Download or read book Book of Gifts and Rarities written by Aḥmad ibn al-Rashīd Ibn al-Zubayr and published by Harvard CMES. This book was released on 1996 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is a translation and study of a ninth- through fifteenth-century manuscript, Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-Tuḥaf. The manuscript furnishes a wealth of varied information offering insights into the period immediately preceding Islam and extending through the first four centuries of Islamic rule.
Download or read book Medieval Islamic Civilization written by Josef W. Meri and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 980 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the socio-cultural history of the regions where Islam took hold between the 7th and 16th century. This two-volume work contains 700 alphabetically arranged entries, and provides a portrait of Islamic civilization. It is of use in understanding the roots of Islamic society as well to explore the culture of medieval civilization.
Download or read book The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages written by Wendy Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of original essays on gift in the early Middle Ages, from Anglo-Saxon England to the Islamic world. Focusing on the languages of gift, the essays reveal how early medieval people visualized and thought about gift, and how they distinguished between the giving of gifts and other forms of social, economic, political and religious exchange. The same team, largely, that produced the widely cited The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1986) has again collaborated in a collective effort that harnesses individual expertise in order to draw from the sources a deeper understanding of the early Middle Ages by looking at real cases, that is at real people, whether peasant or emperor. The culture of medieval gift has often been treated as archaic and exotic; in this book, by contrast, we see people going about their lives in individual, down-to-earth and sometimes familiar ways.
Download or read book Islam and Tibet written by Anna Akasoy and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first encounters between the Islamic world and Tibet took place in the course of the expansion of the Abbasid Empire in the eighth century. The significance of these interactions has been long ignored in scholarship. These papers explore for the first time the multi-layered contacts between the Islamic world, Central Asia and the Himalayas from the eighth century until the present day in a variety of fields including art history, history of science, literature, archaeology, and anthropology.
Download or read book A History of the Islamic World 600 1800 written by Jo Van Steenbergen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of the Islamic World, 600–1800 supplies a fresh and unique survey of the formation of the Islamic world and the key developments that characterize this broad region’s history from late antiquity up to the beginning of the modern era. Containing two chronological parts and fourteen chapters, this impressive overview explains how different tides in Islamic history washed ashore diverse sets of leadership groups, multiple practices of power and authority, and dynamic imperial and dynastic discourses in a theocratic age. A text that transcends many of today’s popular stereotypes of the premodern Islamic past, the volume takes a holistically and theoretically informed approach for understanding, interpreting, and teaching premodern history of Islamic West-Asia. Jo Van Steenbergen identifies the Asian connectedness of the sociocultural landscapes between the Nile in the southwest to the Bosporus in the northwest, and the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) in the northeast to the Indus in the southeast. This abundantly illustrated book also offers maps and dynastic tables, enabling students to gain an informed understanding of this broad region of the world. This book is an essential text for undergraduate classes on Islamic History, Medieval and Early Modern History, Middle East Studies, and Religious History.
Download or read book The Emperor and the Elephant written by Sam Ottewill-Soulsby and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history of Christian-Muslim relations in the Carolingian period that provides a fresh account of events by drawing on Arabic as well as western sources In the year 802, an elephant arrived at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne in Aachen, sent as a gift by the ʿAbbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid. This extraordinary moment was part of a much wider set of diplomatic relations between the Carolingian dynasty and the Islamic world, including not only the Caliphate in the east but also Umayyad al-Andalus, North Africa, the Muslim lords of Italy and a varied cast of warlords, pirates and renegades. The Emperor and the Elephant offers a new account of these relations. By drawing on Arabic sources that help explain how and why Muslim rulers engaged with Charlemagne and his family, Sam Ottewill-Soulsby provides a fresh perspective on a subject that has until now been dominated by and seen through western sources. The Emperor and the Elephant demonstrates the fundamental importance of these diplomatic relations to everyone involved. Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid’s imperial ambitions at home were shaped by their dealings abroad. Populated by canny border lords who lived in multiple worlds, the long and shifting frontier between al-Andalus and the Franks presented both powers with opportunities and dangers, which their diplomats sought to manage. Tracking the movement of envoys and messengers across the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and beyond, and the complex ideas that lay behind them, this book examines the ways in which Christians and Muslims could make common cause in an age of faith.
Download or read book Button Power written by Christen Carter and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A collection of more than 2,000 colorful and artistic pin-back buttons, forming a people's history of American culture and politics that focuses on a range of subjects: advertising, arts and entertainment, historical events, movements and causes, humor, nature, celebrated personalities and organizations, geographical features, sports, transportation, wars and anti-war movements"--
Download or read book Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline written by Cecily J. Hilsdale and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-20 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Late Byzantine period (1261–1453) is marked by a paradoxical discrepancy between economic weakness and cultural strength. The apparent enigma can be resolved by recognizing that later Byzantine diplomatic strategies, despite or because of diminishing political advantage, relied on an increasingly desirable cultural and artistic heritage. This book reassesses the role of the visual arts in this era by examining the imperial image and the gift as reconceived in the final two centuries of the Byzantine Empire. In particular it traces a series of luxury objects created specifically for diplomatic exchange with such courts as Genoa, Paris and Moscow alongside key examples of imperial imagery and ritual. By questioning how political decline refigured the visual culture of empire, Cecily J. Hilsdale offers a more nuanced and dynamic account of medieval cultural exchange that considers the temporal dimensions of power and the changing fates of empires.
Download or read book The Emperor s House written by Michael Featherstone and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolving from a patrician domus, the emperor's residence on the Palatine became the centre of the state administration. Elaborate ceremonial regulated access to the imperial family, creating a system of privilege which strengthened the centralised power. Constantine followed the same model in his new capital, under a Christian veneer. The divine attributes of the imperial office were refashioned, with the emperor as God's representative. The palace was an imitation of heaven. Following the loss of the empire in the West and the Near East, the Palace in Constantinople was preserved– subject to the transition from Late Antique to Mediaeval conditions – until the Fourth Crusade, attracting the attention of Visgothic, Lombard, Merovingian, Carolingian, Norman and Muslim rulers. Renaissance princes later drew inspiration for their residences directly from ancient ruins and Roman literature, but there was also contact with the Late Byzantine court. Finally, in the age of Absolutism the palace became again an instrument of power in vast centralised states, with renewed interest in Roman and Byzantine ceremonial. Spanning the broadest chronological and geographical limits of the Roman imperial tradition, from the Principate to the Ottoman empire, the papers in the volume treat various aspects of palace architecture, art and ceremonial.
Download or read book Global Gifts written by Zoltán Biedermann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Gifts considers the role that the circulation of material culture played in the establishment of early modern global diplomacy.
Download or read book The book of Travels written by Palmira Johnson Brummett and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The early modern era is often envisioned as one in which European genres, both narrative and visual, diverged indelibly from those of medieval times. This collection examines a disparate set of travel texts, dating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, to question that divergence and to assess the modes, themes, and ethnologies of travel writing. It demonstrates the enduring nature of the itinerary, the variant forms of witnessing (including imaginary maps), the crafting of sacred space as a cautionary tale, and the use of the travel narrative to represent the transformation of the authorial self. Focusing on European travelers to the expansive East, from the soft architecture of Timur's tent palaces in Samarqand to the ambiguities of sexual identity at the Mughul court, these essays reveal the possibilities for cultural translation as travelers of varying experience and attitude confront remote and foreign (or not so foreign) space.
Download or read book Abbasid Studies IV written by Monique Bernards and published by Gibb Memorial Trust. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon after their successful revolution in 750 AD, the Abb?sids supplanted the Umayyad dynasty, built the new city of Baghdad, Iraq which became the capital of the Islamic Empire. The civilization that the Abb?sids helped to create carried forth the torch of knowledge lit by ancient Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and Persia. Adding many of their own unique contributions, the Abb?sid dynasty left an indelible mark on the history of humankind. This current selection of ?Abb?sid Studies presents a colourful mosaic of new research into classical Arabic texts that sheds light on significant historical, political, cultural and religious aspects of the ?Abb?sid era and provides insight into how the fundamentals of philology are shaped. Wonderful vistas of ancient dreams open up while ?Abb?sid armies clatter and collide; images are conjured of murderous caliphs, foreign looking littérateurs and talking objects. We see a lively self portrait of a scholar struggling with the presentation of his own image and a Persian courtier on exploratory missions around the globe obtaining eyewitness testimony of the wonders of the world. We learn of magic pools, all-seeing mirrors, the kidnapping of a lute-playing shepherd; a Baghdadi party-pooper at an Isfahani social gathering monopolising all participants with an amazing speech until the narrator drunkenly passes out on the floor, and much more. ?Abb?sid Studies IV is the latest contribution to the new series of The Occasional Papers of the School of ?Abb?sid Studies. The contributors to this book are David Bennett, Amikam Elad, Antonella Ghersetti, Joseph Lowry, Letizia Osti, Ignacio Sanchez, Emily Selove, John Turner, Johan Weststeijn, and Travis Zadeh.
Download or read book By the Emperor s Hand written by Timothy Dawson and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As absolute as Hitler's control over the German war machine was, it depended on the ability, judgment and unquestioning loyalty of the senior officers charged with putting his ideas, however difficult, into effect.Top military historian James Lucas examines the stories of fourteen of these men: all of different rank, from varied backgrounds, and highly awarded, they exemplify German military prowess at its most dangerous. Among his subjects are Eduard Dietl, the commander of German forces in Norway and Eastern Europe; Werner Kampf, one of the most successful Panzer commanders of the war; and Kurt Meyer, commander of the Hitler Youth Division and one of Germany's youngest general officers.The author, one of the leading experts on all aspects of German military conduct of the Second World War, offers the reader a rare look into the nature of the German Army a curious mix of individual strength, petty officialdom and pragmatic action.
Download or read book Mecca and Eden written by Brannon Wheeler and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2006-07 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nineteenth-century philologist and Biblical critic William Robertson Smith famously concluded that the sacred status of holy places derives not from their intrinsic nature but from their social character. Building upon this insight, Mecca and Eden uses Islamic exegetical and legal texts to analyze the rituals and objects associated with the sanctuary at Mecca. Integrating Islamic examples into the comparative study of religion, Brannon Wheeler shows how the treatment of rituals, relics, and territory is related to the more general mythological depiction of the origins of Islamic civilization. Along the way, Wheeler considers the contrast between Mecca and Eden in Muslim rituals, the dispersal and collection of relics of the prophet Muhammad, their relationship to the sanctuary at Mecca, and long tombs associated with the gigantic size of certain prophets mentioned in the Quran. Mecca and Eden succeeds, as few books have done, in making Islamic sources available to the broader study of religion.
Download or read book Ritual Images and Daily Life written by Gerhard Jaritz and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2012 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval images and their content, intentions, and functions regularly followed specific strategies, rituals, and symbols of communication. This is true for religious as well as for secular images. One can recognize these strategies and rituals through analyzing the patterns that occur in the varieties of image construction, image space, image messages, and their perception. This book contains contributions by international specialists whose research interests concentrate on these patterns, the rituals associated with them, and the influences of these phenomena on the daily life of the image audience. (Series: History: Research and Science / Geschichte: Forschung und Wissenschaft - Vol. 39)
Download or read book Gifts in the Age of Empire written by Sinem Arcak Casale and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-07-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the Safavid and Ottoman empires through the lens of gifts. When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. Sinem Arcak Casale here sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts.
Download or read book Levant Cradle of Abrahamic Religions written by Catalin-Stefan Popa and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2022-08-28 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume is the result of a Lecture Series on The Levant, Cradle of Abrahamic Religions, which engaged scholars on topics related to the cultural and religious diversity of the historical Levant. Like a jigsaw, the studies contained within showcase interlock fragments of the historical encounters between faiths, religions and societies in a rich Levantine and Oriental space, in an attempt to render them more accessible to readers today by focusing both on broader religious phenomena as well as on the practical, liturgical and social interaction between traditions and mentalities, features representative of both faith and society at large.
