Ritualzeit – Zeitwahrnehmungen und Zeitpraktiken am Hof um 1000

A notable feature of courtly life in Japan were its ritualized procedures, which not only included periodical religious ceremonies but also political activities. Time at the court was of the essence for its ceremonial routine. Yet how did courtiers perceive their daily occupations in temporal regards, and to what extent did they evaluate their personal time, while the communal time was objectively measured and pronounced? How did those involved in courtly ceremonies encounter time in terms of its availability and its symbolic qualities, e.g. bemoaning a lack of time or adjusting to auspicious as well as ominous dates? Research so far has provided a profound understanding of time calculations, the courtly ritual calendar and especially the divination office, whose task it was to determine favourable days for the various activities at the court. In contrast, concrete political and religious acts at court have received less consideration as temporal processes. In order to find some answers to the outlined questions, I will focus on rituals as a case study of conceptions and practises of time. Information on courtiers’ dealings with their individual as well as social time can be obtained from various sources, among which I examine courtly diaries, with a special focus on Fujiwara no Yukinari’s diary Gonki. The author’s statements about time will help to elucidate some temporal aspects of courtly rituals as well as to deepen our knowledge of time perceptions at the Japanese court during its heydays.

Power and Politics of Representation: Picturing Elite Women in Ilkhanid Painting

The first half of the fourteenth century was a discrete period in Ilkhanid Iran during which paintings that pictured elite Mongol women in their true courtly milieu, participating in courtly life and in their contemporary place within societal hierarchies, were produced. It will be argued that a correlation existed between the power wielded by these women in Mongol socio-economic and political spheres and their depictions as formative, important members of the ruling elite; and that the decrease, and ultimate halting, of such representations coincided with changes in their political, cultural and social power. Using Ilkhanid enthronement scenes in the Diez and Istanbul albums to illustrate how visible and prominent the Khātūns were, a fact corroborated by written testimonials of visitors to the Mongol courts, this paper then examines how such images became symbols of legitimacy for later Il-Khans as well as later Persianate rulers in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. It will be argued that the image of an enthroned royal Ilkhanid couple carried the weight of political and dynastic legitimacy, and that the inclusion of the Mongol Khātūn was integral to this symbolic importance.

Arabic Philology at the Seventeenth-Century Mughal Court. Saʿd Allāh Khān’s and Shāh Jahān’s Enactments of the Sharḥ al-Radī

Persian narrative sources provide a colorful picture of Mughal courtly life, but in order to zoom in on cultural practices one has to turn to the artefacts of cultural pursuits. This article studies one specimen of the empirical treasure trove of Arabic manuscripts in South Asia in order to approach a lacuna in Mughal scholarship: the role of Arabic at the Mughal court. In the following, I will analyze the different paratextual layers of a manuscript of the thirteenth century Arabic grammar commentary Sharḥ al-Radī by Radī al-Dīn al-Astarābādhī to study its reading and transmission. The manuscript version represents a written artefact, which emerged out of a series of intellectual engagements. On the one hand, these textual engagements offer a perspective on the manuscript’s initial owner, Saʿd Allāh Khān (d. 1656), and his intellectual pursuits, as well as the scholarly framework in which he was brought up and worked in. On the other hand, the history of this manuscript’s circulation highlights the treatment of Arabic written artefacts at Shāh Jahān’s court. In an exemplary manner, the manuscript’s history of circulation demonstrates how courtly elites engaged with Arabic during the seventeenth century.

War, Marriage, Tournament: Scottish Politics and the Anglo-French War, 1448–1450

The Scottish kingdom has often been portrayed as standing at the periphery of late medieval Europe. However, the events of 1448 to 1450 demonstrate that the Scots were capable of projecting their interests effectively at the courts of European rulers. These years witnessed the start of the final phase of the Hundred Years War culminating in the conquest of Normandy and Gascony by the French crown. Scottish historians have placed considerable stress on the marriage of King James II to Marie of Guelders in 1449 as an example of interactions between Scotland and European courtly life. This article demonstrates the interconnections between Anglo-Scottish warfare in the Borders, marriage diplomacy, the rapidly changing situation in the French kingdom, and the internal politics of Scotland. It shows that Scots and the Scottish kingdom were active participants in a wider political world at a defining point in European history.

Saladino Rinato: Spanish and Italian Courtly Fictions of Crusade

Completes the historical arc of the book, exploring the last generations of medieval writers, ushering in the Renaissance. Juan Manuel, Dante Alighieri, and Giovanni Boccaccio, created a new identity for Saladin after two centuries of European writing about the sultan. The refashioned Saladin challenged fellow knights on matters of chivalry, religion, and political history. Spanish and Italian literature used him in order to perform an allegorical, critical review of Christian identity. As these three European authors contemplated the fractious political spaces that their kingdoms were becoming, they found in Saladin a persona both chivalric and unsettling to chivalry as an institution. The Renaissance is known as the age in which Europe rediscovered Antiquity for the sake of intellectual progress, but that work was initiated through medieval reflections upon courtly life.

A MAYA CURIA REGIS: EVIDENCE FOR A HIERARCHICAL SPECIALIST ORDER AT XULTUN, GUATEMALA

This article presents an in-depth analysis of an important mural painting discovered within Structure 10K2 of the Los Sabios Group at the Classic Maya site of Xultun, Guatemala. We first discuss the composition of the mural scene and its central protagonist, a Late Classic period (a.d. 550–900) ruler of Xultun named Yax We'nel Chan K'inich, suggesting that it presents a ritual performance associated with an ancient New Year ceremony. Several attendant figures in the mural are labeled as members of a specialist order or category called Taaj, “obsidian,” and are marked by an unusual shared appearance. This “obsidian order” exhibits internal hierarchical ranking and is attested at other Classic Maya centers. In addition to discussing the overall content of the Xultun mural scene, we conduct a focused inquiry into these various Taaj individuals by presenting associated archaeological evidence and considering related epigraphic data. Through this analysis of the Taaj, we shed light on a previously unknown aspect of Maya courtly life and organization that is relevant to models of sovereignty, governance, and ritual performance in the Classic Maya world.