The Medieval History Journal recent issues

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

Obituary: Aaron Jakovlevich Gurevich

Mazour-Matusevich, Y., Neretina, S. — 2006-11-22

Such Stuff as Peoples are Made on: Ethnogenesis and the Construction of Nationhood in Medieval Europe

Hoppenbrouwers, P. — 2006-11-22

Peoples, or ethnic communities, ‘have been present in every period and continent’, says the cover of a recent volume on ethnicity.¹ If true, we should also be aware that ‘peoples’ in the recorded past are social entities which are always to a large extent constructed and constantly changing during continuous processes of state formation. This article aims at summarising the building blocks and leitmotifs, derived from Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian tradition, that medieval authors, in particular the clerical writers of histories, used in their construction of peoples in a time when political communities developed state-like features which required some measure of national identification. Understandably, the development of national identities in medieval Europe proved to be a complex interplay, in which the imagining of ‘Self’ was inextricably bound up with the judgement of ‘Other’ within the boundaries of that period's mental outlook.

Silkworms, Capital and Merchant Ships: European Silk Industry in the Medieval World Economy

Ertl, T. — 2006-11-22

Silk represented a bridge connecting East Asia, the Middle East and the Occident in the exchange of art forms between A.D. 1000 and 1500. The study of medieval production, trade, and use of silk, therefore, provided the opportunity to examine the complex dependencies between the artistic mind, technical skills, entrepreneurial options and political conditions in different areas of Eurasia. The aim of this article is not only to explain the overwhelming rise of the late medieval Italian silk industry, but to show the pace of regional developments in Eurasia, at times diverging, at times in unison.

The Shaping of a Sacred Space: The Tekke of Zuhuri seyh Ahmet Efendi in Eighteenth-century Salonica

Ginio, E. — 2006-11-22

The sicil, the archives of the kadi, of eighteenth-century Ottoman Salonica preserves about a dozen endowment deeds established by affluent Muslim Salonicans in favour of a new Sufi lodge (tekke), originally established by Zühuri Seyh Ahmet Efendi in the city. These documents enable us to follow the shaping of a new sacred space in Salonica that became, for a limited period, a focal point for charitable activity during the middle of the eighteenth century. These endowment deeds likewise enable us to explore the interaction between the tekke and the community it served. By discussing the connections between the local saint, his tekke and the surrounding community, this article explores contemporary perceptions of charity, attitudes towards the deserving ‘poor’ and the negotiation of legitimacy through providing charity.

Gregorio Dati (1362-1435) and the Limits of Individual Agency

Epurescu-Pascovici, I. — 2006-11-22

This article focuses on the diary of the Florentine Gregorio Dati (1362–1435) and its significance for the study of agency in pre-modern Europe. In particular, this article analyses Dati's ‘abeyance of individual agency’ in the context of his family affairs, business ventures, and participation in politics, as well as in relation to Dati's views on his personal development. The diary data, and in particular the private memoranda of 1404 and 1412, are corroborated with Dati's other writings and placed in the context of late-medieval and Renaissance culture. As such, this article draws attention to the role of cultural factors in the construction of agency, and aims to participate in a broader, interdisciplinary debate.

'The Voice of Mahmud': The Hero in Ziya Barani's Fatawa-i Jahandari

Sarkar, N. — 2006-11-22

This article is an initial attempt to study the ‘internal dynamics’ of the Fatawa-i Jahandari, a ‘Mirrors for Princes’ text written in the mid-fourteenth century by Ziya Barani, an ex-courtier, resident in Delhi. It focuses on the author's use of the ‘voice’ of Mahmud of Ghazni and, through examples from the text, tries to understand possible meanings that it may have en-gendered for the narrative and the reader. As such, the article is both a methodological and empirical exercise.

Book Reviews

2006-11-22

Introduction

Al-Bagdadi, N. — 2006-06-19

Preamble

Al-Azmeh, A. — 2006-06-19

Visual Influences on Arabic Linguistic Sciences

Baalbaki, R. — 2006-06-19

Associated with reliance on vision unaided by hearing, tashif adversely affected several scholarly fields, especially grammatical study since a large part of its data originates in Qur'anic readings, prophetic tradition and poetry, all influenced by tashif. Further, because of concern with the analysis of linguistic usage, the grammarians' reliance on the written form of language was prone to errors in analysis due to the inherent deficiencies of any written system in representing spoken language. In Arabic linguistics, sarf (morphology) is the only branch in which analysis was largely made on the written form of words. However, Arabic, like most Semitic scripts, indicates consonants and long vowels as the skeleton of words to which short vowels and other markers may be added externally. Although this ‘skeletal’ writing of Arabic fairly reflects its spirit as a Semitic language, it greatly misled the grammarians. This article dwells on four types of morphological rules traceable in the tradition to visual influences. These are: hadf (elision), i‘lal (vowel mutation), naql al-haraka (vowel transfer), and ibdal (alternation).

Spectral Armies, Snakes, and a Giant from Gog and Magog: Ibn Fadlan as Eyewitness Among the Volga Bulghars1

Montgomery, J. — 2006-06-19

This article is based on a close reading of Ibn Fadlan's narrative of his forced detention by the King of the Volga Bulghar during which he saw some local mirabilia. I propose to consider the wonders he describes, including his use of the Qur'an as corroboration for some of them, from the point of view of ‘iyan, visual perception, eye-witness testimony. To this end, Ibn Fadlan's wonders will be compared with several textual forebears, including al-Sindibad, and they will be considered as exempla of what Anthony Pagden has called ‘the Autoptic Imagination’.

The Gaze in Ibn al-Haytham

Simon, G. — 2006-06-19

The article looks at the revolutionary shift of visual interpretation as it occurred in the works of one of the most prominent Arab scientists, Ibn al-Haytham. In his critique of the visual theories of Euclide and Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham developed a new conception of estimating distance. Distance is no longer calculated geometrically by the visual faculty, but by the interpretation of signs which are implicit in the visual field and of which an image is formed. This necessity to interpret signs gave Ibn al-Haytham's theory an intellectualist and distinct style and methodology.

'Ajib and Gharib: Artistic Perception in Medieval Arabic Sources

Rabbat, N. — 2006-06-19

In the prodigious medieval Arabic historical output the mention of specific art objects reveals unfamiliarity with elementary aesthetic vocabulary. The authors usually refrain from judging the quality of art, unlike their expert discussion of literary works. This article uses a famous, relatively long and oft-quoted text from al-Maqrizi's Khitat describing three examples of Fatimid painting to explore how the Arab historians saw the visual arts, and why. It explores the linguistic roots of the most frequently used terms, such as ‘ajib and gharib, in twelfth- to fifteenth-century texts and how they were transposed from their semantic fields to the description of art objects. It then examines the sources’ reticence vis-à-vis the description of art and seeks an explanation in the intellectual formation of the historians and class distinction between historians and artists.

The Other Eye: Sight and Insight in Arabic Classical Dream Literature

Al-Bagdadi, N. — 2006-06-19

The famous and vast body of Arab dream literature offers a very rich historical and systematic source for the study of indices, symbols and other visual indicators. While this oneiric literature has always attracted much attention to this world of dreams, their visual dimension has remained rather neglected. This article looks at one of the fundamental elements of the dream, namely its transposition from the visual to the oral and/or written, the only way, as J.C. Schmitt has underlined, by which we can know of dreams. Thus at the centre of this article stands the relationship between the visual aspect of the dream and the forms of its non-visual representation.

Image against Nature: Spolia as Apotropaia in Byzantium and the dar al-Islam1

Flood, F. B. — 2006-06-19

Although the use of portable amulets and talismans in the pre-modern Islamic world is well documented, little is known about their monumental counterparts. Despite this neglect, references to apotropaia and talismans designed to offer protection from pests such as pigeons, snakes and scorpions are common in descriptions of medieval architecture in Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Iran. In many cases these consisted of pre-Islamic zoom-orphic spolia set at entrances and gateways. The function and nature of these images find close analogies in Byzantium, where antique statuary was also ascribed a talismanic value. In both cultural spheres, this value is predicated upon the ability of the image to invert or negate the power of the imaged, a function to which antique figural spolia may have been especially well suited.

The Visual Sign as Semiotic Signifier in the Arabian Nights

Ghazoul, F. J. — 2006-06-19

This article concentrates on tales from the Arabian Nights where visual signs play a part in communication and narrative unfolding. The Tales of ‘Aziz and Aziza’ and ‘The Hunchback’ are examined in terms of how visual signs are interpreted by the characters. The typology and codes of these signs are explored to construct a latent semiotics based broadly on the categories of Peirce (icon, index and symbol) as well as insights drawn from recent semiotic research. This article also presents theoretical positions on the visual sign and on signification developed in medieval Arab civilisation in order to relate the underlying folk semiotics of the Arabian Nights to the learned semiotics and theories of interpretation articulated by medieval philosophers and scientists.

Bibliographic Orientations

2006-06-19