North Caucasus aborigine population in VII-IX centuries Adighe-Zikhes and different states of Dagestan

The article sets out howthe formation process of Aborigen population - Adighe-Zikhes and Dagestan as astate, had developed in North Caucasus in VII-IX centuries.For that period, Adyghes occupied black sea coast in the South-East of Tamans peninsula which had been ruled by Gothic-Tetraksite. the mentioned process served to strengthen Zikhes tribe, which became quitsignificant and prominentevenearlier in 1st century BC. In VIII century there appear plenty of state units in the territory of Dagestan as a result of society development. The “kingdoms” such as Tabasaran, Sarir, Kaitag, Gumukand atc. become established. These political units owned the territories of Dagestan main ethnic groups. Within these political units went formation process of Dagestan Main ethnos.

Ob 500-letnici Luthrovega nastopa na državnem zboru v Wormsu ▪︎ On the 500th Anniversary of Luther’s Appearance at the Diet of Worms

Following the publication of Luther’s theses on 31 October 1517, the Diet of Worms was the next fundamental step in the reform movement of the 16th-century European Christianity. In the “Holy Roman Empire,” the way was opened for further religious and new institutional development in the previously unified church, culminating in the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which granted individual rulers of political units in the country, princes, prince-bishops etc. the right to decide on the religion of their Catholic and Lutheran subjects. The immediate cause of “Worms 1521” and the consequent “Edict of Worms” were two papal bulls addressed to Luther. The first, Exsurge Domine from 1520, threatened him with excommunication unless he recanted almost one half of the theses published in 1517. Luther responded by proclaiming the pope the Antichrist, although he had until then somewhat avoided criticising him, and publicly burned the bull in December of the same year. Exsurge Domine was followed in January 1521 by the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem excommunicating Luther, which also meant death sentence and exile from the state. According to the established doctrine and practice the execution of the sentence would follow automatically. This doctrine was rejected by Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, who was not convinced by the arguments about Luther’s “heresy” and demanded judgement by domestic experts and authorities. He had his University of Wittenberg in mind, which firmly defended Luther’s views. Frederick the Wise reached the agreement with Emperor Charles that “the case of Luther” would be discussed at the Diet, and that Luther was guaranteed safe arrival in Worms and return to Wittenberg. Luther appeared before the Diet on April 17 and 18. The party representing Luther’s conviction gave him only the option of renouncing the convicted theses, which is why he requested more time for reconsideration and was granted the emperor’s personal permission. The next day, on April 18, Luther performed brilliantly, to which the emperor personally responded on April 19. Thus, Emperor Charles and the monk Luther literally stood opposite each other at the Diet, in front of the highest representatives of the state, which was previously completely unimaginable. Both presented their religious perceptions and understandings, referring to their own conscience. They were in a very unequal position not only as emperor and monk; it was a much more sensitive matter, since the emperor was religiously “free” while Luther was a validly convicted and excommunicated “heretic”. The case of Luther at the Diet was far from solely religious in nature, but rather a reflection of the broader socio-religious situation at the turning point in history. The conflict culminated in the contradictions between “cultural” Rome and barbaric “Germanism”, as perfectly illustrated by the correspondence of the papal nuncio, Girolamo Aleandro the elder. The great understanding for Luther’s resistance to Rome was supported at the Diet by decades-old German complaints (gravamina) debated at Diets, which were not taken seriously in Rome. The most notable figures in the case of Luther (causa Lutheri) at the Diet were: Martin Luther, Emperor Charles V, Elector of Saxony Frederick the Wise, and the papal nuncio Girolamo Aleandro the elder. Although at the end of the Diet each of them was “victorious” in one way or another, the actual winner was Martin Luther, who achieved unprecedented success only by appearing before the Diet, not renouncing the convicted theses and being able to return to Wittenberg under the emperor’s protection. It is true that he published his fundamental reform writings as early as 1520, but the door for the Reformation has only now opened. After Luther was “abducted” on his way back, he undertook the translation of the Bible into German, which became the only recognized religious basis, and he incorporated his theology into the translation. He used his native, German language to communicate the faith. This was already demonstrated at the Diet, where he spoke first in German and only then in Latin for those who did not understand German, e.g. the emperor and the papal nuncio Aleandro. Pamphlets (Flugschriften) handed out in the streets also reported about the events at the Diet in German. At first glance, the conclusion of the Diet was not favorable for Luther. The Edict of Worms, dated May 8 and signed by the emperor on May 26, as an act of the emperor and not as a resolution of the Diet, legitimized Luther’s conviction. The edict was drafted by the nuncio Aleandro, and partly also by Peter Bonomo, later Trubar’s teacher. However, the edict did not have fatal consequences for Luther, because the emperor did not send it to the province of Saxony; consequently Frederick, Elector of Saxony, did not have to declare it, so the edict did not apply where the “heretic” lived. This, in turn, enabled Luther to continue working as both a religious reformer and a university professor at the University of Wittenberg, which became a central institution for the education of Lutheran reformers.

Mapping the International System, 1886-2019: The CShapes 2.0 Dataset

This article introduces CShapes 2.0, a GIS dataset that maps the borders of states and dependent territories from 1886 through 2019. Our dataset builds on the previous CShapes dataset and improves it in two ways. First, it extends temporal coverage from 1946 back to the year 1886, which followed the Berlin Conference on the partition of Africa. Second, the new dataset is no longer limited to independent states, but also maps the borders of colonies and other dependencies, thereby providing near complete global coverage of political units throughout recent history. This article explains the coding procedure, provides a preview of the dataset and presents three illustrative applications.

Archaeology and Material Culture of Aram and the Arameans

At the end of the 2nd millennium bce, the geographical term Aram appears for the first time in the annals of the Middle Assyrian kings and in connection with the ahlammû or ahlammu Arameans (or Aramaeans). At that time, the ahlammu Arameans were considered nomadic tribes who lived in the area between the Khabur and the Middle Euphrates, where they constituted a serious threat to the cultivated land and the Assyrian state. From the 9th century bce on, when the Aramean tribes had already spread to other parts of Syria as far as to Mount Lebanon, it was more common to refer to the “Land of Aram” as the geographic designation for a large area that included several different ethnolinguistic population groups. The term is used by the Assyrians and in the Hebrew Bible, but only very rarely in local Aramaic written sources. Therefore, it is important to stress that Aram was mostly a foreign-constructed term that local dynasts adopted only in a few cases for political or territorial self-expression. Despite the fact that the Aramaic language, which includes several subdialects, gradually developed from the 9th to the 7th century bce, there is no reason to assume an Aramean political or cultural identity for this period. This is confirmed by the material culture, which definitely shows no distinction between territories and states dominated by Aramaic-speaking population groups and others, such as the so-called Luwian states. Hence, the task to review the archaeology and material culture of Aram and the Arameans in this volume has to be cautious about any ethnic ascriptions. In fact, the Aramean states of the first half of the 1st millennium bce, like Bīt Bahiani/Guzana, Huzirina, Bīt Adīni, Bīt Agusi, Sam’al-Ya’udi, Hamat/Lu’aš, and Damascus-Aram, were individually shaped political units with a strong sense of urban identity. They developed and interacted within the larger Syrian koine that emerged based on common cultural traditions and that continuously transformed its image until it was fully integrated into the Neo-Assyrian state. In this context, it is rather illuminating to investigate the cultural layout of a single state in order to depart from the fallacious idea of a conscious Aramean identity.

What are micro nations? An analysis of the activities of three projects: Liberland, Imperial Throne and Free City of Christiania

The article analyzes micro nations as a new idea of establishing one’s own country. Even if micro nations are small and irrelevant, they are an interesting example of how people want to create their own environment. Some projects were established as a joke or for financial profit; others have the ambition of becoming an internationally recognized country. The article presents the story of three different micro nations; Liberland, Imperial Throne, and the Free City of Christiania. All of them represent different approaches for self-governance and ideology (libertarianism, monarchism and anarchism). The article also considers definitions of micro nations and tries to match them with existing definitions of political units.

Charlemagne, the Carolingian Empire, and Its Successors

Both the Christian empire of Charlemagne and the subsequently hugely influential imperial ideology of the early Middle Ages were rooted in the Roman past. This chapter addresses the reality of the early medieval empire and the ways in which it was represented by contemporaries for posterity. It examines the career of Pippin III, the first king of the Carolingian dynasty, and the expansion of the Carolingian Empire under his illustrious son Charlemagne, by both design and chance, to embrace most of western Europe. This vast realm was governed by an elaborate and efficient political and administrative system in which both lay and ecclesiastical magnates played a crucial role. This system of governance was maintained even within the smaller political units of the later ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The Latin Christian culture initially promoted by Charlemagne, moreover, is the most enduring legacy of the medieval empire to the Western world.

Taking one for the team: Partisan alignment and planning outcomes in England

Does partisan alignment affect sub-national political units’ performance? When testing for a partisan alignment effect, local authority planning processes represent a ‘hard case’. Formally, decision-making processes are insulated against political considerations, and there is a mis-match between national party commitments to expand house-building on the one hand, and pressure on local councillors from residents opposing new developments on the other. I find that, in general, partisan alignment brings an increased propensity to approve large residential planning applications. This suggests councillors’ willingness to ‘take one for the team’ by prioritising national over local interests. Consistent with ‘party politics of housing’ insights, inter-party variation sees an altered effect in left-wing constellations, which display lowered approval propensities. In addition to these substantive extensions to scholarship on partisan alignment effects, the insights presented into the drivers of variation in local authority planning outcomes contribute to the pressing tasks of understanding and addressing the chronic under-supply of new housing within the English housing system.

Local Responses to the Empire

Chapter 8 (‘Local Responses to the Empire: From Armed Resistance to Integration’) focuses on the local responses in the southwest to the Assyrian imperial rule. Such studies are somewhat rare regarding the Assyrian empire, but the present case study has a number of advantages, and in addition to the large archaeological database available, we have a unique textual source, reflecting the voice of (some of) the conquered, i.e. the Hebrew Bible. Notably, in most imperial settings, texts, if they exist at all, represent the imperial view, but the Hebrew Bible, as complex as it is as a historical source, provides insights into some local views of imperial rule. The evidence allows us to reconstruct the local responses to Assyrian rule in different political units, and by various groups within these units, from armed resistance, through more subtle forms of resistance, to cooperation, collaboration, and even integration. The evidence reveals, once again, profound differences between the provinces and the clients, as well as between the different clients.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest

The Neo-Assyrian empire—the first large empire of the ancient world—had attracted a great deal of public attention ever since the spectacular discoveries of the nineteenth century. The southwestern part of this empire, located in the lands of the Bible, is archaeologically speaking the best-known region in the world, and its history is also described in a plethora of texts, including the Hebrew Bible. Using a bottom-up approach, this book utilizes this unparalleled information to reconstruct the outcomes of the Assyrian conquest of the region, and how it impacted the diverse political units and ecological zones that comprised it, forcing the reader to appreciate the transformations the imperial takeover brought in its wake. The analysis reveals the marginality of the annexed territories in the southwest, and that the empire focused its activities in small border areas, facing the prospering clients. A comparison of this surprising picture to the information available from other parts of the empire suggests that the distance of these provinces from the imperial core is responsible for their fate, leading to a better appreciation of factors influencing imperial expansion, the considerations leading to annexation, and the imperial methods of control, challenging some old conventions about the development of the Assyrian empire and its rule. The detailed information also enables an examination of the Assyrian empire within the context of other ancient Near Eastern empires, and of imperialism at large, shedding a new light on the nature of Assyrian domination, and the reasons for the harsh treatment of the distant provinces. The book also examines what set the limits on the Assyrian empire, and highlights the historical development of imperial control in antiquity, and how later empires were able to overcome these limitations, paving the way to much larger and longer-lasting polities.

Family Torymidae Walker, 1833.

This chapter includes differential characters to distinguish the family Torymidae (Chalcidoidea), hypothesized phylogenetic relationships with other families, and general biological attributes of the family. Previous cataloguing efforts of the Iranian fauna for the family are summarized, as well as the information included in the checklist of species for the family. This summary information includes the number of species recorded from Iran, any newly recorded species, a comparison of the Iranian fauna with those of adjacent countries, and major host attributes of the family in Iran. For each species record, reference is included to catalogues that previously reported presence of the species in Iran, including Noyes (2019), distribution in Iran by province and extra-limital distribution by country. In addition to currently recognized countries, previously recognized political units are also included such as Yugoslavia and USSR, as well as some non-political regions such as Caucasus and Transcaucasus (a geographical region in the vicinity of the southern Caucasus Mountains on the border of Eastern Europe and Western Asia that roughly corresponds to present-day Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan). Also included for each species record are host records and plant associates in Iran, when known, and additional comments as necessary.