Sicily between Byzantium and the Islamic World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Davis-Secord
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Central Mediterranean ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Exchange Material ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines patterns of travel and communication that linked Sicily to the Islamic world during the centuries prior to the Muslim conquest in the ninth century. Covering the period of transition to Muslim rule, it shows how Sicily began to “drift” closer to North Africa already in the seventh century. This growing relationship was established through a series of both military and diplomatic connections that brought Muslims into contact not only with Greek Christians in Sicily but also, due to the relationship between the island and Latin Christendom, with Latin Christians. During these years of both violence and diplomacy, from the first seventh-century raids through the ninth-century conquest, Sicily and the Islamic world also began to exchange material goods and economic products. In some ways, then, Byzantine Sicily acted as a meeting ground in the central Mediterranean world for Muslims, Greek Christians, and Latin Christians.

“Arab” Textiles in the Near East

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Lee Eiland
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Near East ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Arabian Population

Beginning in the seventh century, the expansion of Islam brought with it an outpouring of peoples from the Arabian Peninsula. While the composition of these Islamic armies became more diverse as the religion spread through the Near East and across North Africa to Western Europe, there were clearly elements of both the urban Arabian population, of which the Prophet was a member, and the rural Bedouins, whose migrations from their original homeland continued sporadically for several centuries. This slowed during the period of Turkish hegemony, but it left a scattering of enclaves identifying themselves as ethnic Arabs throughout the Islamic world.

The Aegean coastlands under threat: Some coins and coin hoards from the reign of Heraclius

1962 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 14-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Regional Economy ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
East Mediterranean ◽  
The North ◽  
Coastal Cities ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Subject

The new Rome inherited from the old a strategic situation in the Mediterranean world that was essentially similar at the beginning of the seventh century to what it had been in the first. Persia, vetus hostis, was still a threat in the east, while in the north there was the less organized but no less persistent threat of migratory peoples pressing across the Danube. By the middle of the seventh century the Byzantine supremacy in the east Mediterranean had been destroyed, and a profound reshaping of the state had been set in train. In discussing some coins and coin hoards from the reign of Heraclius (610–41), I wish to draw attention to the place of the Aegean coastlands in the regional economy of the Byzantine Empire as it was before the Arab expansion. The revival of commerce in the provinces in the ninth century seems to have begun in the coastal cities of the Aegean: this prompts an inquiry into their importance in the sixth and seventh centuries.The second and third decades of the seventh century were a time of disaster for the Empire, when it was attacked from both the east and the north. The Persian armies conquered Syria in 611 and thereafter were able to make incursions into western Asia Minor, on occasion reaching as far as the shores of the Bosporus. Thomas Presbyter records that they carried captives away from Rhodes, while in the same year the Slavs invaded Crete. The Miracula S. Demetrii gives a graphic account of a naval blockade of Salonica by the Slavs and mentions sea raids on the whole of Thessaly and near-by places and the Greek islands which depopulated many cities and regions. The Avars, in alliance with Slavs, Bulgars, and Gepids, besieged Constantinople itself by land and sea, while the Persians occupied Chalcedon. The records of events in the first part of the reign of Heraclius are fragmentary in the extreme, and the chronology in particular has been the subject of much debate.

Bedouin Towns Between Governmental and Alternative Planning: Aspects of Applied Anthropology

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aref Abu-Rabia
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Applied Anthropology ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Upper Egypt ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cement Block ◽  
Desert Regions

Today (2006) some 60% of the 160,000 Bedouin in the Negev Desert live in seven towns, and most of the remaining 40% live in tribal settlements of varying sizes, in clusters of wooden, metal, huts, tents, or in cement block or stone houses. Al-'Aref (1934: 9-34, 231-37) and Abu-Mu'eileq (1990), claim that Bedouin tribes have inhabited the Negev for thousands of years. Sharon (1975:11-30) tells of three known Bedouin migrations in the desert regions around Palestine in the last 1300 years. The first Bedouin immigration took place with the rise of Islam in the seventh century. The armies of the Muslims were composed entirely of Bedouin soldiers, who came to Syria and Palestine with their families, tents, livestock and camels. The second Bedouin migration occurred in the ninth century. Tribes of Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym moved northwards from the Najd Heights to Sinai, Upper Egypt (10th century) and North Africa (11th century). The third Bedouin migration commenced early in the sixteenth century and reached its height in the seventeenth century. The Shammar tribe from the region north of Najd in the vicinity of Jabal Tay and Jabal Shammar- wandered northwards, and displaced the previous overlords of the Syrian Desert, the Mawali tribes (Hitti 1951:622; Sharon 1975).

Press Propaganda and Subaltern Agents of Pan-Islamic Networks in the Muslim Mediterranean World prior to World War I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Press ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.

Nuragic Settlement Dynamics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cezary Namirski
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Central Mediterranean ◽  
Settlement Dynamics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Bronze Age

The book is a study of the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Nuragic settlement dynamics in two selected areas of the east coast Sardinia, placing them in a wider context of Central Mediterranean prehistory. Among the main issues addressed are the relationship between settlement and ritual sites, the use of coastline, and a chronology of settlement.

The Oxford University/British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia (1992) Mastaura Kalesi: a Preliminary Report

1993 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Barnes ◽  
Mark Whittow
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Report ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
River Systems ◽  
Western Turkey ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Different Types ◽  
British Institute ◽  
Geographical Context

1992 was the first season of the Oxford University/British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia. Over the next five years it is planned to survey and record in as much detail as practicable five Byzantine castles in the area of the Büyük and Küçük Menderes river systems in western Turkey. The five castles will eventually be published in a single monograph where they can be discussed as a group and placed in their historical and geographical context. An annual preliminary report will appear in Anatolian Studies, which we hope will serve as a forum to test ideas, raise problems, and encourage other historians and archaeologists to suggest further ways of obtaining the most from these sites.The five sites—indicated on Fig. 1—are Mastaura kalesi (near Bozyurt, in Aydın ili, Nazilli ilçesi, merkez bucağı); Yılanlı kalesi (on the side of the Boz dağ near Kemer in İzmir ili, Ödemiş. ilçesi, Birgi bucağı); Çardak kalesi (near Çardak in Denizli ili, Çardak ilçesi, merkez bucağı); Yöre kalesi (near Yöre köy in Aydın ili, Kuyucak ilçesi, Pamukören bucağı); and Ulubey kalesi (on the Kazancı deresi near Ulubey in Uşak ili, Ulubey ilçesi). None has received more than brief notice before; none has been planned or studied in any detail. They have been chosen to cover the whole period of Byzantine rule in the area from the seventh century to the early fourteenth, and a variety of the different types and functions of Byzantine castles. Yılanlı is possibly a late seventh-century fortress, built in the context of the Arab attempts to take Constantinople and the consequent struggle to control the western coastlands of Asia Minor. Çardak appears to have been built between the seventh and the ninth century principally to act as a look-out point in the Byzantine defensive system against Arab raids.

Private Associations in the Ancient Greek World

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Private Associations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Greek World

Private associations abounded in the ancient Greek world and beyond, and this volume provides the first large-scale study of the strategies of governance which they employed. Emphasis is placed on the values fostered by the regulations of associations, the complexities of the private-public divide (and that divide's impact on polis institutions) and the dynamics of regional and global networks and group identity. The attested links between rules and religious sanctions also illuminate the relationship between legal history and religion. Moreover, possible links between ancient associations and the early Christian churches will prove particularly valuable for scholars of the New Testament. The book concludes by using the regulations of associations to explore a novel and revealing aspect of the interaction between the Mediterranean world, India and China.

Islam, nationalism and state in the Muslim Caucasus

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Galina Yemelianova
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Process ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Russian North ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Relationship

Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991 the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus – corresponding to present-day Azerbaijan and the Russian North Caucasus – have been in a continuous process of renegotiating their Islamic identity and the role of Islam in the processes of nation-building. This has involved a complex set of factors, including the correlation between the rise of Islam and socio-economic well-being (or the lack of it), the level and longevity of Islamic heritage, the relationship between Islam and the nature of the ruling post-Soviet Caucasian regimes, and the degree of susceptibility to the region’s exposure to foreign influences, Islamic and Western. This article examines some of these factors from an historical perspective, concentrating on how the political elites and the populace variously dealt with essentially external influences in the course of their centuries-long incorporation within successive political empires. From the seventh century AD these were Islamic, emanating from the Umayyad, Abbasid, Timurid, Ottoman and Safavid empires; and from the nineteenth century, Russian Orthodox and Soviet atheist. An analysis of the dynamics set up by these influences and the distinctively Caucasian Muslim responses to them is crucial in understanding how current elites and their antagonists in the region embrace, reject and otherwise instrumentalise Islam.

The Hellenistic and Byzantine Defences of Tocra (Taucheira)

1998 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 35-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Smith ◽  
James Crow
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Outer Wall ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Curtain Wall ◽  
South Side ◽  
Sea Wall ◽  
The City

AbstractThe fortifications of the Hellenistic and Roman city of Tocra are over 2 km long (including the sea-wall) and comprise a curtain wall up to 2 m wide flanked by 31 rectangular towers. Three main structural phases were noted in the survey carried out in 1966 by David Smith: (1) Hellenistic walls of isodomic ashlar, (2) later Hellenistic work of isodomic ashlar with bevelled edges, associated with the indented trace along the south rampart, and (3) an extensive rebuild of plain ashlar blocks including the towers and reconstruction to the East and West Gates, dateable, on the basis of Procopius, to the reign of Justinian. The general significance of the fortifications at Tocra is considered in the second part: these include the Hellenistic indented trace along the south side, later reinforced by towers in the sixth century AD. Also of wider importance was the use of an outer wall or proteichisma, and the pentagonal, pointed towers at the two main gates. Both these elements were unusual in Byzantine North Africa and they are discussed as part of the more general repertory of Byzantine fortifications. The unusual tower adjacent to the West Church is considered in the context of literary accounts. The article concludes by considering how the architecture and magnitude of the fortifications can allow a reassessment of the wider role of the city in the sixth and seventh century defences of Cyrenaica.

Home Gardening and Access to Animals in Households with Xerophthalmic Children in Rural Nepal

1998 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita V. Shankar ◽  
Joel Gittelsohn ◽  
Elizabeth K. Pradhan ◽  
Chandra Dhungel ◽  
Keith P. West
Keyword(s):  
Vitamin A ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Home Garden ◽  
Central Nepal ◽  
South Central ◽  
Home Gardening ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Rural Nepal ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

This case–control study compares the home garden and animal husbandry practices of households with and without xerophthalmic children in south-central Nepal, focusing on the relationship between these practices and household intake of vitamin A–rich foods. Eighty-one households with a child between the ages of one and six years diagnosed with xerophthalmia (cases) and 81 households with an age-matched, non-xerophthalmic child (controls) were studied. There was little difference between case and control households in the size of their gardens. However, case households were significantly less likely to plant carotenoid-rich vegetables from October to March than were control households (odds ratio, 0.39; 95% confidence interval, 0.16 to 0.96). The mean consumption of non-carotenoid-rich vegetables, but not of carotenoid-rich vegetables, increased linearly with garden size. Case households were significantly more likely than control households to rent domesticated animals from others (χ2 = 5.91; p < .05). Control households were more likely than case households to own chickens and pigeons (χ2 = 6.6–9.2; p < .05). During specific seasons, household meat consumption was significantly lower in case households, regardless of access to animals. Case households appeared to have significantly lower intakes of key vitamin A–rich foods, particularly green leaves and meat, regardless of their socio-economic level (as determined by ownership of material goods), access to animals, or availability of home gardens.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document