Early Seventh Research Articles

Archaeological Geology of Jurash, ʿAsīr Province, Southwestern Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACTThe Jurash archaeological site is located on Wādī Bīshah near the city of Khamīs Mushayt in southwestern Saudi Arabia. It has a fort and other remains from the pre‐Islamic period (third century bc to early seventh century ad) and a settlement with two mosques from the Early Islamic period (early seventh to early 11th centuries ad). A survey was conducted for the purposes of identifying the building materials and determining their geographic sources, and also investigating the building methods. It was found that all materials were locally derived and that the fort's outer wall is a typical example of South Arabian fortifications of the first millennium bc. An examination of the site stratigraphy revealed that Jurash has been repeatedly inundated by destructive flash floods from Wādī Bīshah. The timing of these events was largely controlled by global climatic fluctuations, including the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age.

Genomic evidence of two-staged transmission of the early seventh cholera pandemic

The seventh cholera pandemic started in 1961 in Indonesia and spread across the world in three waves in the decades that followed. Here, we utilised genomic evidence to detail the first wave of the seventh pandemic. Genomes of 22 seventh pandemic Vibrio cholerae isolates from 1961 to 1979 were completely sequenced. Together with 152 publicly available genomes from the same period, they fell into seven phylogenetic clusters (CL1–CL7). By multilevel genome typing (MGT), all were assigned to MGT2 ST1 (Wave 1) except three isolates in CL7 which were typed as MGT2 ST2 (Wave 2). The Wave 1 seventh pandemic expanded in two stages, with Stage 1 (CL1–CL5) spread across Asia and Stage 2 (CL6 and CL7) spread to the Middle East and Africa. Three non-synonymous mutations, one each, in three regulatory genes, csrD (global regulator), acfB (chemotaxis), and luxO (quorum sensing) may have critically contributed to its pandemicity. The three MGT2 ST2 isolates in CL7 were the progenitors of Wave 2 and evolved from within Wave 1 with acquisition of a novel IncA/C plasmid. Our findings provide new insight into the evolution and transmission of the early seventh pandemic, which may aid future cholera prevention and control.

Symbol of (Iranian) Empire: The Sāsānian Imperial Standard (Derafsh-e kāviyān) from Arab-Islamic Conquest Narratives to Modern Nationalist Myths

Abstract: With its capture at the outset of the conquest of Iran in the early seventh century, the imperial Sāsānian standard, known as the Derafsh-e kāviyān , became a metaphor for imperial corruption, underscoring both the righteousness of the Islamic caliphate and the piety of the Arab-Muslim warriors who founded it. Two centuries later, it served as a potent symbol of pre-Islamic Persian splendor and the continuity of its rich tradition. Later still, modern Iranian nationalists raised the "banner of Kāveh" as part of their campaign to foster a sense of national consciousness and pride in the country's ancient heritage. Today, the Derafsh-e kāviyān continues to be a powerful symbol for secular Iranian nationalists campaigning against the Islamic Republic of Iran; for Kurdish nationalists seeking political autonomy; and for Tajik state authorities linking their nation to a mythical past.

The Kitāb al-Jadal of Abū Bakr ʿImād al-Dīn ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad al-Nūqānī al-Baghdādī al-Shāfiʿī (A Scholar of the Sixth Century): A Study and Critical Edition

Objectives: This study contains a critical first edition of a text in the fields of Uṣūl al-Fiqh (Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence) and Jadal (Islamic Dialectics) by ʿImād al-Nūqānī, a prominent Shāfiʿī scholar in the disciplines of Fiqh, Uṣūl, and Jadal. The study also seeks to shed light on the author's biography, which remained obscure for an extended period. Methodology: The study employs an inductive approach based on collecting, analysing, comparing, and deducing information regarding the author's biography. It also utilises a historical method focused on authenticating the manuscript's attribution to the author through critical examination and validation of information on his person. Findings: Among the most significant findings of this study is the calculation of al-Nūqānī’s life span as being from the second decade to the end of the sixth century (or early seventh century) and the refutation of the manuscript's incorrect attribution to Fakhr al- Nūqānī. Originality: This study's value lies in its critical edition of a previously unedited text and in clarifying the author's biography. The text includes essential discussions such as objections to analogical reasoning (qiyās), the conditions for there being a qiyās al-ʿilla (analogical reasoning based on the effective cause), the organisation of objections in a debate, and the types of rational and transmitted evidence.

Reinventing Sacred Ground Amidst Natural Disaster: The Holy Islamic Tomb in Seventeenth-Century Quanzhou

The Holy Islamic Tomb at Lingshan Mountain in Quanzhou, China, is believed to be the final resting place of two of the Prophet Muhammad’s disciples who were dispatched as missionaries in the early seventh century. While prior scholarship has centred on verifying the tradition’s chronology, this article foregrounds the role of environmental actors in the tomb site’s ascent to prominence. I argue that the holy tomb (shengmu) tradition did not emerge until the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, so its invention should be analysed alongside concurrent climate hazards that plagued late Ming China (1368–1644). Uncommon episodes of snowfall, flooding, drought, and associated famines drove Quanzhou’s local communities towards popular religious practices. Muslim visitation practices in Quanzhou, which experienced a restrained period following the decline of Mongol rule, re-emerged into universal consciousness and became integral to the city’s spiritual landscape by aligning with Chinese allegorical narratives. Through this reinvented tradition, the Holy Islamic Tomb was characterized as a site blessed by the heavens during times of cosmic disturbances. Instead of passive assimilation, through which religious identities may be diluted, the active participation of Quanzhou Muslims in local practices empowered them to elevate and honour Islamic traditions within a predominantly non-Muslim society.

Readability of cerebrovascular diseases online educational material from major cerebrovascular organizations

IntroductionThe internet is an essential resource for patients and their loved ones to understand their medical conditions, and professional medical organizations have taken great strides to develop educational material targeting...

The Tang legacy on the Silk Road during the Uighur era: urbanisation in the eastern Tianshan region during the ninth to thirteenth centuries

AbstractTang expansion in the early seventh century brought about a series of changes to the eastern Tianshan region, including the incorporation of the region into the imperial postal relay and defence system. Important structures, including cities for the soldiers and other immigrants from Tang territory, along with fortresses and relay posts, were established along the major routes in the region, especially on the northern slopes of the Tianshan range. However, the era after the decline of the Tang is not as well known, due to a lack of contemporary sources. This article, based on a comprehensive analysis of documentary and unearthed materials, discusses a previously unacknowledged process of urbanisation in the region during the Uighur era. Uighur immigrants, originally nomads on the Mongolian steppe, occupied not only the cities, but also the garrisons and other infrastructure established by the Tang. As a result, urban settlements were established at sites that had previously served military purposes. Clusters of new cities emerged in the region, especially on the northern slopes of the Tianshan, which had long been part of the nomadic cultural zone. The sedentary and mercantile culture of the Uighurs played an important role in this process, serving as an impetus for economic prosperity along the eastern section of the Silk Road between the Tang and Mongol–Yuan eras.

An Overview of Land Routes in Byzantine Anatolia (ca. 4th-7th c. CE)

This paper presents an overview of land routes in Byzantine Anatolia during the period between the fourth and seventh centuries CE and aims to explain the development of the routes in Byzantine Anatolia in a changing context. Understanding the emergence of routes, which expanded in Byzantine Anatolia, comes from the earlier-built Roman roads. The development and the use of routes during the period in question were largely shaped by the construction and use of Roman roads, both administratively and politically. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Romans restored the main roads until the early seventh century, and maintained them during the Byzantine period. The use of routes was significantly impacted by the foundation of Constantinople as the new capital and the development of more ‘centralized rule’ in the Roman Empire in the fourth century. Rather than explaining and discussing all the routes of Anatolia in detail, this study aims to outline the ways in which major routes developed in Byzantine Anatolia.

Paleoepidemiology of cribra orbitalia: Insights from early seventh millennium BP Con Co Ngua, Vietnam.

We test the hypothesis that the condition(s) leading to the development of cribra orbitalia at Con Co Ngua, an early seventh millennium sedentary foraging community in Vietnam, effectively reduced the resilience of the population to subsequent health/disease impacts. An assessment of both the implications and potential etiology of cribra orbitalia in this specific population is carried out. The effective sample included 141 adults aged ≥15 years (53 females, 71 males, and 17 unknown sex) and 15 pre-adults aged ≤14 years. Cribra orbitalia was identified by way of cortical bone porosity of the orbital roof initiated within the diplöic space, rather than initiated subperiosteally. The approach is also robust to the misidentification of various pseudo-lesions. Resultant data was analyzed using Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Median survival is higher in adults aged ≥15 years without cribra orbitalia than those with this lesion. For the pre-adult cohort, the opposite pattern is seen where median survival is higher in those with cribra orbitalia than those without. Adults displayed increased frailty and pre-adults increased resilience with respect to cribra orbitalia. The differential diagnosis for a survival analysis of adults and pre-adults with and without cribra orbitalia included iron deficiency anemia and B12/folate deficiency, parasitism (including hydatid disease and malaria) in addition to thalassemia. The most parsimonious explanation for observed results is for both thalassemia and malaria being the chief etiological agents, while appreciating these conditions interact with, and can cause, other forms such as hematinic deficiency anemias.

Reclaiming History from the Settler Coloniser: A Meditation on Nur Masalha's Palestine across Millennia: A History of Literacy, Learning and Educational Revolutions

In this wonderful book, Nur Masalha challenges and transforms world history, as did his earlier Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (2018). In this meditation I recount some of Nur Masalha's argument — not all, given the extraordinary richness of the material he has uncovered, described, and analysed — but also offer my own reflections prompted by his book. As Masalha relates in his introduction, the work is a passionate response to Zionism's historical claim that Palestinians possess no history of literacy, education, and literary culture. He shows the falsity of such a claim through multiple examples. Masalha explores, for example, the multifaceted history of education in Byzantine Palestine (Third to Early Seventh Century), based on a philosophy of ‘civil society’. Palestine as a cosmopolitan and transnational world inhered in what Masalha refers to as Cities of Learning. There were famous intellectuals, such as in antiquity Josephus (AD 37-c.100) and Origen (AD 185–253). In modernity he highlights Khalil Sakakini (1878–1953), whose remarkable educational reforms, emphasizing a ‘philosophy of joy’, emerged at a similar time to A.S. Neill's Summerhill School in the UK. Women's education is featured, from the time of the Palestinian Madrasas under the Ayyubids and Mamluks (1187–1517) onwards, a powerful tradition which continues into the modern era. When press censorship was relaxed following the Ottoman Young Turk Revolution of 1908, there was a huge growth of newspapers, photography, and photojournalism, a remarkable figure here being the Palestinian photographer Karima ‘Abboud (1893–1940). Masalha draws attention to the importance of translation in Palestinian history, especially in the important figure of Khalil Ibrahim Beidas, a relative of Edward Said, who was interested in the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gorky. There is a fascinating chapter on the interactions of Palestinian scholars and the Crusaders, with free passages of ideas, goods and technologies; arabesque became a mainstream European decorative art. The result of these multiple explorations is a major transformation in how we think about the world.

Marked Bodies: Skin as Communicative Entity in Late Antique Hagiography

This article analyses the communicative function of the skin, taking a Christian hagiographic text written in the early seventh century in the Sassanid Empire as a case study. The aim is to illustrate the creation of speech codes in Christian communities in the Sassanid Empire and their expression in the hagiographic literature, focusing on the representation of one aspect: the presence or absence of marks on the skin. By analysing these references and comparing them with other hagiographic testimonies, I shall explore how Christian communities in late antiquity constructed systems of meaning around the skin and used them to articulate their religious identity in relation to other communities. The Speech Codes Theory developed by Greg Philipsen is of relevance here, helping to elucidate how Christian communities, embedded in an agonistic socio-cultural, political, legal, and religious context where Zoroastrianism occupied the hegemonic spheres, developed a constellation of very specific meanings around the skin that enabled a perpetual process of creating, negotiating and defining a message of religious affiliation.

Islam and Judaism: Religious Attitudes and Identity in the Medinan Era

ABSTRACT For two centuries, Orientalists have consistently questioned the role of Judaism in the early development of Islam. This has resulted in an array of scholarship that attempts to unpack a more accurate relationship of early Islam with Medinan Jews than is found in much of the historiographically tenuous sīra and taʾrīkh literature. This article contributes to this strand of revisionism by assessing religious identity in the Medinan period, utilising what this article argues to be the only two relevant, reputable and proven documents from the early seventh century – the Qurʾān and the Constitution of Medina. Religious attitudes and identities can be derived from a comparative assessment of the semantics of these documents, analysing their implications, including how views on key words and notions can enable us to reorientate early Medinan interreligious attitudes between Muslims and Jews.

An archaeology of conversion? Evidence from Adulis for early Christianity and religious transition in the Horn of Africa

The port-city of Adulis in modern Eritrea was a key node on the Red Sea linking the Kingdom of Aksum to the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. Recent excavations at Adulis have reinvestigated two early Christian churches. New radiocarbon analysis dates both structures to the sixth and early seventh centuries AD, with multiple phases of architectural development reflecting changing use and liturgy. The author uses evidence for both continuity and change in architectural materials, construction styles and sacred practices to assess religious transition at Adulis, and across the Aksumite Kingdom more broadly. Moving beyond an archaeology of conversion, the article reinforces recent work on cosmopolitanism in the Horn of Africa.

Pollen, brooches, solidi and Restgermanen, or today’s Poland in the Migration Period

Abstract The work synthesises in 26 monographic chapters the results of a six-years long (2012 – 2018) interdisciplinary international project whose aim was to present the state of knowledge on today’s Poland during the Migration Period, and to compare the evolution of its settlement with that of its neighbours. One of its main results – the accordance between the palynological evidence of the change of environment (extensive reforestation and drastic reduction of anthropogenic indicators) and the archaeological reconstruction of the change of settlement (disappearance of the Przeworsk, Wielbark and other cultures of the Roman Period by the mid-fifth century) – conclusively confirms the often questioned verdict of a sudden severe depopulation of the lands between the Vistula and the Oder, similar to that revealed in the rest of Central/Eastern Europe (disappearance of the Elbe and Chernyakhiv-Sântana de Mureş cultures). An entirely new perspective opened by the project is the survival of enclaves with contacts all round the compass (the Eastern Empire, the Merovingian West, the Danubian lands, Scandinavia, the Western Balts). None of them yielded Slavonic material, even the longest-lived one recently discovered at Gąski-Wierzbiczany in Kujawy, evidently one of the main centres of the European Barbaricum and in the third and fourth century the Roman army’s recruiting station, which continued till the early seventh century; this evidence (or lack of it) is the death-blow to the theory of a supposed continuity of settlement – and so of ethnicity, necessarily Slavonic – from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. Through these enclaves, southern cultural influences reached Scandinavia during the Younger Germanic Iron Age; the one at the mouth of the Vistula seems to have been the earliest and greatest recipient of the Imperial solidi in the Baltic zone, from which they were redistributed to the Nordic lands. A sample of other topics: tracing the extent (quite limited) of the Hunnic presence north of the Carpathians; evidence on fugitives from Hermanaric’s realm, including what appears to be the earliest known assemblage of the Dančeny-Brangstrup horizon; the Migration Period among the Western Balts, neighbours and cultural cousins, who did not take part in the Völkerwanderung. In the end, two leitmotifs of the work, one pessimistic, the other optimistic: short-sightedness and harmfulness of the official persecutive policy, in Poland and the majority of other European countries, with regard to amateur metal detecting, which only makes priceless potential evidence disappear without a trace; material remains and relative written sources (in this case Iordanes and Procopius) reflect the same historical reality and can legitimately be used to support one another.

A Greek-Coptic Miaphysite Litany from Thebes (P.Mon.Epiph. 49)

Abstract A bilingual Greek-Coptic manuscript (P.Mon.Epiph. 49+592) found at the monastic settlement of Epiphanius in Western Thebes contains a litany recounting the principal events in the saving work of Christ. The litany has been overlooked in scholarship on the manuscript and on comparable litanies from antiquity. It differs from other litanies in attributing all the statements to God rather than to Christ. The article argues that the litany was an expression of miaphysite affiliation and belief. The article contextualizes the litany in the robust miaphysite culture of Thebes in the early seventh century and in the Greek-Coptic bilingualism of the time, and it discusses possible uses of the litany in collective worship, monastic prayer, and other rituals.

Everyday Life in extremis

Everyday Life <i>in extremis</i>

The introduction of anthropomorphic imagery in Daoist Ritual

ABSTRACT Daoist ritual during the three centuries between the early Celestial Master community and the systemization of ritual and textual canon in the fifth century by Lu Xiujing was aniconic. The ritual protocols of the Celestial Master community and of the Lingbao scriptures simply had no use or place for iconic imagery. This remains the case in the Daoist compendium Wushang biyao 無上秘要, compiled at the behest of emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou in the late 570s. Yet, statues are an integral part of Daoist ritual as presented in the early seventh century ritual compendium Sandong fengdao kejie 三洞奉道科戒. Where and when did Daoist statues appear? How were they accepted and incorporated into orthodox Daoist ritual? This article traces the introduction of statues and iconic imagery into Daoist ritual and the changes in ritual practice entailed by the use of iconic imagery.

Short-term variations of ΔT from Yángdì-eclipse on AD 616 May 21, Suiko eclipse on AD 628 April 10, and neighboring solar eclipses and occultations

Abstract We obtain a narrower and more reliable range of the delay of Earth’s rotation, ΔT, than those obtained before. At the same time, we determine the observation sites of these eclipses in the early seventh century. The eclipses are the one on AD 616 May 21 recorded in the history book Suíshū of the Suí dynasty, and the one on AD 628 April 10 recorded in the first official Japanese history book Nihon Shoki (also called as Nihongi). Our method of analysis is to express multiple observations simultaneously on the “Sôma” diagram in which the ordinate is ΔT and the abscissa is the correction to the coefficient of the lunar tidal term. In order to increase the reliability of the present result, we analyze several solar eclipses and an occultation of Mars during the period from the fifth century to the end of the seventh century. These analyses show the short-term variations of ΔT off the smoothed spline curves of Stephenson, Morrison, and Hohenkerk (2016, Proc. R. Soc. A, 472, 20160404).

The Coeling: Narrative and Identity in North Britain and Wales AD 580–950

An examination of the Cambro-Latin sources associated with the ‘Coeling’ lineages in the Harleian genealogies (HG VIII–XII and XIX) underscores the need to take a revised view of the geopolitics of the Hadrianic Frontier region across the sixth and seventh centuries. The Northumbrian conquests of the early seventh century may have been a more gradual, diplomatic process than was imagined by later sources, including Bede and Historia Brittonum. Similarly, the hegemony of Rheged, the dynasty of Urien and the ‘Anglian Wars’ of the late sixth-century may have received undue emphasis by these sources. Finally, the Coeling dynasty itself emerges as a retrospective fabrication, whose component groupings appear to have been genealogically and even culturally unrelated in the first instance. We find a hint of this diversity in the onomastic character of each of the lineages, as well as the conflicting dynastic and geopolitical emphases implicit in this early material. The distinct and heterogeneous character of these Cambro-Latin sources are best accounted for in terms of genuine connections to the North, which appear to have converged and syncretised in the surviving text compilations from early medieval Wales. The same tendencies are apparent in the vernacular hengerdd material and saga englynion concerned with Urien and his contemporaries which, we conclude, were probably mediated through the same lines of communication.

Chronica Hispana saeculi VIII et IX ed. by Juan Gil

Reviewed by: Chronica Hispana saeculi VIII et IX ed. by Juan Gil Hélène Sirantoine Gil, Juan, ed., Chronica Hispana saeculi viii et ix (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 65), Turnhout, Brepols, 2018; hardback; pp. 563; 4 colour illustrations; R.R.P. €340.00; ISBN 9782503574813. None of the texts gathered in this volume of the prestigious Brepols series ‘Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis’ needed a new edition. And with good reason, since the editor Juan Gil, a member of the Real Academia Española since 2011, is the same scholar to whom we already owe the excellent editions, published decades ago, of the four Latin narratives included in this issue dedicated to Hispanic chronicles of the eighth and ninth centuries. However, eadem sed aliter (as Gil notes in his prologue, p. 7), they now find themselves for the first time presented together, allowing readers to contrast two very distinct moments that punctuated what is otherwise regarded as a historiographical desert for the early Latino-Iberian Middle Ages. The mid-eighth century saw the composition in al-Andalus of two texts that Gil included in Volume i of his Corpus scriptorum Muzarabicorum (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1973). The Chronica Byzantia-Arabica [End Page 239] was crafted around 741–44 by an anonymous author (Christian or recently converted to Islam) on the basis of an oriental, probably Greek, text. It presents in parallel the history of Byzantium since the reign of Phocas (602–10) and that of the growing Islamic Empire up to the year 741. To this core were interpolated notices about the Hispanic Visigothic kingdom up to its conquest by Muslims, narrated in quite a detached manner. In that sense, the neutrality of this early chronicle strongly differs from the lamentations found in the Chronica Muzarabica, which a Christian dhimmi, probably a cleric, crafted soon after. This second composition also chronicles concomitantly the history of Byzantium, Islam, and Iberia since the early seventh century up to 754, the date of its completion. Its author, however, contemplated the settlement of Muslims in the peninsula with much more bitterness. Thus, the Chronica Muzarabica constitutes the first chronicle in which the idea of the ruin and loss of Christian Iberia, promised to a great future, emerged as a historiographical theme. This theme would be elaborated upon in the next two chronicles, which Gil had previously edited as Crónicas asturianas (Universidad de Oviedo, 1985), along with a Spanish translation by José Moralejo and an introductory essay by Juan Ruiz de la Peña. Crafted in the curial milieu of the expanding Asturian kingdom of the late ninth century, this historiographical revival must be linked to the propagandistic agenda surrounding the figure of Alfonso III (866–910), and marked the emergence of two intertwined ideological stances: that of ‘Reconquest’—an interpretation of the historical interaction between Asturias and al-Andalus as the progressive recovery by the Christians of a territory conceived as theirs—and neo-gothicism—a political project glorifying Asturian kings as the regenerated successors of their Visigothic ancestors. Conserved in two versions, both dependent on an archetype no longer extant, the Chronicle of Alfonso III offers biographies of the Visigothic, then Asturian kings, from Wamba (r. 672–80) to the end of the reign of Ordoño I, Alfonso III’s father, in 866. As for the Chronicle of Albelda, completed in 883, it compiles brief Hispanic geographical and chronographic miscellanies, followed by longer historiographical ordines dedicated to Roman, Visigothic, and finally Asturian rulers up to the ongoing reign of Alfonso III. It incorporates in its final paragraphs the Prophetic Chronicle, predicting the collapse of al-Andalus and restoration of the Visigothic kingdom by November 884. Novelties in the edition of the four chronicles are limited, although Gil notes that new readings resulted from the discoveries in their manuscript transmission made by Francisco Bautista. The three-hundred-page introduction, however, offers introductory chapters for each chronicle, scrupulously updated in light of the studies they have been the object of since Gil first edited them, including by himself. The choice of an uneven structure of presentation makes it perhaps the most challenging part of the book for the neophyte who, without...