Introduction

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Eberhard W. Sauer
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Sasanian Empire ◽  
Roman World

The Sasanian Empire (third-seventh centuries) was one of the largest empires of antiquity, stretching from Mesopotamia to modern Pakistan and from Central Asia to the Arabian Peninsula. This mega-empire withstood powerful opponents in the steppe and expanded further in Late Antiquity, whilst the Roman world shrunk in size. Recent research has revealed the reasons for this success, notably population growth in some territories, economic prosperity and urban development, made possible through investment in agriculture and military infrastructure on a scale unparalleled in the late antique world. This volume explores the empire’s relations with its neighbours and key phenomena which contributed to its wealth and power, from the empire’s armed forces to agriculture, trade and treatment of minorities. The latest discoveries, notably major urban foundations, fortifications and irrigations systems, feature prominently. An empire whose military might and urban culture rivalled Rome and foreshadowed the caliphate will be of interest to scholars of the Roman and Islamic world.

scholarly journals Sasanian Persia

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Sasanian Empire ◽  
Roman World

The Sasanian Empire (third-seventh centuries) was one of the largest empires of antiquity, stretching from Mesopotamia to modern Pakistan and from Central Asia to the Arabian Peninsula. This mega-empire withstood powerful opponents in the steppe and expanded further in Late Antiquity, whilst the Roman world shrunk in size. Recent research has revealed the reasons for this success, notably population growth in some territories, economic prosperity and urban development, made possible through investment in agriculture and military infrastructure on a scale unparalleled in the late antique world. This volume explores the empire’s relations with its neighbours and key phenomena which contributed to its wealth and power, from the empire’s armed forces to agriculture, trade and treatment of minorities. The latest discoveries, notably major urban foundations, fortifications and irrigations systems, feature prominently. An empire whose military might and urban culture rivalled Rome and foreshadowed the caliphate will be of interest to scholars of the Roman and Islamic world.

The New Self and Reading Practices in Late Antique Christianity

2015 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Guy G. Stroumsa
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman

The article deals with the complex relationship between the religious revolution of late antiquity and cultural changes in the Roman world. It focuses on new attitudes to books, and analyses them in parallel with new conceptions of the self emerging in early Christianity. In particular, it seeks to understand the paradox of the early monks having been at once fierce opponents and carriers of Greco-Roman paideia.

Late Antique Iran and the Arabs: The Case of al-Hira

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 115-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Toral-Niehoff
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Third Space ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Sasanian Empire

Abstract This article reevaluates our evidence for the interaction of Arab and Iranian elements in the Arab frontier-state of al-Hira, a state in late antiquity, which can be seen as a paradigmatic “third space” of special cultural dynamics. First, it sums up our evidence about the political and commercial ties connecting the Lakhmid principality and the Sasanian Empire; next, it focuses on the possible agents of cultural exchange between the two; finally, we direct our attention to the cultural spheres themselves and the issue of where and how Iranian-Arab transculturation as a process can be detected in the Hiran context. The article argues for a cautious reassessment of the material in light of current research in cultural studies. This is significant in its wider historical perspective, as such a process might have prepared the path for later developments in Islamic times, when the apogee of Arab-Iranian interaction is supposed to have taken place, i.e., in Abbasid Iraq.

scholarly journals GLASS IN LATE ANTIQUITY IN THE NEAR EAST

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-248
Author(s):  
Margaret O’Hea
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Effective Medium ◽  
Internal Space ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Glass Technology ◽  
Roman World

This paper seeks to explore some of the possible connections between three late antique strands of glass technology and application in the Near East: windows, lighting, and finally, recycling. Glass has long been acknowledged to have influenced two major innovations in the use of internal space within the Roman world: firstly, during the Principate, when window-panes were first applied to bath-houses to maintain humidity and temperatures, whilst casting light into dark interiors, and secondly, in the 4th c. A.D., when oil-lights made of glass were finally adopted as an effective medium for ceiling-lighting.

Innovation and Stagnation: Military Infrastructure and the Shifting Balance of Power Between Rome and Persia

2017 ◽  
pp. 241-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eberhard W. Sauer ◽  
Jebrael Nokandeh ◽  
Konstantin Pitskhelauri ◽  
Hamid Omrani Rekavandi
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Western World ◽  
Sasanian Empire ◽  
The Third ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Shifting Balance ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Independent Design

The Roman Empire, and its eastern and western successor states, controlled the majority of Europe’s population for approximately half a millennium (first century BC to fifth century AD), holding dominant power status from the second century BC to the seventh century AD, longer than any other state in the western world in history, and it was also the only empire ever to rule over the entire Mediterranean. Its ability to integrate ethnic groups and its well-organised military apparatus were instrumental to this success. From the third century onwards, however, the balance increasingly shifted; the physical dimensions of fortresses and unit sizes tended to decrease markedly in the Roman world, and the tradition of constructing marching camps and training facilities seems to have been abandoned. By contrast, the Sasanian Empire increasingly became the motor of innovation. Already in the third century it matched Rome’s abilities to launch offensive operations, conduct siege warfare and produce military hardware and armour. Jointly with the Iberians and Albanians, the empire also made skilful use of natural barriers to protect its frontiers, notably by blocking the few viable routes across the Caucasus. By the fifth/sixth century, it pioneered heavily fortified, large, rectangular campaign bases, of much greater size than any military compounds in the late Roman world. These military tent cities, filled with rectangular enclosures in neat rows, are suggestive of a strong and well-disciplined army. Like these campaign bases, the contemporary c. 200km-long Gorgan Wall, protected by a string of barracks forts and of distinctly independent design, is not copied from prototypes elsewhere. The evidence emerging from recent joint projects between the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handcraft and Tourism Organisation and the Universities of Edinburgh, Tbilisi and Durham suggests that in late antiquity the Sasanian army had gone into the lead in terms of organisational abilities, innovation and effective use of its resources.

Late Antiquity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benet Salway
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Greek East ◽  
Political Economic

Late antique epigraphy differs in several respects from that of the High Empire, reflecting the changed political, economic, and cultural circumstances. This chapter focuses on the epigraphic habit of that fluctuating portion of the late antique world that remained Roman. Despite the emergence of inscriptions in additional languages, such as Syriac and Coptic, Latin and Greek retained their hegemony as the two main epigraphic languages of the Roman world. The establishment of an imperial court, with its attendant bureaucratic and military retinue, in major centres of the Greek East from the last decades of the third century coincided with a new flowering of Latin inscriptions in the region.

New Perspectives on Urban Economic Planning

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-98
Author(s):  
Fanny Bessard
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Near East ◽  
Economic Planning ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Urban Economic ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
Trading Activities ◽  
The City

This chapter examines how the greater involvement of caliphs and governors in early Islam in the patronage of urban retailing and crafts contributed to a redefinition of the topography of late antique and early medieval settlements from the Near East to Central Asia. The model of clustering productive and trading activities, which can be seen in its infancy in the Roman world in Pompeii, was expanded and became the norm from 700. This model evolved from simple communal working areas integrated in the urban fabric before 750 in the Levant to solely economic rabaḍ relocated outside the city walls in the ninth and tenth centuries in Iraq, Soghdia, and Ferghana. This chapter argues that this clustering of economic activities was favoured by a change in the location of the civic power under the ‘Abbāsids.

Late Antique Letter Collections

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Letter Writer ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Letter Collection ◽  
Latin Letter

This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300-600 C.E.). Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, it illustrates how letter collections advertised an image of the letter writer and introduces the social and textual histories of each collection. Nearly every chapter focuses on the letter collection of a different late ancient author—from the famous (or even infamous) to the obscure—and investigates its particular issues of content, arrangement, and publication context. On the whole, the volume reveals how late antique letter collections operated as a discrete literary genre with its own conventions, transmission processes, and self-presentational agendas while offering new approaches to interpret both larger letter collections and the individual letters contained within them. Each chapter contributes to a broad argument that scholars should read letter collections as they do representatives of other late antique literary genres, as single texts made up of individual components, with larger thematic and literary characteristics that are as important as those of their component parts.

Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophir Münz-Manor
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Biblical Poetry ◽  
Contemporary View ◽  
Cultural Dialogue ◽  
The One

The article presents a contemporary view of the study of piyyut, demonstrating that Jewish poetry of late antiquity (in Hebrew and Aramaic) was closely related to Christian liturgical poetry (both Syriac and Greek) and Samaritan liturgy. These relations were expressed primarily by common poetic and prosodic characteristics, derived on the one hand from ancient Semitic poetry (mainly biblical poetry), and on the other from innovations of the period. The significant connections of content between the different genres of poetry reveal the importance of comparative study. Thus the poetry composed in late antiquity provides additional evidence for the lively cultural dialogue that took place at that time.

Unearthing Houses in Porphyreon and Chhim. Structure, Spatial Development, and Decoration of Domestic Spaces in Late Antique Phoenicia

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-195
Author(s):  
Tomasz Waliszewski ◽  
Julia Burdajewicz
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Wall Painting ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Functional Study ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Residential Architecture

Porphyreon (Jiyeh/Nebi Younis) and Chhim were large rural settlements situated on the coast of modernday Lebanon, north of the Phoenician city of Sidon. As attested by the remains of residential architecture, they were thriving during the Roman Period and late Antiquity (1st–7th centuries AD). This article presents the preliminary observations on the domestic architecture uncovered at both sites, their spatial and social structure, as well as their furnishing and decoration, based on the fieldwork carried out in recent years by the joint PolishLebanese research team. The focus will be put on the wall painting fragments found in considerable numbers in Porphyreon. The iconographical and functional study of the paintings betrays to what extent the inhabitants of rural settlements in the coastal zone of the Levant were inclined to imitate the decoration of the urban houses known to them from the nearby towns, such as Berytus, but also from religious contexts represented by churches.

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