scholarly journals Jihad in the Circassian Sultanate (1382–1517): The Phenomenon of Volunteering in the Context of the Mamluk-Ottoman Confrontation

Author(s):  
Evgeny I. Zelenev ◽  
◽  
Milana Yu. Iliushina ◽  

This article examines the development of the theory and practice of jihad under the Circassian Sultanate in Egypt and Syria (1382–1517). The article aims to trace the development of the key aspects of the concept of jihad and reveal the peculiarities of its perception in the Mamluk state. The article highlights an essential characteristic of the theory of jihad in the Mamluk period, i.e. the interpretation of jihad as farḍ al-‘ayn (the personal duty of every Muslim). A fertile ground for this paper was given by studies of M. Bonner and D. Cook, who supplemented a balanced approach to the interpretation of jihad from a historical perspective with a critical consideration of its religious and political meanings. The authors emphasise the importance of the difference between the understanding of jihad as a collective and individual obligation using the concept of minimalism and maximalism developed by Y. Waghid. The paper is based on works by Ibn al-Nahhas (d. 1411), an outstanding thinker of the Mamluk era. The interpretation of jihad as a personal responsibility of every Muslim substantiated by Ibn al-Nahhas was the basis of the volunteer movement that unfolded in Egypt and Syria in the fifteenth century. The doctrine of jihad concentrated around the most important Islamic values embodied in the concepts of “justice” (al-‘adl) and “truth” (al-ḥaqq) and was initially used by the Mamluks and subsequently by the Ottomans as a powerful ideological tool for manipulating the Muslims’ consciousness. This paper is relevant because the conclusions of the study are valid not only for the Middle Ages but are directly related to the present. The authors of the article emphasise this by drawing parallels with modern events in countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-365
Author(s):  
Evgeny I. Zelenev ◽  
Milana Iliushina

This article is devoted to the study of the development of the theory and practice of jihad during the rule of the Circassian sultans in Egypt and Syria (1382–1517). The purpose of the study is to trace the development of key aspects of jihad, to identify features of its perception in the Mamluk state. An essential feature of the theory of jihad in the Mamluk period is the interpretation of jihad as farḍ al-ʿayn (the individual duty of every Muslim). While studying the theory of jihad, the authors rely on a holistic and balanced approach justified in the papers of M. Bonner and D. Cook and their interpretation of the concept of jihad, which has a centuries-old history of development and a sophisticated, multi-layered set of meanings. Another methodological basis of the present paper was the concept of minimalism and maximalism, developed by Yusef Waghid. The source base for the study of jihad theory is the works of Ibn al-Nahhas (d. 1411), a prominent philosopher of the Mamluk era. The interpretation of jihad as an individual duty of every Muslim, substantiated by Ibn al-Nahhas, was the foundation of the volunteer movement that developed in Egypt and Syria in the 15th century. The doctrine of jihad where the concepts of justice (al-‘adl) and truth (al-ḥaqq) play a key role, was used by the Mamluks and then by the Ottomans as a powerful ideological tool to manipulate the minds of Muslims. The relevance of the study is that the findings are not only true for the Middle Ages but are directly related to the present.


Traditio ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 357-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. R. Brown

Concentrating as he did on the office of adelphopoiesis preserved in Eastern Christian liturgical sources, John Boswell gave short shrift to the West. Although he believed that the ritual was known and practiced there, the only documentary trace of any similar ceremony he discussed was an account that Gerald of Wales included toward the end of the twelfth century in his Topographica Hibernica. Boswell did present a fifteenth-century French pact of brotherhood in translation in an appendix, but he did not consider its ceremonial significance in his text. Nor did he believe it pertinent to his topic, labeling it as he did, “an agreement of ‘brotherhood',” and terming it “[a] treaty of political union using fraternal language.” I shall discuss Gerald's account and this compact later, in the course of analyzing a variety of evidence regarding ritual brotherhood in Western Europe between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. I shall attempt to show that ties of brotherhood contracted formally and ritually between two individuals were more common in the West than Boswell believed. I shall argue that bonds of ritual brotherhood similar to those solemnized in the office of adelphopoiesis existed in many parts of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages, in areas far removed from the regions of Italy subject to Byzantine influence, where euchologies containing the Eastern ceremony were preserved.’ In dealing with the Western evidence I shall be particularly concerned with its nature, which contrasts strikingly with the Eastern sources. For the East, the most abundant documentation is liturgical, and traces of such relationships in other sources are rare — although (as Claudia Rapp shows in this symposium) not as sparse as has sometimes been thought. For the West the situation is precisely the reverse.’ The Western cases of individuals linked by ritual fraternal ties that Du Cange presented far outnumber the Eastern instances he cited, and additional Western examples have come to light since his time. However, as regards the ceremonial by which the ties were forged in the West, there is no strictly liturgical evidence. Western liturgical books contain no special prayers and offices for making brothers. Narrative and documentary sources cast fitful light on the nature of the ceremony that accompanied the unions, but they do not suggest that any uniform ritual ever existed. Why this was so is a matter for speculation, but I believe that the absence of fraternal ceremonial from the liturgy is closely related to another distinctive aspect of the institution in the West: the lack of prohibitions, ecclesiastical and secular, against the bond. I shall consider this issue after examining the various motives that seem to have underlain the Western fraternal alliances, and also the outcomes of the unions. In the end I shall propose that whatever the differences in documentation, and despite the difference in the ritual practices, striking formal and functional likenesses existed between the Eastern and Western institutions of ritual brotherhood linking two participants: in the purposes they served, the means by which they were contracted, and the gap that often existed between ideal and reality. In a final section I shall discuss the problems associated with attempting to establish whether or not — or when and how often — Western (or Eastern) rituals of brotherhood formalized relationships that involved or were expected to involve sexual intercourse between the participants.


2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-66
Author(s):  
Rimvydas Petrauskas

The main aim of this article is to collect and assess all accessible data about the early development of chivalric culture in the GDL and to identify possible trends. This phenomenon is perceived as part of the history of the European knighthood in the late Middle Ages. The article also seeks to investigate the meaning of the conception of the knight in the GDL documents of the fifteenth century in order to determine the spread of knighthood in the nobility of the Grand Duchy. In the research of these aspects the flourishing of the knighthood culture at the court of Grand Duke Vytautas in the early-fifteenth century is distinguished as a period when high-ranking representatives of the country’s nobility were awarded titles; and a new enhancement is noticeable in the times of Alexander Jogailaitis when an initiative, a unique phenomenon in Poland-Lithuania, was undertaken to establish a brotherhood of knights. In the analysis of the use of the concept of knighthood, emphasis is placed on the difference between the singular use of the knightly title and the pluralistic estate conception.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 197-225
Author(s):  
Eleazar Gutwirth

Abstract The background to this paper is the difference between occasionally atemporal and multinational approaches and local, historical approaches to religious ideas and encounters. The chosen example is that of two authors from one town (Arévalo) and one historical moment (fifteenth-century Castile). The article attempts firstly to identify stylistic, rhetorical, and literary elements in the historiographic traditions about the reputation of the town. Secondly it points to the changes in the status of the town in the late Middle Ages that affected Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Thirdly, after identifying certain tendencies in the writings of the two authors from the town, one Muslim (known as the Mancebo de Arévalo) and the other Jewish, Rabbi Yosef ibn Ṣaddiq de Arévalo, it searches for affinities and common elements in their attitudes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 132 ◽  
pp. 47-78
Author(s):  
Stuart Jenks

The Distribution Revolution of the Fifteenth CenturyThe consumption revolution of the long eighteenth Century (c. 1650-1850) was inconceivable without a prior distribution revolution in Northwest Europe, in the course of which markets were linked in a stable hierarchy reaching from the international fairs of Antwerp and Frankfurt down to humble packmen tramping from village to village. The exotic products of the consumption revolution did not have to surmount any significant distribution problems, because the networks had been functioning since the fifteenth Century. The proof of this hypothesis is divided into two parts, one empirical and the other theoretical. The foundation of some 2000 weekly markets in England between 1200 and 1350 resulted from the interaction of peasants’ cash requirements and improved transportation by horse: There was much money to be made by establishing markets, but peasants could choose between them. This set in train a brutal winnowing of markets which was intensified in the late middle ages by the effects of the plague, the enclosure movement and price-wage developments. In the end, the surviving markets had organized themselves into a hierarchy based on London, which was, by 1500, indisputably the center of foreign trade and the distribution of imports in England. This section concludes by showing that the hierarchization of markets was also characteristic of the Hanseatic area during the same period. The theoretical part of the paper demonstrates that the hierarchization of markets changed the framework for economic actors in a way no person or group could alter. Late medieval industrial mass production, succeeded by early modern proto-industrialization, required efficient labor markets and distribution networks. Placing the price signals generated by urban markets at the center of the argument solves a number of troubling problems of proto-industrialization: the geographical concentration of proto-industries, the outsourcing of simple tasks (and the retention of more sophisticated processes) and thesubsequent urbanization of rural industrial clusters. It also allows us to go beyond Diamond and Krugman and construct a real-world model of the rise of market hierarchization, as traders exploited scale economies derived from the difference between urban Wholesale and rural retail prices, and - by concentrating their trade on the most liquid provincial markets (thus maximizing thick market externalties) - locked these satellite markets into the hierarchy. An examination o f the policies o f the London Grocers and Mercers proves that this did, indeed, take place in the course of the fifteenth Century. Therefore, the distribution revolution was a true revolution, one which changed forever the framework for economic actors in a way 110 person or group could alter (,economic Constitution‘).


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-115
Author(s):  
Amin Wibowo

Knowledge is created and learned by academicians for the purpose of further theory development. Academician’role in disseminating knowldege is very important. To reach a convergent understanding both theory and practice, it’s a need of flexibility between methodology and sources of data so that it stimulates actionable insight.One of the problems between theory and practice differencesis customers focus.For practicians customer focus raised three foundamentals questions: can the knowledge phylosophy reduce cost?. Can the knowledge phylosophy increse sales?, and can the knowledge phylosophy increase the profit?. This paper discuss the development of marketing knowledge based on the marketing practice to bridge the gap between academicians and practicians. Issues being discussed in this paper are the meaning of marketing knowledge from practician perspective, the theory of marketing in practician’s world, actionable research as the bridge of knowledge development, and the difference perspective between academician and parctician.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 541-544
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Bayo

This monograph deals with illuminated manuscripts created in French-speaking regions from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, i.e., from the earliest narratives of Marian miracles written in <?page nr="542"?>Old French to the codices produced at the Burgundian court at the waning of the Middle Ages. Its focus, however, is very specific: it is a systematic analysis of the miniatures depicting both material representations of the Virgin (mainly sculptures, but also icons, panel paintings, altarpieces or reliquaries) and the miracles performed by them, usually as Mary’s reaction to a prayer (or an insult) to one of Her images.


Author(s):  
Pavlína Rychterová

This chapter examines the growing importance of the vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages in shaping the form, content, and audiences of political discourse. It presents a famously wicked king of the late Middle Ages, Wenceslas IV (1361–1419), as a case study and traces the origins of his bad reputation to a group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writings. These have often been dismissed as fictions or studied solely as literature, but in fact they represent new modes of articulating good and bad kingship. The chapter shows that, in the context of an increasingly literate bourgeois culture, especially in university cities, these vernacular works transformed Latin theological approaches to monarchy, while rendering mirrors for princes and related literatures accessible to an unprecedented audience.


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