Islamic Invasion Research Articles

<em>Ecce quam bonum et quam iocundum habitare firatres in unum.</em> Vidas reglar y secular en las catedrales hispanas llegado el siglo XII

As the Visigothic Councils and Saint Isidore's texts shows, the Hispanic catedral clergy was obliged to lead a communal life. After the Islamic invasion, the vita apostolica was retrieved in a two different ways. While the Iberian Western Kingdoms continued under Visigothic rules, the Marca Hispanica let it felt the reforming influence of Aix-la-Chapelle Council. Until the 12th century and depending on each Kingdonis politics and ecclesiastics realities, the cathedral clergy endured successive strict disciplinarian waves that exacted conmion life systems. In the 12th century, these processes ended in two different religious phenomenon, the beginnings of a final secularisation or the establishment of agustinian communities sub regula that arrived at the 16th century.

Genetic relationships between southeastern Spain and Morocco: New data on ABO, RH, MNSs, and DUFFY polymorphisms.

The genetic polymorphism of four blood group systems (ABO, RH, MNSs, and DUFFY) was analyzed in two well-defined population samples coming from south-central Morocco and southeastern Spain. Both a controversial ancient common substrate and the long period of coexistence between North Africa and southern Spain during the eight centuries of the Islamic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula suggest a particular genetic relationship between northwestern Africa and southern Spain. Allele distributions in each sample are in general agreement with that expected according to the geographical and historical characteristics in the Mediterranean region. However, the differences between the Moroccan sample and other north African groups illustrate considerable genetic variability in this geographical region. In comparison with other samples from different regions of the Iberian Peninsula, the markers examined fail to demonstrate any particular affinity between the southern Spanish sample of La Alpujarra and Moroccan populations. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 11:745-752, 1999. Copyright 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Chaucer's Prioress, the Jews, and the Muslims

AbstractThis paper explores some implications of the "Asia" setting of Chaucer's Prioress's Tale. Its method is literal and historicist. Its argument is that the tale is meant to present real, not figurative, Jews; that Chaucer had opportunity to meet and know about Jews outside of England (which had expelled its Jews in 1290); that "Asia" in Chaucer's day was under Islamic control and Europe was threatened by Islamic invasion; that Jews were often viewed as allied with, or even interchangeable with, Muslims. The paper considers some recent scholarship on the tale and ends with interpretive options that follow from a literal historicist reading.

Transformations of the Sikh Diaspora

Today, many people in the West believe they see in migration an external threat to their cultures and societies no less significant than the Islamic invasions that were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1529 and 1683. The British have sought to protelct themselves from the contemporary challenge by legislating an enld to the “open house” ideal of their imperial heyday; with its concentration of alien dress, smells, language, and norms of behavior, an area like South-all has become a symbol of danger to national tradition. In France, the presence of a Muslim North African minority has stimulated a more extreme than usual defense of a presumably endangered French civilization, reflected in increasing votes for right-wing candidates wielding racist rhetoric. The easy inclusion of Algeria, Indochina, and Tunisia into “un terre Français” is the distant memory of an idealistic and apparently naive past. In Germany, the euphoria over unification has been succeeded by fears of population movements from the east that might create an intolerable economic, social, and cultural burden.

Relations between Libya, Tunisia and Malta up to the British Occupation of Malta

AbstractThe conventional view is that Malta has been on the ‘forgotten frontier’ of Christian maritime resistance to Islamic expansionism since the Islamic invasions of North Africa in the seventh century. The limited archival and archeological evidence suggests that, up to the arrival of the Order of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Malta in 1530, this picture is not accurate. The Islamic occupation of the Maltese archipelago in 870 created a cosmopolitan Muslim society which persisted until the mid-thirteenth century, despite the Norman conquest of the region in 1090. Indeed, the formal end of Muslim society in Malta only came in 1224, as a side-result of the Hohenstauffen suppression of a Muslim rebellion in Sicily.Even under the Order of St John contacts with the Muslim world were far closer than is conventionally supposed. The Grand Master of the Order maintained close contacts with the Qaramanlis in Tripoli and the Beys of Tunis during the eighteenth century, despite the continuation of the corso. In reality, contacts had always existed and had been recognised as essential by the Holy See because Malta could not sustain its population once it had exceeded 10,000 persons. Sicily, the obvious source of supply, often exerted undesirable political pressure and the Barbary coast was the only other alternative. The main legacy of the close contacts between Malta and the North African Muslim world, however, is to be found, even today, in the Maltese language, which is really a Medieval variant of North African Arabic.

The Origin and Function of the Gypsy Image in Children's Literature

The Origin and Function of the Gypsy Image in Children's Literature Ian Hancock (bio) Gypsies, or Romanies, have provided writers with a source of color since their very appearance in Europe in the Middle Ages. Black's Gypsy Bibliography, which includes nothing later than 1914, lists 351 novels, 199 plays, and 133 ballads in the English literary tradition alone, which have been written about or which feature Gypsy characters. In children's literature, in Britain perhaps even more than in the United States, Gypsies turn up with some frequency —never as characters who happen incidentally also to be Gypsies, but because they are Gypsies, and because they serve a specific purpose. This purpose has, broadly speaking, three manifestations: the Gypsy as liar and thief either of property or (especially) of non-Gypsy children; the Gypsy as witch or caster of spells; and the Gypsy as romantic figure. In order to understand why the Gypsy should find him or herself in this mainly unflattering role, it is necessary first of all to understand what a Gypsy really is, and what historical circumstances have led to the emergence of so deeply-rooted a fictional image. In the United States, which in fact has one of the highest Gypsy populations of any country in the world, Gypsies are often thought of as fantasy beings: journalist Randolph Conner writes of "witches, devils, ghosts, monsters, fairies, gypsies and other supernatural characters" celebrating Halloween (Conner); the Cooper Manufacturing Co. of New York includes a Gypsy with the witches and monsters which make up its line of Halloween costumes sold each year. Among those who know that Gypsies are actual people, there is the widespread idea that they are a social, or a behavioral population like hippies or tramps, rather than an ethnic group. There are many references in the literature to individuals becoming Gypsies by joining such a group or adopting a stylized way of life. Gypsies, or more properly Romanies or Rom, share a common origin in ninth-century India. Evidence for this is abundant, whether linguistic, historical, cultural, or anthropomorphic. Leaving India at the time of (and probably because of) the Indo-Persian wars, the original population found itself in the Byzantine Empire by the tenth or eleventh century, and by the fourteenth century had been pushed [End Page 47] up into southeastern Europe on the crest of the encroaching Turkish invasion. The Europe in which those early Gypsies found themselves was a land in turmoil. The Muslims were preventing access to the eastern trade routes and to the Holy Land; the economy and Christendom were both threatened, and the Crusades had depleted the manpower drastically. Gypsies, being dark-skinned, unfamiliar in language and dress, and coming from the east, were thought to be Muslims themselves. Even today, they are called "Tatars" or "Heidens" or "Turks" in some parts of Europe, and the very word "Gypsy" derives from "Egyptian," a medieval label vaguely applied to any exotic eastern peoples. Because of their mistakenly-acquired identity, and because they lacked a country and military or political strength, Gypsies could not satisfactorily convince the Europeans that they were not part of the Islamic invasion. Thus, they soon became the target of cruel persecution. In southern Europe, due to their metalworking skills, they were made the property of the state in Moldavia and Wallachia and they became slaves, a condition which lasted for five centuries until its abolition in the middle of the last century (Hancock, The Pariah Syndrome). Elsewhere, laws were passed making it illegal even to be born a Gypsy. Those caught were mutilated and hanged. Later, huge numbers were rounded up and transported to work in the colonies overseas, in India and Africa as well as in the Americas. There were Gypsies with Christopher Columbus on his third voyage to Hispaniola in 1498 (Wilford), and the first to reach North America arrived in 1664, banished from England by Oliver Cromwell. Prejudice against Gypsies became embedded in the attitudes and eventually in the folklore of European culture. Unable to defend themselves, easily recognized in large groups, Gypsies learned to stay away from urban areas and to travel in small numbers, denying whenever possible their...

Arabs, Copts, Egyptians, Americans: An Exploration of Identity in the Diaspora

“Coptic,” “Christian,” “Orthodox,” “Egyptian,” “American,” “North African”: All of these words describe my identity, some more than others. As a Coptic Orthodox Egyptian American woman, one word, “Arab,” is particularly problematic. Many Copts, including some of my dearest friends, vehemently deny the “Arab” label. The Copts, they say, are not Arabs, but descendents of the Pharaohs. Only Egyptian Muslims can call themselves Arab. The Egyptians who remained Christian after the Islamic invasion in the seventh century, the Copts, were not Arab. This idea was further reinforced when I read Leila Ahmed's memoir A Border Passage, and discovered that even some Egyptian aMuslims reject the Arab identity.