Art, Allegory and the Rise of Shi'ism in Iran, 1487-1565

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Kia
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Narrative Poetry ◽  
Illustrated Text ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
Narrative Subject ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

Some of the world’s most exquisite medieval paintings, from late fifteenth-century Herat and the early Safavid workshops, illustrate well-known episodes of popular romances––like Leyla & Majnun––that give prominence to depictions of unrelated figures such as a milkmaid or a spinner at the scene of the hero Majnun’s death. This interdisciplinary study aims to uncover the significance of this enigmatic, century-long trend from its genesis at the Timurid court to its continued development into the Safavid era. The analysis of iconography in several luxury manuscript paintings within the context of contemporary cultural trends, especially the ubiquitous mystical and messianic movements in the post-Mongol Turco-Persian world, reveals the meaning of many of these obscure figures and scenes and links this extraordinary innovation in the iconography of Persian painting to one of the most significant events in the history of Islam: the takeover of Iran by the Safavids in 1501. The apparently inscrutable figures, which initially appeared in illustrations of didactic Sufi narrative poetry, allude to metaphors and verbal expressions of Sufi discourse going back to the twelfth century. These “emblematic” figure-types served to emphasize the moral lessons of the narrative subject of the illustrated text by deploying familiar tropes from an intertextual Sufi literary discourse conveyed through verses by poets like Rumi, Attar and Jami, and ended up complementing and expressing Safavid political power at its greatest extent: the conversion of Iran to Shiism.

Nizam al-Mulk Remembered

2018 ◽  
pp. 127-148
Author(s):  
Neguin Yavari
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth

The focus in the fifth and final chapter is on the afterlife of Nizam al-Mulk, of his legacy as well as of his representations. By the late fifteenth century, in Timurid Iran, Nizam al-Mulk is already the stuff of legend. In one historian’s estimation, the vizier is a veritable eleventh-century avatar of the martyr par excellence of Shi’i lore Husayn b. ‘Ali (d. 680), and the progenitor of modern Iran. But the story of Nizam al-Mulk does not end with his metamorphosis into a crypto-Shi‘i and a proto-Iranian patriot. In the 2010s, it is Nizam al-Mulk who is the most regularly invoked exemplar of legitimate Islamic governance, exhorting prudence and expedience to guide the Iranian polity through the treacherous waters of nuclear negotiations with the West, and to domesticate outlier and extremist fervor. The Iranian invocation of Nizam al-Mulk differs radically from his depiction in modern Sunni—Arab or Turkish—historiography. That living legacy is the true history of the laureled vizier.

The Iberian Atlantic to 1650

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart B. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
World View ◽  
Demographic Factors ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Political Control ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Two Kingdoms

The Castilians and Portuguese were the first Europeans to create systems of continual communication, trade, and political control spanning the Atlantic. Following medieval precedents and moved by similar economic and demographic factors, these two kingdoms embarked in the late fifteenth century on a course of expansion that led to the creation of overseas empires and contact with other societies and peoples. This process produced a series of political, religious, social, and ethical problems that would confront other nations pursuing empire. Portugal and Castile were sometimes rivals, sometimes allies, and for sixty years (1580–1640) parts of a composite monarchy under the same rulers. Their answers to the challenges of creating empires varied according to circumstances and resources, but they were not unaware of each others' efforts, failures, and successes nor of their common Catholic heritage and world-view that set the framework of their imperial vision, their rule, and their social organisation. This article focuses on the history of the Iberian Atlantic to 1650, the Atlantic origins and Caribbean beginnings, conquest and settlement to 1570, and imperial spaces and trade.

scholarly journals THE PRESERVATION OF CROSBY HALL, c. 1830–1850

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 687-719 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSEMARY SWEET
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth

ABSTRACTThis article offers a case-study of an early preservation campaign to save the remains of the fifteenth-century Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate, London, threatened with demolition in 1830, in a period before the emergence of national bodies dedicated to the preservation of historic monuments. It is an unusual and early example of a successful campaign to save a secular building. The reasons why the Hall's fate attracted the interest of antiquaries, architects, and campaigners are analysed in the context of the emergence of historical awareness of the domestic architecture of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as wider recognition of the importance of this period for Britain's urban and commercial development. The Hall's associations with Richard III and other historic figures, including Thomas More and Thomas Gresham, are shown to have been particularly important in generating wider public interest, thereby allowing the campaigners to articulate the importance of the Hall in national terms. The history of Crosby Hall illuminates how a discourse of national heritage emerged from the inherited tradition of eighteenth-century antiquarianism and highlights the importance of the social, professional, and familial networks that sustained proactive attempts to preserve the nation's monuments and antiquities.

Archbishop John Morton and the Province of Canterbury, 1486–1500

1978 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Harper-Bill
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Personal Nature ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Foster Father ◽  
The Church

The episcopate of John Morton has received little attention from historians, possibly because it falls in time between the traditional interests of medievalists and of reformation specialists. Previous treatments, notably that of dean Hook in his Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the biography by Woodhouse, published in 1895 and heavily reliant on Hook, have concentrated on Morton's political role as ‘foster father of the Tudors’, and while Professor Claude Jenkins provided an excellent survey of the Canterbury register, he was more concerned with the evidence which it provides for die condition of the Church in die late fifteenth century than widi the archbishop himself. The purpose of this paper is to outline the salient characteristics of the episcopate and to examine the ecclesiastical policies pursued by Morton. Two qualifications must immediately be added. First, despite the wealth of material in the archiepiscopal register, supplemented by the records of the cathedral priory, there is almost nothing of a personal nature, and as always it is more difficult to estimate the character or sentiments of a fifteenth-century bishop than of his twelfth-century counterpart Secondly, it has been remarked how a hard and fresh look has upgraded the reputation of Hubert Walter, ‘that old model of secular prelacy’.

Pythagoras in the Renaissance: The Case of Marsilio Ficino*

1999 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 667-711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Celenza
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
Marsilio Ficino ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth

AbstractThis article discusses the manner in which Ficino employs the figure of Pythagoras and various aspects of the Pythagorean tradition in the philosophical areas of psychology, moral philosophy, and ontology. It also argues that the figure of Pythagoras as prophet was particularly appealing to a Ficino situated in the cultural environment of late fifteenth-century Florence. Text, culture, and ideology interacted in a complex way: spurred on by his early appreciation of Iamblichus's soteriological presentation of Pythagoras, Ficino helped create an ideology in Florence which was receptive to a prophetic figure. The piece thus suggests that Ficino viewed a certain segment of the history of thought through late ancient, Iamblichean eyes.

Sight, sound and ceremony in the chapel of Galeazzo Maria Sforza

1993 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 151-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn S. Welch
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Musical Taste ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth

Bernardino Corio's late fifteenth-century history of Milan covers the city's past from its foundations to the collapse of the Sforza dynasty. Following the historiographic traditions established by Leonardo Bruni, its essential outlines are founded on careful use of sources and, for more recent events, contemporary memories and impressions. It is, however, also characterised by judicious revisionism and anecdotal invention. The careful reader always needs to ask why digressions have been included and what hidden points are being made. It is therefore well worth inquiring why Corio, a member of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza's court, chose to link his master's assassination on 26 December 1476 with a passage on his chapel choir and musical taste.

THE PLEA ROLLS OF THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS: AN UNUSED SOURCE FOR THE ART AND HISTORY OF LATER MEDIEVAL ENGLAND, 1422–1509

2015 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 157-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A Danbury ◽  
Kathleen L Scott
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Great Emphasis ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Land Inheritance ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Contemporary Context

The court of Common Pleas was one of the most important courts in the English legal system for more than 600 years, until its abolition by Act of Parliament in 1873. The cases heard before this royal court were civil disputes between the king’s subjects, often relating to land, inheritance and debts. The purpose of this paper is to introduce readers to the ornament and imagery that appeared on the headings of the main records of the court of Common Pleas between 1422 and 1509 and to explore the origins and contemporary context of the images and representations employed by the clerk-artists who wrote and decorated these headings. The decoration they chose ranged from simple ornament to representations of plants, birds, animals and people. Great emphasis was placed on the role of the sovereign as the fount of justice, and this emphasis was reinforced by the incorporation of words and phrases, acclamations and verses from the Psalms chosen to underline the majesty and power of successive monarchs. The illustrations provide an important insight into the art, history and politics of late fifteenth-century England.

scholarly journals On the Dating of the English and Scottish Ballads

PMLA ◽  
1932 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
Louise Pound
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Simple Form ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Narrative Poetry ◽  
History Of

The practice has established itself among literary historians and anthologists of associating the English and Scottish ballads primarily with the fifteenth century, sometimes with the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One of the best and most popular of the histories of English literature now used in schools and colleges states in its revised editions: “These ballads appear to have flourished luxuriantly among the folk in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after which their composition ceased. Over three hundred of them, in 1,300 versions, have survived, and have been collected and printed.” The now widely used History of English Literature by M. Emile Legouis, the most ambitious among recent histories of our literature, remarks of the ballads: “They cannot all be claimed for the fifteenth century, for poems of this sort must have had an earlier beginning and certainly were produced until a later time, but the impulse to make them seems to have been particularly active in this century, to which, moreover, the oldest extant specimens belong.” A recent excellent poetical anthology has: “Ballad is the name applied to a simple form of narrative poetry which in England and Scotland flourished between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.” Statements like these leave with readers the definite impression that the fifteenth century was the heyday of ballad production, and that the bulk of the three hundred ballads in Professor Child's collection emerged from this century, or from an even earlier period.

scholarly journals The History of Vilnius Old Jewish Cemetery at Šnipiškės in the Period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-92
Author(s):  
Elmantas Meilus
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
General Situation ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Tax Exemptions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Grand Duchy

The recent international outcry concerning an old Jewish cemetery once again being destroyed in a former suburb of Vilnius, namely Šnipiškės (nowadays in the very centre of the city), forces us to revise the history of its origin and development in the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Summarizing the history of the cemetery, one plausible conclusion is that the cemetery was established on state-owned land in the jurisdiction of the Castle possibly in the late fifteenth century and the first reliable historical data goes back to the late sixteenth century in relation to tax exemptions. A comparison of historical, cartographic and archaeological data permits to make a valid assumption that the oldest burials from the second half of the sixteenth century were located in the south-western and central section of the cemetery based on the layout of 1808 (in the area between the Sports Hall and swimming pool built in the Soviet period). The cemetery developed gradually by acquiring separate state land plots belonging to the Castle Authority (Horodnictwo) and Forestry Authority (Derewnictwo) which were rented by different persons and by taking over payment of the taxes and fees they used to pay. The general situation of the cemetery at that period was marked in the plan from the Fürstenhof collection, drafted in approximately 1730. The Jewish cemetery was combined into one mas out of separate plots around 1790 in listing the urban possessions (land plots). Such situation was reflected in the layout of 1808 (possession no. 1116).

The Professionalization of Indigeneity in the Carib Territory of Dominica

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-56
Author(s):  
Jennifer Shannon
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Native People ◽  
Cultural Consciousness ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
State Relations ◽  
At Home

The origin of enduring stereotypes of Native peoples conjured by Christopher Columbus in the late-fifteenth century, the Kalinago people of today live in Dominica, an island with a unique, complicated history of settlement and resistance. Kalinagos dedicated to raising "cultural consciousness" participate in Dominican museum and heritage projects as well as in international indigenous meetings abroad. This article suggests the concept of "the professionalization of indigeneity" to consider how some Native people are experts at representation itself: producers of representations of their communities both on their communities' behalf and for the public abroad, yet always with attention to state relations at home.

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