of a genre, but as variations on a (Qur'anic) theme, and the avenue of medieval historiographers and storytellers is utilised as a bridge to explore various possible interpretations of the Qur'anic passage. Historiographers and storytellers provide us with an illustration of how lessons of admonition implied in the Qur'anic text were perceived in medieval Islamic society. They also, as will become clear, provide a picture of Solomon that is consistent with the Qur'anic figure as a whole.


Author(s):  
George Garnett

Chapter 5 analyses three genres of historical writing about England in the later middle ages: histories of individual churches, universal histories, and histories of the kingdom. It confirms the provisional judgement reached in Chapter 4: that with respect to the Conquest and earlier England, historical writing fossilized. There were, however, exceptions, most of which could be categorized in the first genre. These are examined in great detail, and follow on from the treatment of the unusual episodes recorded during the thirteenth century at St Augustine’s, Canterbury and Burton Abbey which were considered in Chapter 4. The first is the problematic, neglected Historia Croylandensis attributed to (Pseudo-)Ingulf, which is for the most part a fabrication of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but which masquerades as the work of the abbot at Crowland at the end of the eleventh century, and therefore as contemporaneous with the great post-Conquest histories of England. The second is the early fourteenth-century Lichfield Chronicle, written by Alan of Ashbourn. The third is a general history of England conventionally attributed to John Brompton, abbot of Jervaulx in the early fifteenth century, and perhaps written at the abbey. All three pay a great deal of attention to (different) twelfth-century compilations of Old English and immediately post-Conquest law. This unusual characteristic accounts for their exceptional interest in the Conquest. The chapter also includes a briefer discussion of the more conventional histories into which condensed earlier discussions of the Conquest were inserted.


Nuncius ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 631-643 ◽  

Abstracttitle SUMMARY /title This short treatise by the eleventh century Spanish Muslim, Ibn Mu'dh, presents a unique method for determining the altitude of the atmosphere. The Arabic original is not extant, but the text survives in three medieval versions. Two of them were translated directly from the Arabic: a Latin version possibly by Gerard of Cremona in the late twelfth century, and a Hebrew version by Samuel ben Judah of Marseilles in the fourteenth century. The third is an anonymous Italian version, translated from Latin, preserved uniquely in a fourteenth century manuscript. The Hebrew and Italian versions are edited here.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 517-539
Author(s):  
Tzafrir Barzilay

This article reexamines the idea prevalent in existing historiography that Jews were accused of well poisoning before 1321. It argues that the historians who studied the origins of such accusations were misled by sources written in the early modern period to think that Jews were charged with well poisoning as early as the eleventh century. However, a careful analysis of the sources reveals that there is little reliable evidence that such cases happened before the fourteenth century, much less on a large scale. Thus, the conclusions of the article call for a new chronology of well-poisoning charges made against Jews, starting closer to the fourteenth century.


2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Crowe

The Roma entered the Balkans from India during the Middle Ages. They reached Persia sometime in the ninth century and by the eleventh century had moved into the Byzantine Empire. According to the eleventh-century Georgian Life of Saint George the Athonite, the Emperor Constantine Monomachus asked the Adsincani to get rid of wild animals preying on the animals in his royal hunting preserve. Adsincani is the Georgian form of the Greek word Atsínganoi or Atzínganoi, from which the non-English terms for Roma (cigán, cigány, tsiganes, zigeuner) are derived. Adsincani means “ner-do-well fortune tellers” or “ventriloquists and wizards who are inspired satanically and pretend to predict the unknown.” “Gypsy” comes from “Egyptian,” a term often used by early modern chroniclers in the Balkans to refer to the Roma. Because of the stereotypes and prejudice that surround the word “Gypsy,” the Roma prefer a name of their own choosing from their language, Romani. Today, it is preferable to refer to the Gypsies as Rom or “Roma,” a Romani word meaning “man” or “husband.” Byzantine references to “Egyptians” crop up during this period as Byzantine political and territorial fortunes gave way to the region's new power, the Ottomans. There were areas with large Roma populations in Cyprus and Greece which local rulers dubbed “Little Egypt” in the late fourteenth century.


1970 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger E. Reynolds

The treasure manuscriptClm 19414of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich has for many years provided scholars in three fields of study with a rich lode of material. Art historians have found one of the best examples of fourteenth-century GermanBibliae pauperumin this manuscript. Historians of canon law have discovered several books of the early eleventh-centuryCollectio XII Partium. For historians of the barbarian lawsClm 19414contains an excellent witness to theLex Baiuwariorum. The purpose of this article is to bring to light another portion ofClm 19414, a florilegium on the ecclesiastical grades which should be of interest to historians of early medieval canon law, religious instruction, and sacramental theology.


Author(s):  
Alan Cole

This chapter focuses on koans. The English word “koan” comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese gong'an, which means “public case” in the sense of a legal precedent. The term gong'an begins to appear in Chan texts in the first half of the twelfth century as a technical term for a particular literary gesture that had already been in vogue in the eleventh century, one in which an author first selected a particular vignette or dialogue from some older strata of Chan literature and then offered commentary on it, or a poem about it, or often both. Thus, it took at least two Chan masters to make a koan—the one who supposedly first said or did something that was recorded in a Chan text, and a later one who took interest in just that account and developed it with his own commentary and/or poems.


Author(s):  
Russell Hopley

This chapter examines the responses of three important medieval Maghribī dynasties to the dilemmas posed by nomadic populations dwelling in their midst. These dynasties include the Almoravids in al-Andalus in the twelfth century, the Almohads in the Maghrib in the thirteenth century, and the Ḥafṣids, successors to the Almohads in Ifrīqiya, during the fourteenth century. The aim is to shed light on the challenges that nomadic populations posed to political legitimacy, and to suggest, paradoxically perhaps, that the presence of unruly nomads in the medieval Islamic west, and the effort to contain them, served an important role in each dynasty's attempt to gain political legitimacy in the eyes of the Muslim community.


Rashi ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Avraham Grossman

This chapter discusses the social and cultural background of Rashi's work. According to evidence preserved in the literary accounts and archaeological findings, Jews began to settle in what is now France during Roman times, in the first century CE. That settlement continued uninterrupted until Rashi's time. In general, Jews continued to do well in France. Nevertheless, the weakness of the central government and the ascendancy of local fiefdoms meant that their social and political status differed in each of the feudal states that made up eleventh-century France, depending upon the good will of the local rulers. Two developments during the eleventh and twelfth centuries influenced Jewish economic and intellectual life and the internal organization of the Jewish community: the growth of cities and the European intellectual renaissance. The chapter then looks at the Jewish community in Troyes and the Jewish centre in Champagne; the twelfth-century renaissance; and the Jewish–Christian religious polemics.


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