Early Ninth Research Articles

EXCAVATIONS IN THE ANCIENT THEATRE OF SPARTA, 2008

This article presents the results of the 2008 excavation in the ancient theatre of Sparta conducted by the British School at Athens and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Laconia. Focused on the west side of the cavea, work aimed to locate the southern edge of the Late Antique settlement between the theatre and the sanctuary of Athena Chalkioikos; to establish the northern limits of the Late Antique settlement over the former orchestra; and to establish a more precise ceramic characterisation and chronology for the Early–Middle Byzantine period in Sparta. The area between settlement clusters on the acropolis and over the former orchestra was essentially open, with just a Byzantine terrace wall and path recorded. In the north-west part of the former cavea, a tomb built in the late eighth or early ninth century AD was used at least until the late thirteenth century for the burial of c. 29 individuals. This article presents the first results of a bioarchaeological study of the human remains, and studies of Byzantine pottery from the tomb interior and from the backfill of the pit in which the tomb was built (the latter including a notable quantity of Early Byzantine domestic ware). The 2008 findings are set in the larger context of research on post-antique phases in the theatre (drawing on the British School at Athens Archive) and on the material culture and urban topography of Byzantine Sparta. Almost all excavated contexts contained residual material of all periods. The article concludes with short catalogues of material which pre-dates the construction of the theatre and of inscriptions of all periods.

Occultation records in the Royal Frankish Annals for A.D. 807: Knowledge transfer from Arabia to Frankia?

The Royal Frankish Annals (RFA) report under A.D. 807 three lunar and one solar eclipse (complete and dated correctly), a lunar occultation of Jupiter, and “a small spot” on the Sun interpreted as Mercury transit. This transmission is embedded between texts on the landing of diplomatic delegates from Baghdad and Jerusalem in Venice and on their meeting with Charlemagne. Technology transfer is explicitly mentioned (a mechanical water clock). The interpretation of a spot on the Sun as planetary transit is attested in Arabic reports since A.D. 840. The Jupiter occultation by the Moon is dated “Luna 17,” correctly counted in Muslim calendar practice since the first crescent detection. Eclipse predictions and records by astronomers from the cAbbasid caliphate using Ptolemy’s Almagest are extant from the early ninth century. There are time-spans of 6 months each between the three reported lunar eclipses (806 Sep 1/2, 807 Feb 25/26, Aug 21/22), a period of possible repetition given in the Almagest, but not known to the Carolingians. The 6-month rule for lunar eclipses might be preserved in the Carolingian Seven Book Computus. We present multiple evidence that visitors from Baghdad brought new insight and fostered the Carolingian progress in astronomy.

AN ENIGMATIC CASE OF A MEDIEVAL TEMPLE AT TALAVRIKSHA, RAJASTHAN

This paper tries to solve the riddle of an early ninth century temple located at Talavriksha, District Alwar. The temple housing a Sivalingam inside the garbhagriha has figures of Varaha, Nrisimha and Trivikrama in the central rathikas and the placement of the guardian deities does not follow scriptures. The locale of the temple is also important due to its association with the Mahabharata and the presence of other important shrines.

Abbasid Jumeirah, Dubai. An Overview of the Site and Its Architectural Stucco Decoration

Jumeirah (Dubai) is one of the most important sites for the understanding of the Abbasid period in eastern Arabia. At the same time, it is severely understudied and the small number of publications available on the subject situates Jumeirah on the margins of academic debate about the region in the Islamic period. This paper aims to prompt discussion on Jumeirah by presenting an overview of the site, a summary of archaeological research and a preliminary study of the typology of stucco decorations. Some issues regarding problems with the reconstructions and renovations of the buildings are also raised. The study of stuccoes contributes to a better understanding of the site’s chronology, indicating its main phase of occupation to the Abbasid period and the possible existence of an earlier, pre-ninth or early ninth century phase.

Birdman, Fly: A Reconsideration of Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds and the Pre-Christian Cloak of the Sweeney Tales

Abstract: The first section of this article provides context for Brian O'Nolan's At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), situating original, early textual tensions within the history of ascetic revival in Ireland in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. The second section offers a comparative look at O'Nolan's translation alongside J. G. O'Keeffe's 1913 touchstone text and Seamus Heaney's 1982 rendition of it. The final section examines two contemporary reconceptual film settings of the Sweeney tale to consider how the tale is reimagined in post-state, gendered, and secular contexts. Fragmented elements of ascetism endure via this endlessly changing tale for Celtic Christianity's contested center.

Invoking, seeing, and touching God during Byzantine Iconoclasm

This article focuses on pectoral crosses, which functioned as relic containers and amulets and were characterized by a blend of figural imagery and inscriptions. Arguably produced between the late eighth and the early ninth centuries, the geographical origins of the crosses are still contested between Byzantium and Rome, while other alternatives have yet to be fully considered. Some of these pectoral crosses bear inscriptions in Greek which have been interpreted as ‘incorrect’, but may reflect the conventions of spoken language in an evolving hellenophone Mediterranean. It is possible that their owners read the text during private prayer and meditation while holding the pendant. In particular, this paper considers a now lost enkolpion, the inscriptions of which, in Latin and Greek, reveal that it was intended for an audience familiar with both languages, at least in religious practices. One of its inscriptions quotes a well-known liturgical hymn sung at Mass before the celebration of the Eucharist. Thus, there is scope for a wider investigation into the function as well as cultural origins of pectoral crosses. The combination of figural illustrations and inscriptions and the variety of precious materials and relics on such pectoral crosses may have been intended to elicit a sort of ‘tactile prayer’, suggesting the use of synesthetic ways to apprehend the Incarnate Logos.

The glass in early al-Andalus

The expansion of Islam in the western Mediterranean led to far-reaching changes in the conquered societies. The study of glass assemblages found in archaeological contexts dating back to the early centuries of al-Andalus, coupled with analytical research and written sources, has emerged as a valuable resource for analysing these transformations. In eighth and early ninth centuries glassmakers were forced to recycle late antique materials due to the end of raw glass imports from the East but also, they developed new glassmaking methods using locally available resources. The import of eastern finished vessels served as prototypes of the new shapes and decorations to the vessels produced in the workshops of al-Andalus. These changes resulted in the long term in the configuration of clearly “Islamised” wares, in a different system of glass production and distribution from that which prevailed from antiquity to the Visigothic period.

Toward a Sunni Consensus on the Rightly Guided Caliphs


 
 
 This article studies how the ʿUthmānī position endorsing the first three caliphs, which was embraced by the majority of the ahl al-ḥadīth in the first two centuries of Islam, came to be replaced by the four-caliph thesis. It examines variations in the narrations of different chains of transmission of Ibn ʿUmar’s tradition in relation to the geographical affiliation and movements of the transmitters active in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. The analysis suggests that Ibn ʿUmar’s tradition was present in two versions at the turn of the ninth century, circulated in Iraqi cities and non-Iraqi cities respectively. Through its investigation, this study substantiates the current narrative on early ahl al-ḥadīth attitudes toward the first four caliphs and offers more insights that help explain why the ʿUthmānī hadith narrators failed to perpetuate their ideas.
 
 

The Organisation of the Mid–Late Anglo-Saxon Borderland with Wales

With hardly any written documentation concerning the creation of Offa’s Dyke or for the contemporary communities that it affected, the intricacies of how the Mercian-Welsh frontier was organised during the late eighth and early ninth century and afterwards can seem entirely unknowable. This article addresses the question of the likely variable character of the long and undoubtedly complex frontier in reference to some location-specific existing archaeological evidence and close study of the form of the Dyke and other contemporary features in the landscape. One of the key elements of this attempt at detection of early frontier organisation therefore involves looking at the potential role of the inherited Roman road network especially where it runs parallel with the Dyke. Two examples based upon archaeological excavations in Herefordshire are noted here as providing clues as to the diversity of frontier structuring. The first example is the uncovering of a mid–late Anglo-Saxon fortified enclosure at Breinton just to the west of Hereford in 2018 that has at last added some substance to the possibility of the past existence of sophisticated military infrastructure including fortresses close to the Mercian/Welsh frontier. A key factor in the organisation of the pre-Norman frontier at least from the English side could have been the location of ‘quasi-military personnel’ close to the Dyke and to the inherited routeway system. Certain entries in the county-based Domesday surveys of Circuit V for the border counties are briefly re-examined here to consider the implications of the spatial distribution of a single category of specialised freemen. This highlights the importance of Leintwardine and the Roman road south from Shrewsbury as a key location: a possibility underlined by discoveries made during an excavation in the 1990s.

The Catechism of the Gods: Kōyasan’s Medieval Buddhist Doctrinal Debates, Dōhan, and Kami Worship

A survey of the history of medieval Kōyasan, an important mountain-based headquarters for esoteric Shingon Buddhism since the early ninth century, cannot omit significant developments in the worship of kami (tutelary and ancestral gods) from the end of the Heian period (794–1185) to the Muromachi period (1333–1573). A fundamental aspect of kami worship at Kōyasan was the regular offering to the kami (shinbōraku 神法楽) of mondō-kō 問答講 (catechism/dialogue form, or ‘question and answer’ ‘lectures’) and rongi (debate examinations in the form of mondō). The relationship between Buddhist scholarship and kami worship has not been fully elucidated and such will enrich understanding of both subjects. The identities and meanings of the two oldest kami enshrined at Kōyasan, Niu Myōjin 丹生明神 (also called Niutsuhime) and Kariba Myōjin 狩場明神 (also called Kōya Myōjin), were delineated in texts produced by scholar monks (gakuryo 学侶) during a period when the debates were re-systematized after a period of sporadicity and decline, so the precise functions of this cinnabar goddess and hunter god in the related ritual offerings deserve attention. In this paper I examine ideas about the Kōyasan kami that can be found, specifically, in the institution and development of these mondō and rongi 論義. Placing them in this context yields new information, and offers new methods of understanding of not only related textual materials, but also of the icons used in the debates, and the related major ceremonies (hōe 法会) and individual ritual practices (gyōbō 行法) that were involved. Given that the candidates of a major ritual debate examination—to be discussed—that has been practiced from the Muromachi period up to the present day are said to ‘represent’ kami, and are even referred to by the names of kami, the history of the precise relationship between the kami and the debates invites more detailed explanation that has so far been largely lacking in the scholarship.

Dropping the Base: Why Does Follis Production at Constantinople Appear to Cease for 24 Years between 842–866?

Abstract This article considers a period of Byzantine numismatic history where production at its main mint, in Constantinople, appears to cease altogether for at least 24 years, and arguably 26 or more years. It almost needs no stating that this is extraordinarily unusual in the numismatic record, and yet the topic has never been covered in more than a paragraph before. In this article, based upon my paper of the same title given to the International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Nicosia in January 2020, I will explore the problem, setting it in its historical context and contrasting this cessation with others that scholars are aware of. I will argue that the pause in production was not accidental and can neither be explained in the context of the monetary contraction of the late seventh to early ninth centuries, nor by archaeological quirk. Rather, I will contend that this apparent cessation was a deliberate policy of the Empress Theodora and the regency council for Michael III, and that its subsequent continuation under the Caesar Bardas was perhaps more incidental, until the coronation of Basil brought the drive to restart production in Michael and Basil’s names.

Edelmetallgegenstände als Quellen zu sozialen Prozessen der Spätawarenzeit (8.–9. Jahrhundert n. Chr.)

Abstract The present paper analyses the precious metal artefacts, scarcely known in the huge archaeological material of the “late Avar period” (eighth to early ninth centuries AD). Unlike in the previous era the majority of the gold and silver objects of the late Avar period are stray finds; in particular high-quality goldsmith's artefacts are absent in the grave assemblages of the eighth century. The significance of precious metal objects in grave assemblages reached its low ebb around the middle of the late Avar period; afterwards not only new object types appeared but a new grave-horizon emerged comprising precious metal objects. This paper, based on the quality and morphology of the objects, their archaeological contexts as well as their spatial distribution, draws a conclusion concerning the social and cultural changes in the early medieval Carpathian Basin.

How did musical notation travel? Singers, manuscripts, and routes in Italy (c. 800-1100)

Recent studies on early music writing definitely confirmed that neumatic notations originated from a common base of graphic techniques for the representation of sounds, rather than from a single ‘script’. These conventions were consequently developed and shaped by some of the most important carolingian centers of liturgical chant, implying that an exchange of skills and musical ‘materials’ took place during the early ninth century. However, while a series of historical records tell of the movement of singers and ‘chant’ manuscripts already in pre-Carolingian Europe, only very few later notated sources can actually provide information on how written music travelled, and on how singers may have responded to their encounter with a ‘foreign’ music script. Three case studies of Italian manuscripts – or that had an impact on Italian centers – will be analyzed from the point of view of the materiality of the various supports for the transmission of chant, assessing also the role of geography and topography in the spreading of musical notation.

When and from Where did YHWH Emerge? Some Reflections on Early Yahwism in Israel and Judah


 The paper addresses two crucial questions of the history of Israelite religion. Did YHWH emerge in the southern steppe and when did YHWH become the God of Judah? After discussing the available evidence for YHWH’s origin in the South, the paper tests the extra-biblical evidence for the worship of YHWH in Israel and Judah and questions his widespread importance in the tenth and early ninth centuries BCE in the mentioned territories. By presenting the theophoric personal names, the hypothesis is corroborated that YHWH was significantly introduced at the earliest by the Omrides. Moving then to the epigraphic evidence, the additional evince for YHWH’s origin in the South is reviewed negatively. YHWH of Teman from Kuntillet ʽAjrud cannot prove the origin of this deity in the South. It is rather a piece of evidence that the worship of this deity in the South was not natural even in the mid-eighth century BCE. That YHWH’s true origin is in Midian, Paran, Seir, etc. remains a speculative hypothesis that is built on the tradition-history of some biblical passages and the biblical Sinai tradition. This particular feature is indeed related to the South and its struggle to claim independence for the Southern YHWH from the North. YHWH was only introduced to Judah as a patron deity of the dynasty, and that is the state of the Omrides ruling in Jerusalem.

The site of Al‐Qurainiyah: Topography and phases of an early Islamic coastal settlement on Failaka Island

AbstractThis paper presents the latest finds from the early Islamic site of Al‐Qurainiyah on Failaka Island, Kuwait. Trenches opened to the west of the main late Islamic village led to the identification of residential buildings and a workshop located along the shoreline, while the pottery assemblage suggests a permanent occupation from at least the seventh century CE to the early ninth century CE. The last two years of excavations allowed us to uncover archaeological contexts that seem to indicate a previous occupation, dating to the late Hellenistic period (second century BC). The long‐term occupation, strategic position of the settlement facing a wide and well‐sheltered lagoon, as well as the installation of a stable settlement in the same period of Al‐Qusur—the main early Islamic site of the island—seem to suggest the interpretation of Al‐Qurainiyah as a landing place used both in the early Islamic period and beforehand.

Towards a Reassessment of Indrabhuti’s Jnanasiddhi

This article argues for the reassessment of Indrabhuti’s Jnanasiddhi in the light of newly discovered primary witnesses and previously unnoticed relations to other works. Presumably composed in the late eighth to early ninth century CE, it belongs to the earlier phase of Tantric Buddhism, a transitional period between the predominance of the Yoga- and Mahayogatantras to the later Yoginitantras, and relates to a variety of important scriptures of this formation. While this article briefly discusses the origins, authorship, contents and context of the Jnanasiddhi, including a brief overview of its modern scholarship, it also highlights its intertextual relations with and notable influences upon other tantric works of major importance. The Jnanasiddhi stands out as a tantric scripture of paramount importance, and we attempt to demonstrate the necessity of its reassessment with recourse to hitherto neglected but nonetheless vital sources that have only recently come to light.

La nature et le roi: Environnement, pouvoir et société à l’âge de Charlemagne (740–820), by Jean-Pierre Devroey

That the inhabitants of the Frankish kingdoms in the later eighth and early ninth centuries were regularly hit by famines is not news to anybody who has read the chronicles and histories of the period. In this book, Jean-Pierre Devroey takes four of these famines as his starting-point for a wide-ranging exploration that takes the reader to sometimes surprising fields of neighbouring research (entomology, dendrochronology, Napoleonic France). Unlike older scholarship, which explained famines either via Malthusian cycles, inadequate agricultural techniques or as natural phenomena, Devroey considers hunger as a social phenomenon caused by human agency, but determined by natural causes. The focus of his research is therefore two-fold: firstly, the natural and climatological circumstances that led to famine, and, secondly, the way in which people imagined and dealt with such disasters. The author allows himself many digressions that sometimes obscure the main line of his arguments, but the book is...

A secular shift in Carolingian history writing?

This article explores a series of Carolingian historians, writing in the early ninth century, who marginalized the role of God’s agency, in sharp contrast to the pattern established by the Annales Regni Francorum. Where this has been noted before, largely in relation to Einhard’s Vita Karoli, it has been explained either as a clash between lay and monastic ideals or as a by‐product of the classical renewal at the Carolingian court. Examining this process across multiple texts suggests, however, that these historians can be understood as self‐consciously ‘secularizing’ in response to contemporary crises.

Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia: Discourse and Struggles ed. by Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim

Reviewed by: Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia: Discourse and Struggles ed. by Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia: Discourse and Struggles Edited by NORSHAHRIL SAAT AND AZHAR IBRAHIM. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2020. 230pp. ISBN 978-981-4843-80-5 A major pitfall which many editors of volumes on Islam in Southeast Asia have failed to avoid is the recurring problem of essentialisation. Tapping on their own research expertise and bias, both local and foreign scholars have produced admirable works that capture specific segments and chunks within the whole array of topics that could be categorised under the cluster of Islam and Muslims in Southeast Asia. With Southeast Asia becoming ever more diverse in the light of globalisation and the region becoming increasingly integrated with the world economy via such projects as China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), one could not be faulted for expecting a smorgasbord of offerings depicting the vast expanse of Muslim cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asia. Bearing such an eye-catching title which begins with the word 'Alternative,' thus conveying the impression of bringing out hitherto neglected narratives and analyses of subaltern Muslim communities and figures of Southeast Asia, Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim's edited volume looks enticingly promising on first impression. One could imagine the appeal such a volume would have if it had explored such terra incognita as Muslims of Indochina and Timor Leste, resurgent sufi congregations in Southern Thailand of the types investigated by Chiengmai-based Christopher Joll, and Malaysia's and Indonesia's Chinese Muslims of the sort studied by Hew Wai Weng of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). Such adventurous detour allows us to debunk politically driven stereotypes, for example by disentangling us from the typical Malay aka pribumi-Chinese conflict paradigm of both Malaysia's and Indonesia's ethno-religious politics. Alas, the geographical essentialisation of Muslim Southeast Asia to only Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore is disappointing to say the least, but is then probably not altogether unexpected, coming from a group of scholars who share past and present affinity if not professional affiliation with the Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore. Treated as practically synonymous with the Malay world, not only is the volume's conception of a Muslim Southeast Asia bereft of any examples from the 'unMalay' world, but Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia also marginalises voices whose discursive location are found beyond the cognitive domain of 'progressive Islam'—the overarching theme that occupies Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim in this book and which they take for [End Page 225] granted as the proxy for whatever is worthy of the label 'alternative voice' among Southeast Asian Muslims. The strand of thought calling itself 'progressive Islam,' while appearing in many aspects to be a post-colonial phenomenon as much as it is a reaction against the dominance of conservative stripes of Islam following the religious resurgence that enveloped Muslim Southeast Asia in the 1970s–80s, shares ancestral linkages with the Kaum Muda (Young Faction) movement of early twentieth century, as chronicled by Azhar Ibrahim in Chapter Four. However, if Kaum Muda's ideological rival was the then Kaum Tua (Old Faction), latter-day progressive Muslims have had to contend not only with the traditionalist ulama (religious scholars) who customarily control the Islamic officialdom of Muslim-majority countries, but they have also had to compete with thinkers from the ultra-conservative Wahhabi-Salafi school ascendant in contemporary Southeast Asia, even lately penetrating Islamic religious bureaucracies in Malaysia. Both conservative trends, namely the traditionalist school and the increasingly influential Wahhabi-Salafi puritanical strand, despite their separate intellectual genealogies,1 are wont to label progressive Muslims as purveyors of 'liberal Islam,' which within mainstream Southeast Asian Islam carries negative connotations implying deviation from the righteous path. These liberal-conservative tensions are brought out in Noor Aisha Abdul Rahman's Chapter 5 on Singapore and Norshahril Saat's Chapter 8 on Malaysia. Further, progressive Muslims are likened to the Mu'tazilites, the rationalist school once dominant in the early ninth century who, because of their fascination with Greek philosophy, prioritised usage of the reason...

A hydromorphic reevaluation of the forgotten river civilizations of Central Asia

The Aral Sea basin in Central Asia and its major rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, were the center of advanced river civilizations, and a principal hub of the Silk Roads over a period of more than 2,000 y. The region's decline has been traditionally attributed to the devastating Mongol invasion of the early-13th century CE. However, the role of changing hydroclimatic conditions on the development of these culturally influential potamic societies has not been the subject of modern geoarchaeological investigations. In this paper we report the findings of an interdisciplinary investigation of archaeological sites and associated irrigation canals of the Otrār oasis, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site located at the confluence of the Syr Darya and Arys rivers in southern Kazakhstan. This includes radiometric dating of irrigation canal abandonment and an investigation of Arys river channel dynamics. Major phases of fluvial aggradation, between the seventh and early ninth century CE and between 1350 and 1550 CE coincide with economic flourishing of the oasis, facilitated by wet climatic conditions and higher river flows that favored floodwater farming. Periods of abandonment of the irrigation network and cultural decline primarily correlate with fluvial entrenchment during periods of drought, instead of being related to destructive invasions. Therefore, it seems the great rivers of Central Asia were not just static "stage sets" for some of the turning points of world history, but in many instances, inadvertently or directly shaped the final outcomes and legacies of imperial ambitions in the region.