Reversals in Wartime: Alcuin and Charlemagne discuss Retrograde Motion

The apparent retrograde motion of the planets was a puzzle for astronomers from the ancient world to the final establishment of heliocentric cosmology in the early modern period, but enjoyed an especially rich discussion in the Carolingian Renaissance. We explore the first stirrings of an eighth-century response to this epistemological challenge in a remarkable series of letters between Alcuin of York and Charlemagne, sent while the latter was on campaign against the Saxons in 798 CE. Their exchange constitutes the longest discussion of the phenomenon of Mars' retrograde motion in the West up to that date. Our consideration of the relevant letters explores Alcuin's ability to marshal diverse and complex explanatory narratives and observational traditions around the problem of the retrograde motion of the planet Mars, even as he was unable to fully reconcile them. Attention to his ultimately unsuccessful (and at times contradictory) attempts at explanation suggest that he relied on knowledge from sources beyond those previously recognized, which we identify. Charlemagne's curiosity about the matter can be located in the much longer context of an ancient tradition of imperial and royal concern with heavenly phenomena; at the same time, the exchange with Alcuin heralds the ninth-century expansion of astronomy away from the computists' preoccupation with the solar and lunar calendrical data required to calculate the date of Easter and towards a more wide-ranging curiosity about observed planetary motion irrelevant to Easter dating and computistical calculations. Alcuin's functional, if not geometrical, assumption of the centrality of the sun in his explanation merits a further examination of the more general sense in which lost ancient heliocentric ideas sustained early medieval echoes.

‘He’ll latin-runes tellan in his horror-coat standing’

Chapter 4 focuses on the area across the east coast of Britain first thought to have been settled by post-Roman migrants, that of the East Anglian and Lincolnshire fenland, and the exploration of this contested space in ‘Angle-Land’. In the part of ‘Angle-Land’ focused on the fen Jones engages in a poetic search for the lost Britons of the early medieval fen by reading the eighth-century Anglo-Latin Vita Sancti Guthlaci Auctore Felice alongside recent archaeological finds from Caistor-by-Norwich. This chapter proposes that this search ultimately questions the extent of the foreignness of the Welsh in this supposedly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ space, allowing Jones to reimagine Guthlac as an Anglo-Welsh saint and to create a new macaronic language for twentieth-century Britain.

Between Qum and Qayrawān: Unearthing early Shii ḥadı̄th sources

In this article, I develop and test a new methodology of unearthing early Shii ḥadı̄th sources that served as the basis for the later collections of the fourth/tenth century. This method, besides answering the question of historicity, enables us to understand the dissemination of texts across times and regions. As a case-study, I examine what is alleged to have been the first Shii legal ḥadı̄th collection, a work attributed to ʿUbaydullāh b. ʿAlī al-Ḥalabī (d. c. 148/765). By comparing the reports transmitted on the authority of al-Ḥalabī in the Twelver ḥadı̄th compendium originating in Qum, al-Kulaynī's al-Kāfī, and an Ismaili legal ḥadı̄th composition, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān's al-Īḍāḥ, composed in Qayrawān, I demonstrate that both works trace their material to an earlier Kūfan source of the second/eighth century, with each work drawing on the same material independently. A cross-regional textual analysis of later ḥadı̄th compendia, in this case composed by contemporaneous scholars, residing in different regions, affiliated to dissimilar religious persuasions, reveals the transmission of identical material; this finding contributes to our understanding of both geographical transmission of early sources and compositional arrangements of the later ḥadı̄th compendia.

Sharwīn of Dastabay: Reconstructing an early Persian Tale

The article discusses a little-known lost Persian tale, The Story of Sharwin of Dastabay, and traces references to it in Arabic, Persian, and Byzantine sources. The earliest references to the story come from the mid- to late eighth century, and it seems to have remained well known in Arabic and Persian literature until the early twelfth and possibly the early fourteenth century, while Byzantine literature shows that at least some of its elements circulated already in the mid-sixth century. The article also discusses how the story may have been transmitted both in Iran and, crossing the linguistic boundary, in an Arabic context. Though much of the story remains unknown, it is clear that it relates to later epics and reveals something of the literary context of Firdawsi and his Shahname.

Valeria Provincia in the Cosmography of Anonymous of Ravenna

Anonymous of Ravenna wrote the Cosmography at the beginning of the eighth century, but his creation of the work cannot be determined more precisely. The Cosmography contains descriptions of the entire world in five books, the fourth of which includes a narration of Provincia Valeria Media. In describing the province, Anonymous of Ravenna referred to several authors’ works, including the Tabula Peutingeriana, Marcomir and Jordanes’ works, and other sources of unknown origin. Anonymous noted that Provincia Valeria Media was located between the Pannonia Superior and Pannonia Inferior, covering the area of the ancient provinces of Valeria and Savia. Anonymous listed the toponyms in Provincia Valeria Media’s territory, which he took from an early copy or transcript of the Tabula Peutingeriana. In Cosmography, Carniola was the western neighbour of Provincia Valeria Media, and it was bounded on the south by Liburnia Tarsaticensis. Regarding the name of Carniola, this researcher can assume that it was a later addition to the text of the Cosmography. Scholars disputed whether Provincia Valeria Media existed in the fifth century or whether Anonymous took its name from historical sources. Recent research has suggested that Anonymous borrowed the name Valeria from Jordan and the name Media Provincia from the Tabula Peutingeriana. He merged the two terms into Provincia Valeria Media. The actual historical value of the Cosmography is not the creation of the name Provincia Valeria Media but the early medieval data that Anonymous recorded in his book.

Typhoeus and Etna in Hesiod, Pindar, and (Pseudo-)Aeschylus

This paper discusses the suspected reading †ἀïδνῆς in Hes. Theog. 860 and proposes the emendation οὔρεος ἐν βήσσῃς, <ε>ἰν Αἴτνῃ παιπαλοέσσῃ. The interpretative consequences of thus introducing into the text a reference to Mount Etna are then explored. The immediately following passage, ll. 861-867, is reinterpreted in the light of a preceding reference to the Sicilian volcano. Not only Hesiod, but also Homer is argued to have knowledge of volcanism. Hesiod’s simple, unelaborated reference to Typhoeus’ defeat at Mount Etna implies that the association of Typhoeus with Mount Etna was made by Greeks before Hesiod; it can plausibly be connected to Greek colonising or proto-colonising activity in the eighth century BCE. The Typhonomachy would be only one of several mythological episodes in early Greek hexameter poetry to be localised in the West. Finally, the arguable presence of the Typhoeus-Etna link in Hesiod’s Theogony significantly increases the likelihood that the closely related descriptions of Typhoeus in passages of Pindar (from Pyth. 1, Pyth. 8, Ol. 4, and frr. 92-3 Maehler) and the (Pseudo-)Aeschylean Prometheus Bound do not depend on each other, but on a lost early hexameter account of the Typhonomachy (perhaps, but not necessarily, the Cyclical Titanomachy) that had attained canonical status by the fifth century BCE. Thus also one popular argument for a late dating of the Prometheus Bound, and for its non-Aeschylean authorship, would need to be discarded.

Constructing Kanchi

This book traces the emergence of the South Indian city of Kanchi as a major royal capital and multireligious pilgrimage destination during the era of the Pallava and Chola dynasties (ca. seventh through thirteenth centuries). It presents the first-ever comprehensive picture of historical Kanchi, locating the city and its more than 100 spectacular Hindu temples at the heart of commercial and artistic exchange that spanned India, Southeast Asia, and China. The author demonstrates that Kanchi was structured with a hidden urban plan, which determined the placement and orientation of temples around a central thoroughfare that was also a burgeoning pilgrimage route. Moving outwards from the city, she shows how the transportation networks, river systems, residential enclaves, and agrarian estates all contributed to the vibrancy of Kanchi's temple life. The construction and ongoing renovation of temples in and around the city, she concludes, has enabled Kanchi to thrive continuously from at least the eighth century, through the colonial period, and up until the present.

Social Transformations and Resilience

The amazing goblet known as the ‘Tassilo Liutpirc Chalice’ is one of the most significant archaeological objects from the eighth century AD. Surprisingly, the animal figures that adorn it have close parallels with the creatures of the Germanic Animal styles from the fifth century onwards. This paper explores the deeply-rooted traditions behind this, and the social, cultural and political mechanisms that sustained its continuity, transcending the boundaries of epochs and religions. It is argued that a supra-regional network of workshops was the driving force in the development of this sophisticated imagery.