The Medieval History Journal recent issues

The Genesis of Islam in the Light of History: The First MHJ Annual Lecture Delivered in New Delhi on 27 November 2008

Al-Azmeh, A. — 2009-07-01

Faced with the choice between two themes that I suggested I might address this evening, the organisers of this event preferred me to speak as an historians' historian, rather than to opt for a topic of more general or current interest, and I have agreed to do so. Yet I should nevertheless be dissatisfied if those among you who do not particularly wish to be lectured to by historians were to be irked by an academic disquisition on some arcane matter. I shall therefore do my very best to ensure that those of you who are not historians, or who are not engaged professionally in the academic trade, shall leave this hall with somewhat more than the fleeting impression of an event. And I shall do so not least by suggesting that genesis, even the genesis of Islam, has more to do with Charles Darwin than with the Bible or the glorious associations of the Greek language, and that the reference to light in the title of my talk has more to do with reflective de-liberation than with exquisite colouration.

The Invention of Dancing Mania: Frankish Christianity, Platonic Cosmology and Bodily Expressions in Sacred Space

Rohmann, G. — 2009-07-01

Medieval ‘dancing mania’ has until recently remained an enigma in medical and religious history. This is because scholars tend to view it as an invariable medical syndrome instead of examining it as an example of the historicity of illness as semantic network. Taking the latter approach allows for grasping the phenomenon as a form of insanity specific to the Rhine basin of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though one whose roots can be traced to the early medieval reception of platonic cosmology and ‘theurgy’. This paper examines the legend of the Kölbigk dancers in the above perspective and establishes that its chief motif goes back to Sulpicius Severus’ reception of ‘Iamblichus’ ‘de mysteriis’. Thus, dancing mania appears to have been a form of insanity, indeed, but one constructed through religious narratives.

Revisioning the Conquest of Mexico: Image and Text in the Florentine Codex (1578-80)

Brochler, A. — 2009-07-01

When the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590) compiled the famous encyclopaedic history of Nahua culture generally known as the Florentine Codex (1578/79–80), he relied heavily on Nahua aides. Educated in the western humanist tradition and knowledgeable about their own world, these native collaborators were crucial to Sahagún's project. This article focuses in particular on the drawings of the Florentine Codex, analysing the close relationship between text and image in Book Twelve, which tells the story of the conquest of Mexico (1519–21). The drawings have received little scholarly attention as they lack the artistic features of what was regarded as ‘classic’ indigenous pictographic writing. This article argues that the tlacuiloque, the writers/painters of Book Twelve, did not merely sprinkle some elements of indigenous pictographic writing in more European style pictures, but created a new idiom to transmit their own way of visualising intertwined histories of conquest.

The Royal Chapel in Iberia: Models, Contacts, and Influences

Costa-Gomes, R. — 2009-07-01

This article analyses the main aspects of the activities of the late medieval royal chapel, comparing several Iberian Christian monarchies. Three definitions of the chapel were proposed since medieval times: the chapel as a collection of liturgical objects, as the human group devoted to the king's service by performing the Christian cult, and as a specific space inside royal residences. All three were put to use for the reproduction of the specific position of kings in Christian societies, as it was expressed in liturgical activities and in devotional practices. Common patterns and mutual influences are analysed, and the example of two ceremonial practices shows that these were more current than it has been argued by historians of the early modern period.

Visualising the Incarnation in Medieval Christianity: Universal Botanical Metaphors and Local Cult Practices

Khan, S. — 2009-07-01

Within Christian iconography and in medieval Christian cult practices, floral depictions play a major role. The genesis of such floral pictorial signs has not been addressed in art historical writing. This article attempts to trace the origins of the Christian floral iconography, investigates the perceptions and usages of such motifs in cult practices and proceeds to demonstrate the extent to which Christian sources shared a common under-standing with world religions such as Buddhism. Buddhist and Christian sources appear to have taken recourse to similar iconographic formulae in order to make abstract, invisible deities perceptible to the believer. Floral iconography in Christian cult practices was an effective medium to communicate Christ's birth through the Virgin Mary and the story of his unique Passion. By transcending common allusions to Incarnations, it is even able to transport meanings which help the believer to find consolation in his quest of the Christian afterlife.

Book Reviews

2009-07-01

The Tale of Lady Tan: Negotiating Place between Central and Local in Song-Yuan-Ming China

Gerritsen, A. — 2009-03-23

This paper explores the story of Lady Tan across genres from biographical record to temple inscription and marvellous tale, highlighting different representations of ‘the local’ in these stories: the loss of local belonging for some, inscribing the morals of a local community for others. Focusing on this tale, this essay argues that locality and belonging were contested constructs, especially during the Song-Yuan-Ming transitional period. Ex-ploring how literati understood themselves in relation to their localities contributes to our understanding of literati identities and the meaning of ‘the local’, in a period with ‘weak central government’, or as a repeating pattern of centralisation and localisation. It reveals the complexities in-volved in giving meaning to locality and negotiating belonging. In Ji'an prefecture, the centralising policies of the Hongwu and Yongle emperors were felt locally and affected how literati positioned themselves between central government and local community. This focus on literati writings from a single prefecture suggests that a close reading of the negotiations that form part of constructing locality and belonging in Ji'an can reveal the potential for a complex interplay between central government and local communities throughout China.

Technology of Indian Sea Navigation (c. 1200-c. 1800)

B., A. — 2009-03-23

India has a rich and hoary tradition of maritime ventures over millennia. Since the days of the Indus Valley Civilisation, Indian seafarers have voy–aged across the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal and even beyond for trade, religious and cultural objectives. Through experience and inheri–tance over generations, these seamen acquired maritime craft skills and wisdom that formed the bedrock of a total navigational package that stood the test of time and survived till an instrumented modern technology took over.

Agricultural Technology in Early Medieval India (c. A.D. 500-1300)

Chakravarti, R. — 2009-03-23

The article discusses the spread of agriculture to an unprecedented degree in the period from c. A.D. 500 to 1300 (early medieval times) on the basis of both epigraphic and textual materials that also speak of considerable diversity of crops, including what may be considered as cash crops. The author pays attention to the role of metal—especially iron—technology in the development of agriculture during this period. It also argues for betterment in manuring. Inseparably associated with the expansion of agriculture—as an impact of the issuance of profuse number of land grants—are better irrigation technologies. The diversity of irrigation tech-niques and hydraulic projects, local and supra local, had intimate linkages with the variability of access to precious water resources in disparate areas of the subcontinent. In this connection, the article also offers early Indian perceptions of the monsoons; it also seeks to underline the meteor-ologists’ observations of the correlation between the flood-level in the Nile catchment area (by the use of the Nilometer) and the pattern of rainfall in the subcontinent on a long chronological range.

Asceticism, Gallantry, or Polygamy? Alexander's Relationship with Women as a Topos in Medieval Romance Traditions

Muller, S. — 2009-03-23

Historisches Seminar, Leibniz University, Hannover. E-mail: sabine.mueller@hist.uni-hannover.de The legend of the ancient Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great was infused with new life in the Middle Ages. Medieval literature cast him as a popular subject, a moral exemplum and a model to be emulated by the nobility. One important aspect of this legend was his relationship with women that can be read as a marker of the different representations of the Alexander figure and their cultural contexts. This study examines the Alexander legend as it was reinvented in three major medieval texts, writ-ten by the French cleric Gautier de Châtillon, the German writer Johann Hartlieb and the Persian poet Nizami. While Christian literary representa-tions reinvent Alexander as an ascetic, chaste figure, exalting fidelity to one woman, his wife Roxane and alternatively as an ideal of gallantry and courtliness, the Persian romance tradition portrayed him as an en-ergetic, polygamous lover. In each case, his attitude towards women is deployed as a symbol of his political attributes.

Book Reviews

2009-03-23

On the Date and Contents of a Portuguese Medieval Technical Book on Illumination: O livro de como se fazem as cores

Cruz, A. J., Afonso, L. U. — 2008-06-03

The book this article discusses is a late medieval Portuguese technical text on illumination written with Hebraic characters. It belongs to a miscellaneous manuscript at Parma's Biblioteca Palatina. Discovered in 1803, it was attributed to Abraham ben Judah Ibn Hayyim and dated to 1262. Soon some authors assigned it to the fifteenth century. The paper's water-marks, recently observed, confirmed the fifteenth century date. Yet, the possibility that this text could be a copy of an older original remains. However, the discussion of the historical context and the content also suggests that the original dates more probably from the fifteenth than the thirteenth century. In terms of structure and content this text should not be considered a treatise but a heterogeneous compilation which, besides the Hebraic marks, presents significantly alchemic, Castilian and Arabic influences.

Alliance, Genealogy and Political Power: The Cudasamas of Junagadh and the Sultans of Gujarat

Sheikh, S. — 2008-06-03

In 1472, the Cudasama ruler of Junagadh in Saurashtra (peninsular western Gujarat) was finally defeated, after a long struggle, by the armies of Mahmud, the sultan of Ahmadabad, a turning point in the history of Gujarat. The Cudasamas, hitherto dominant rulers, were reduced to the status of minor landholders. For the sultanate, it marked the abandonment of an administration based largely on tribute and alliance with local chieftains in favour of more direct rule. The transition in their government from military garrison-based rule to a more settled, bureaucratic sovereignty marked a significant shift away from the former system of politics in Gujarat. In spite of this history of violent antagonism between the Cudasamas and the sultans, this article hopes to show how both groups belonged to a common, transforming arena of politics in which alliance-making, genealogy and patronage were markers of status, a form of politics which may still be recovered from texts, genealogies and the accounts of professional record-keeping groups.

Agricultural Technology in Kashmir (A.D. 1600 to 1900)

Hangloo, R.L. — 2008-06-03

This article seeks to locate and analyse the ecological and socio-political conditions specific to hill agriculture within Kashmir in a medieval context. It draws upon a range of sources—texts, travel accounts and personal observation, as also interaction with farmers—to put the story together.

On the Relationship between Interpretations of the Confucian Classics and Political Power in East Asia: An Inquiry Focusing upon the Analects and Mencius

Huang, C.-c. — 2008-06-03

This article focuses on the complex relationship existing between the interpretation of Confucian classics and political power in China, Japan and Korea. A wide range of materials is contained for discussion, namely East Asian scholars’ commentaries on the Analects and Mencius, questions extracted from the Book of Mencius in the civil service examinations in the Ming (1368–1644) China, reminders which a Tokugawa Japanese scholar marked on Mencius against imperial reading, and quotations from Confucian classics appearing in the dialogues between emperors and courtiers in the Han (206 BCE–220 CE) and Tang (618–907) dynasties. It is pointed out that the dual roles played by the interpreters—as Confucian scholars and as administrators—had closely connected the interpretation of classics to political power. Briefly speaking, three forms of relationship are observed: inseparability, competition, and the balance to be struck between the interpretation of the classics and political power. To sum up, the East Asian Confucians read and understood the classics through their own ‘existential structures’, at the same time endowing the classics with new strategic content; they were not just playing ‘intellectual games’

Book Reviews

2008-06-03

Disasters and Pre-industrial Societies: Historiographic Trends and Comparative Perspectives

Juneja, M., Mauelshagen, F. — 2007-11-27

Climatic Extremes, Recurrent Crises and Witch Hunts: Strategies of European Societies in Coping with Exogenous Shocks in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

Pfister, C. — 2007-11-27

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, continental Europe north of the Alps was afflicted by a 13-year cycle of frequent cold and rainy summers which was the result of a series of volcanic explosions in the tropics. The inclement weather led to recurrent subsistence crises and to multiple floods in the Alps following from extensive glacier advances. This article discusses the relationship between ‘climate’ and ‘history’ from the example of this unique period. The vulnerability of food production in Europe to climatic hazard is assessed from an impact model. The result shows that the period 1560 to 1630 is most prominently marked by a high level of climatic stress. Likewise, this study demonstrates how authorities in Val Aosta (Italy) responded to annually recurrent floods in the 1590s triggered by the advancing Ruitor glacier. Finally, by confirming the thesis advanced by Wolfgang Behringer relating extensive witch hunts during that period to climatic change and recurrent subsistence crises, this article makes a plea for bridging the gap separating studies of climate from those of culture.

The Great El Nino of 1789 93 and its Global Consequences: Reconstructing an Extreme Climate Event in World Environmental History

Grove, R. H. — 2007-11-27

This article explores the global dimensions of an extreme climatic anomaly characterised by a series of El Niño events observable during the late eighteenth century. While similar events, comparable in their extent and severity, can be detected during earlier centuries, archival and physical data available for a later period suggest that the consequences of the El Niño of 1788–96 were most dramatic. Reconstructing this event may be a useful analogue in understanding the effects of comparable phenomena further back in time, especially where data is sparse. This article investigates the shocks triggered off on a global scale by El Niño events that became part of a conjuncture affecting economic systems, intellectual and administrative responses to issues of environment, and popular unrest. The precise relationship between an anomalous climatic situation and revolutionary upheaval, as in the case of France in the late 1780s and 1790s, is still open to discussion. The study of climatic stresses is however important to be able to contextualise a historical phenomenon on a global matrix. It now appears that the history of the Great El Niño of the 1790s can help to illuminate a much larger picture of world history during the last 5,000 years, especially in understanding the connections between El Niño events and the shocks such anomalies have periodically administered to the world economic system.

Climate and Crisis in Eighteenth Century Mexico

Endfield, G. H. — 2007-11-27

Signals of social and economic growth and prosperity in late colonial Mexico, and especially in the eighteenth century, masked a number of deeper, longer-standing structural problems. Drives towards market integration and the development of international trade associated with the Bourbon reforms stimulated a phase of remarkably rapid economic and administrative change, but also exacerbated a growing social inequality. Some groups benefitted from the economic developments of the 1700s, others suffered serious economic deprivation. This article suggests that repeated periods of anomalous weather and subsistence crisis between the 1690s through to the early 1800s might have served to at once reveal and compound these inequalities and may have also contributed to local and collective social unrest at different points throughout this period.

Risks and Disasters in the History of the Mexico Basin: Are they Climatic or Social?

Garcia-Acosta, V. — 2007-11-27

Using primary information coming from the two published volumes of Desastres agrícolas en México. Catálogo histórico (Agricultural Disasters in Mexico. Historical Catalogue), this article explores floods that occurred from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries in the Mexican Basin, including Tenochtitlan—later Mexico City—and the Valley of Mexico. Through their description and contextualisation it is possible to confirm the social character of disasters associated with natural hazards, be they climatic or environmental that occurred in the core of pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexico.

Famine in Bengal: A Comparison of the 1770 Famine in Bengal and the 1897 Famine in Chotanagpur

Damodaran, V. — 2007-11-27

Famine research has gained ground in both Asia and Africa in recent times and it is well known that British India experienced a series of subsistence crises particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century. However, analyses of these famines by historians have rarely included a study of environmental changes. A knowledge of the ecological basis of different peasant economies is crucial to an understanding of the capacity of certain communities to withstand drought and other famine related hazards. It is argued in this article that modernisation and commercialisation were accompanied by pauperisation and vulnerability to famine in large parts of India but the process affected regions differently as the evidence from Bengal shows. It was only by the later nineteenth century that the drastic effects of taxation, modernisation and ecological transformation caught up with outlying areas of Bengal and Bihar resulting in a permanent destabilisation of tribal society in the region. That these processes had occurred in central Bengal over a century previously emphasises the fact that the transition from pre-modern to modern was affected in India, differentially, and a regional focus reveals the uneven nature of development, local resistance to the forces of modernisation and the survival of husbandry techniques and coping strategies in times of scarcity that withstood the threats of modernisation well into the nineteenth century.

Changing River Courses in North India: Calamities, Bounties, Strategies Sixteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries

Bhargava, M. — 2007-11-27

Disaster is a multidimensional social phenomenon. Scholars, cutting across different disciplines, have yet to reach a common understanding or a consensus on the definition of disaster. To understand natural disaster and catastrophe, this article will study the nature of changing river courses and their impact on the environment and on human-environment relations. It will focus on the corrosive power of rivers, the destructive as well as beneficent effects of their impetuous trajectories and the social implications of this process. Our analysis is based on a case study of one of the major river systems in South Asia, i.e. river Ganga (Ganges) and its tributaries in north India.

Natural Disasters? Droughts and Epidemics in Pre-colonial Sudanic Africa

Meier, A. — 2007-11-27

Droughts and epidemics are recurrent phenomena in the history ofSudanic Africa. Only in the aftermath of the famines of 1973–74 and 1984–85 in the Sahel zone did historians begin to question their easy classification as ‘natural disasters’ and to look more closely at the interplay of climatic and societal stress factors in the causation process. Research into the history of disasters in pre-colonial Sudanic Africa has to face the problem of a distinctive lack of available source material. This article will address the problems surrounding the identification of droughts and epidemics, before getting to the question of how they turned into disasters, mostly in the form of famines. It argues that before the colonial period the regional food systems seem to have been better adapted to deal with climatic stress than with the specific forms of violence that were an intrinsic part of the fabric of Sudanic Africa since the political reorganisation of the sixteenth century. Thus, both vulnerability and resilience, but also the ways to explain disasters have to be understood in the context of the political, economic and social history of these African societies.

Natural Disasters in the Chronographia ofJohn Malalas: Reflections on their Function An Initial Sketch

Meier, M. — 2007-11-27

Christian chronicles have been regarded for a long time as an inferior sub-genre of historiography. One of the intentions of this article is to contribute towards a revision of this assessment—it does so through analysing the way natural disasters have been handled in the Chronographia of the Byzantine chronicler John Malalas. In accordance with the norms specific to the genre of Christian chronicles, Malalas too writes within a mould of salvation history, and interprets events as a manifestation of the workings of divine will. Especially during the reign of the emperor Justinian (527–65) the author observes the occurrence of several natural disasters, yet adheres to the view that these were not to be regarded as signs of an approaching end of the world. Instead, it would seem, that he wished to characterise the age of Justinian as an age of fear. As God spread fear through natural disasters so as to induce people to lead a life pleasing to God, the emperor too, at another level, disseminated fear in order to live up to his role as God's representative. Malalas interpreted contemporary events in terms of a retributive theology rooted in the Old Testament and for whose currency evidence could be found at different places during the sixth century.

Towards a History of Natural Disasters in China: The Case of Linfen County

Janku, A. — 2007-11-27

Hitherto two discourses have dominated our thinking about natural disasters in China. The first is linked to the ancient theory of the Heavenly Mandate, interpreting natural phenomena in terms of people's behaviour and especially the government's performance. The second discourse describes China as a country especially prone to natural disasters, due to its particular geographical conditions and general backwardness. This view has gained prominence in the course of intensifying interactions with the Western world since the second half of the nineteenth century. This article is an attempt to get beyond the surface of these dominating discourses by looking at the local level experience in the pre-modern period. The history of disasters of Linfen county in the south of Shanxi province is reconstructed on the basis of local sources, such as records of portents, stele inscriptions, literati writings and popular legends. It shows how the experience of disasters is inscribed in local culture in ways very different from what the dominating discourses would suggest.

Portents, Disaster, and Adaptation in Sixteenth Century Germany

Soergel, P. M. — 2007-11-27

Historians have long noted an upswell in early-modern Germany in portents, signs worked in nature that pointed to future ills, and have interpreted this increase as an indicator of rising anxiety and fears, fears that were the result, either of a new ‘guilt culture’, or which were conditioned by the generally dismal relationship that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century people had to their environment. This article argues for a new interpretation. It relies on recent studies in the psychology of well-being which have shown that natural disasters and a dismal environment do not condition human beings to long-term fear and anxiety. Instead, the mind's ability to adapt to such trials is evidence of an evolutionary process of ‘hedonic adaptation’. The subsequent investigation draws upon the works of Martin Luther, one sixteenth-century moralist generally judged to be among the bleakest critics of the time, to show that his attitude towards the environment was complex and multifaceted, and was not characterised by an unrelieved pessimism towards nature. The conclusions thus call upon scholars of natural disaster to distinguish carefully between long-standing theological commonplaces concerning sin and its effects upon nature and the genuine reactions of human beings to historical disasters.

'Mind the Next Flood!' Memories of Natural Disasters in Northern Germany from the Sixteenth Century to the Present

Kempe, M. — 2007-11-27

Floods and storm-tides have been—and continue to be—a regular feature of the daily life of small rural communities on the coasts of the North Sea in Northern Germany and the Low Countries. This article examines the cultural strategies evolved within these communities as part of their response to catastrophe and ever-present danger. Practices of communication and memorialising are one important way of coping—for they transport a specific memoria of disaster experiences, that has a stabilising function. The article takes a longue durée perspective, extending from the sixteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century, in order to grasp the dynamics by which collective memories crystallise into a ‘culture of disaster’. It examines the strategies of different media in the creation of a cultural memory unique to ‘amphibian societies’ in North Germany.

'...prima ci fu la cagione de la mala provedenza de' Fiorentini...' Disaster and 'Life World' Reactions in the Commune of Florence to the Flood of November 1333

Schenk, G. J. — 2007-11-27

Early in November 1333 flood waters gushed into the city of Florence. Giovanni Villani, eyewitness and chronicler of this disaster, wrote extensively on contemporary discourses about its origins. In recent research Villani's explanatory models have been viewed as characteristic of the oscillatory perceptions of his contemporaries, alternating between factors of natural history and notions of theological guilt. However, even Villani cited the lack of preparedness on the part of the inhabitants of Florence as the foremost cause of this particular tragedy that overtook his city. This explanation, which constitutes one more contemporary reaction to the disaster, has been largely overlooked by research on the subject of the 1333 floods. The records of the city administration open up fresh insights into hitherto little known reactions and measures resorted to by the Commune of Florence. This allows us a glimpse into the ‘life-world’ of contemporaries. The emerging account of pragmatic responses and concrete measures is useful in giving us access to collective attitudes which can legitimately take their place alongside of earlier, well-known interpretive models seeking to uncover ‘theories of practice’ in dealing with natural disasters.

Islamic Attitudes to Disasters in the Middle Ages: A Comparison of Earthquakes and Piagues

Akasoy, A. — 2007-11-27

By comparing two natural disasters, earthquakes and epidemics, in particular the plague, this article tries to reconstruct general features of debates around disasters in medieval Islam. It points out several similarities such as the function as a punishment and warning in the early Islamic tradition, the apocalyptic dimension and the status of victims of both disasters as martyrs and comparisons with the problem of flight and desertion. Furthermore, there are conflicts between Islamic religion and Greek science, but in both cases the debates took place in separate bodies of literature. Apart from these common features there are also differences which can be partly explained by the natures of the phenomena and partly by specific developments in the debates around them.

Fire and Quake in the Construction of Old Manila

Bankoff, G. — 2007-11-27

Manila, was one of the grandest early modern European cities in Asia, yet it was destroyed by fire and earthquake on numerous occasions. Over successive reconstructions, it evolved a style of architecture and urban planning that reconciled alien notions about space and place to local environmental realities. The city that materialised over the ensuing centuries was neither wholly European nor Asian, but a rich fusion of the two whose form and substance was ultimately determined by the twin threats of conflagration and seismic activity.

Coping with 'Natural' Disasters in Pre-industrial Societies: Some Comments

Helbling, J. — 2007-11-27