Sicily at the Center of the Mediterranean

Author(s):  
Sarah Davis-Secord

This chapter examines the discontinuities behind the apparent continuities in Norman Sicily during the twelfth century. It looks at the Muslim population of the island, as viewed from both inside and outside of Sicily, and Muslims' reactions to living for the first time on the “wrong” side of the new boundary between religio-political cultures. The chapter discusses Sicily's political, military, and diplomatic connections with the wider Mediterranean world, the connections between Sicily's Muslim community and the dār al-Islām, Sicily's intellectual and religious connections to the dār al-Islām and Latin Christendom, and economic connections in the Latin and Muslim Mediterranean.

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 417-438
Author(s):  
Louis I. Hamilton

AbstractThe Mirabilia urbis romae offers us insight into the symbolic meaning of the streetscape of Rome from the perspective of a canon of St. Peter’s. It should be read alongside the contemporary Roman Ordo with which it was certainly associated in the twelfth century. When read in that context, the Mirabilia serves as a kind of direct and indirect commentary on the papal liturgy. The papal liturgies at Easter and Christmas moved through an environment that was “re-written” by the Mirabilia as a narrative of Christian Roman renewal and of triumph throughout the Mediterranean world. The Mirabilia celebrates both Roman renewal and hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean, giving heightened significance to the liturgical life of the twelfth-century papacy. The papal liturgy, at these most triumphant processional moments, celebrated that historic and, ultimately, eschatological triumph.


Author(s):  
Sarah Davis-Secord

This book examines Sicily's place within the religious, diplomatic, military, commercial, and intellectual networks of the Mediterranean world. It traces the history of Sicily, from the sixth-century incorporation of the island into the Byzantine empire, through the period of Muslim rule (827–1061), until the end of Norman rule there in the late twelfth century. In particular, it investigates how Sicily moved from the Latin Christian world into the Greek Christian one, then into the Islamicate civilization, and then back into Latin Christendom. In order to understand Sicily's role(s) within the broader Mediterranean system of the sixth through twelfth centuries, the book explores patterns of travel and communication between Sicily and elsewhere—between Constantinople and Rome, between Byzantium and the Islamic world. Finally, it describes Sicily in the dār al-Islām.


Author(s):  
Michael Koortbojian

The ancient Romans famously distinguished between civic life in Rome and military matters outside the city—a division marked by the pomerium, an abstract religious and legal boundary that was central to the myth of the city's foundation. This book explores, by means of images and texts, how the Romans used social practices and public monuments to assert their capital's distinction from its growing empire, to delimit the proper realms of religion and law from those of war and conquest, and to establish and disseminate so many fundamental Roman institutions across three centuries of imperial rule. The book probes such topics as the appearance in the city of Romans in armor, whether in representation or in life, the role of religious rites on the battlefield, and the military image of Constantine on the arch built in his name. Throughout, the book reveals how, in these instances and others, the ancient ideology of crossing the pomerium reflects the efforts of Romans not only to live up to the ideals they had inherited, but also to reconceive their past and to validate contemporary practices during a time when Rome enjoyed growing dominance in the Mediterranean world. The book explores a problem faced by generations of Romans—how to leave and return to hallowed city ground in the course of building an empire.


Author(s):  
Элеонора Кормышева ◽  
Eleonora Kormysheva

The diachronic trends in socio-economic and cultural development of the societies in the Nile valley are revealed based on the materials from Giza necropolis (the 3rd millennium BC) and the settlement of Abu Erteila (1st century AD). The research made it possible to trace the typological similarities in the evolution of the studied societies in cultural and historical contexts. The main fields of the research were epigraphy, iconography, social history, and material culture. Many previously unknown monuments discovered by Russian archaeologists in Egypt and Sudan were introduced into scientific discourse. The basis was created for studying the Nile valley as a contact zone between the Mediterranean world and Africa.


Author(s):  
Joshua M. White

This book offers a comprehensive examination of the shape and impact of piracy in the eastern half of the Mediterranean and the Ottoman Empire’s administrative, legal, and diplomatic response. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, piracy had a tremendous effect on the formation of international law, the conduct of diplomacy, the articulation of Ottoman imperial and Islamic law, and their application in Ottoman courts. Piracy and Law draws on research in archives and libraries in Istanbul, Venice, Crete, London, and Paris to bring the Ottoman state and Ottoman victims into the story for the first time. It explains why piracy exploded after the 1570s and why the Ottoman state was largely unable to marshal an effective military solution even as it responded dynamically in the spheres of law and diplomacy. By focusing on the Ottoman victims, jurists, and officials who had to contend most with the consequences of piracy, Piracy and Law reveals a broader range of piratical practitioners than the Muslim and Catholic corsairs who have typically been the focus of study and considers their consequences for the Ottoman state and those who traveled through Ottoman waters. This book argues that what made the eastern half of the Mediterranean basin the Ottoman Mediterranean, more than sovereignty or naval supremacy—which was ephemeral—was that it was a legal space. The challenge of piracy helped to define its contours.


1970 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
William Stinchcombe ◽  
James A. Field

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 2513-2515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soumia Brahmi ◽  
Abdelaziz Touati ◽  
Axelle Cadière ◽  
Nassima Djahmi ◽  
Alix Pantel ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTTo determine the occurrence of carbapenem-resistantAcinetobacter baumanniiin fish fished from the Mediterranean Sea near the Bejaia coast (Algeria), we studied 300 gills and gut samples that had been randomly and prospectively collected during 1 year. After screening on selective agar media, using PCR arrays and whole-genome sequencing, we identified for the first time two OXA-23-producingA. baumanniistrains belonging to the widespread sequence type 2 (ST2)/international clone II and harboring aminoglycoside-modifying enzymes [aac(6′)-Ib andaac(3′)-I genes].


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-160
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

Abstract Most scholars working on the concept of transculturality consider it a modern phenomenon, but we can discover forms of transculturality already in the Middle Ages, and this in terms of political, scholarly, artistic, medical and literary exchanges. Within the framework of Mediterranean Studies, this article examines the extraordinary case of Rudolf von Ems’ Der guote Gêrhart (ca. 1220–1225) which illustrates how much the Mediterranean world proved to be a highly useful backdrop for the description of transcultural exchanges between the protagonist and a Moroccan castellan, Stranmûr. The verse narrative is based on the experiences of a wealthy Cologne merchant who proves to be extraordinarily open to other cultures, languages and religions and encounters an equally minded Muslim lord. We would not be far off by describing the poet’s projections as a case of medieval tolerance.


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