Medieval Eastern Research Articles

Archaeometric investigations of the tableware cargo of the Kavalliani shipwreck (Greece) and into the role of the harbour of Chalcis in the Byzantine and Frankish periods

In the medieval Eastern Mediterranean, shipwreck finds point out a remarkable pottery production, which constitutes most of the known cargoes of table wares. These wares are also found in sites all around the Mediterranean in 12th and 13th century CE contexts, and may be seen in museums all around the world. Their origin was still the subject of much speculation, as it corresponds to a main hub in trade networks. We show here that it can be identified to Chalcis, the harbour of wealthy Byzantine Thebes, and later on an important Venetian port of call in the Aegean under the name of Negroponte. Our results are based on the comparison of the chemical composition of samples from the Kavalliani shipwreck, which carried a cargo of these wares and sunk while leaving the Chalcis area, to the reference group of Chalcis.

Novel Micro‐Scale Steel‐Making from Molten Cast Iron Practised in Medieval Nomadic Communities of East Mongolia

Evidence of novel steel‐making was found in a number of small cast‐iron fragments recovered by the Mongolia–American archaeological survey of eastern Mongolia. These iron artefacts come from medieval period habitation and manufacturing sites and they consistently display irregular surface features characteristic of a solidification reaction from a partially molten state. Their microstructure consists of large near‐spherical islands of pearlite spread on a background of fine white cast‐iron eutectic. Reflected in this peculiar structure is an extremely small‐scale steel‐making process where one or more small pieces of cast iron were heated above the eutectic temperature for rapid decarburization in the partially molten state. We provide a detailed account of the technological aspects of this micro‐scale steel‐making method as observed in the microstructure and chemical composition of the objects examined. This small‐scale technology was ideally suited to the pastoral nomadic way of life that characterized medieval eastern Mongolia; however, it probably would not have been appropriate for sedentary communities with access to large‐scale urban manufacturing centres. Based on this observation, we discuss the role of nomadic lifeways and associated political environments that likely influenced the development of this innovative steel‐making technique.

Ancient and Medieval Eastern Texts as the Hypertext

Being the object of study within various sciences including linguistics, the hypertext represents a complex phenomenon of modern human communication. The earlier concept of hypertext became widely used with the development of computer technologies. However, despite a relatively new term, it is possible to acknowledge the ancient origin of hypertext represented by a variety of famous manuscripts, such as the Panini’s eight books of grammar or eastern fairy tales. The hypertext represents the fourth stage in cognitive revolution of humankind leading to the shift in human thinking thus changing it from linear, typical for the Gutenberg era, to lateral thinking, which most likely was dominating during the ‘preliterate’ period. Oral, written and electronic communication are considered as development stages of a discourse consistently replacing each other. Reflections on the relation of hypertext to lateral thinking lead to the idea of unconventional thinking of geniuses, which found it hard to study at a standard school. The paper analyzes the structure of the One Thousand and One Nights fairy tales from the point of view of its hypertextuality.

Main trends of studying medieval eastern christian hymnography: reception of literary critic

Main trends of studying medieval eastern christian hymnography: reception of literary critic

Giraffe, Giraffe, Camel!

Giraffe, Giraffe, Camel!

Review: Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval Mediterranean Medicine, by Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev

Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev, Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval Mediterranean Medicine . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. xiv, 290 pp., 35 color plates, 7 black and white tables, 1 black and white map. 80£. ISBN: 9780748697816. Zohar Amar is a Professor in the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology and Director of the Unit on the History of Medicine at Bar-Ilan University, Israel who has written extensively on the identification and movement of plants in the pre-modern world, including a study attempting to identify all of the flora in the Bible. Efraim Lev is a Professor in the Department of Israel Studies and Head of The Interdisciplinary Center for the Broader Application of Genizah Research at the University of Haifa, Israel who focuses more specifically on the history of medieval materia medica. Together Amar and Lev have produced a study of the impact on medieval Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and European medicine of drugs introduced to those regions following the Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries. The two have collaborated in research and writing for several years, and they laid the groundwork for this study in a series of joint publications on subjects included in this volume. Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval Mediterranean Medicine will be an essential resource for years to come. Its descriptions of new medicinal substances traveling from East to West now provide the growing number of scholars from a variety of fields interested in the history of materia medica with introductions to the origins, movements, uses, and even physical appearances of those substances. Amar and Lev have divided their work into four chapters of unequal length. In the first chapter, which also serves as an introduction, they briefly trace the geopolitical effects of the …

Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean eds. by Y. Tzvi Langermann and Robert G. Morrison

Reviewed by: Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean eds. by Y. Tzvi Langermann and Robert G. Morrison Peter Phillip Jones Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann and Robert G. Morrison (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press 2016) 270 pp. This collection of eleven essays grew out of ongoing conversations between editors Y. Tzvi Langermann (Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel) and Robert G. Morrison (Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine), and finds its focus on the history of science and its intersections with religious thought in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean. Within this rough topical frame, the contributors attempt to tackle, through historical and philological approaches, the transit of various texts across the Mediterranean, and the implications of those transits for medieval languages and cultures, with the aim of bettering our understanding of how knowledge was exchanged from one culture to another. In other words, each contribution probes at least one "transit," and approaches this term as a multivalent concept from the physical movement of texts, to their translations and re-translations, while also considering the impacts they may have had on medieval intellectual history, each in their specific contexts. Rather than attempt to reproduce the multitude of provocative conclusions and interesting methodological characteristics of the entries in this collection, I merely offer an overview of the contributions, with a few closing thoughts. The first essay, by Robert G. Morrison, examines the role of oral transmission in translating the Sefer Mezuqqaq ("The purified book"), an astronomical text first written in Arabic and then translated into Hebrew by a Moses ben Elijah (likely 15th c.), who had the text verbally read out to him in Turkish. Recognizing the text as a Hebrew version of a popular Islamic text on astronomy (the al-Mulakhkhaṣ), Morrison homes in on modifications made in the Hebrew translation, which may have been the result of the text's oral transmission. Morrison describes a back-and-forth communication process between a Hebrew writer and a Turkish speaker that led the translator to problematize the approaches to astronomy put forward in the text, in the course of translating. The second essay, by Ofer Elior, is a case study of Jewish Byzantine reception of Spanish-Provençal Hebrew philosophical and scientific texts. Analyzing the letters of a fifteenth-century Byzantine Jewish scholar, Rabbi Yedidyah Rakh, Elior shows how Rakh confronts and complements Maimonidean rationalism in his attempts to reconcile seeming contradictions between the Torah and the scientific reasoning of his day. Elior's analysis also reinforces the notion, put forward by past scholarship, that the Byzantine Jewish intellectual community of this time was detached from other Jewish intellectual traditions. So while there is considerable evidence to show that philosophical and scientific works were crossing the Mediterranean for Byzantine consumption, somewhere a disconnection resulted in a separate, isolated, and often less precise tradition of scientific and philosophical interpretation. [End Page 279] The third essay, by Y. Tzvi Langermann, is a study of Abraham Bar Ḥiyya's composite theory of light and opposition, drawn together from diverse sources (Greek, Jewish, Islamic). Langermann looks at Bar Ḥiyya's eschatological treatise, The Scroll of the Revealer, and considers the notion of gradations of light, and the idea that the universe is organized according to pairs of opposites. Tracing Bar Ḥiyya's theories back to their influences, such as Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed and the Sefer Yeṣira, a medieval cosmological text, Langermann persuasively argues that Bar Ḥiyya carefully adapted from these influences in the shaping of his own original work of Jewish eschatology. The fourth essay, by Leigh Chipman, considers secret writing, or cryptography, and its use in encrypting poetry and prose in the Middle East during the late Ayyubid and early Mamluk periods (thirteenth/fourteenth centuries). Chipman explores the possible functions served by cryptography in diplomatic affairs of the time, and how knowledge of cryptography may have travelled west, from Mosul to Venice, due to improved diplomatic relations based around increased trade. The fifth essay, by Leonardo Capezzone, discusses the multiple re-conceptualizations of memory from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries in Islamic intellectual history, tracing its meaning as a moral virtue, and function...

A Medieval Bright Star Table: The Non-Ptolemaic Star Table in the Īlkhānī Zīj

The Īlkhānī zīj compiled by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and his colleagues in the first period of the astronomical activities (the 1260s and early 1270s) in the Maragha observatory includes a star table collecting important observations of Islamic astronomers from the early ninth century through the third quarter of the thirteenth century, including the Mumtaḥan astronomers, Ibn al-A‘lam, Ibn Yūnus, as well as the Maragha astronomers themselves. This table gives the ecliptical coordinates of 18 bright stars in comparison with Ptolemy’s corresponding values. This medieval bright star table is especially interesting for two reasons: first, it provides reliable evidence for the examination of the accuracy of the observations made and the instruments employed (notably, an armillary sphere) in the Maragha observatory. Second, it facilitates a comparative study of the accuracy of stellar observations in medieval Middle Eastern astronomy in the period in question. We have obtained the result that the Maragha astronomers observed more accurate star longitudes than did their predecessors, while for the latitudes, all Islamic observers appear to have gained about the same degree of accuracy. We also discuss two delicate matters raised by this table: first, the problem of the use of the two different values for the rate of precession by the Maragha astronomers in order to convert earlier star longitudes to the epoch of the Īlkhānī zīj (1°/66 years for Ptolemy’s longitudes and 1°/70 years for those measured by their Islamic predecessors); second, the change in the star latitudes essentially related to the various values measured by Ptolemy and the Islamic astronomers represented side-by-side in it. Finally, we briefly discuss a small celestial globe designed by the son of Mu’ayyad al-Dīn al-‘Urḍī, the instrument-maker of the Maragha observatory.

Res publica Byzantina? State formation and issues of identity in medieval east Rome

It is a great pleasure and an honour to be writing for the fortieth anniversary volume ofByzantine and Modern Greek Studies. As editor of the journal for some twenty years, from 1984 until 2004, I have watched the journal grow in stature and in esteem over that period, and I am delighted to see it continuing to do so in the hands of its current editors. In the first issue I edited, I also contributed an article that attempted to reconcile some very different approaches to the history of Byzantine society and culture, or at least, to show that such different approaches were not necessarily mutually exclusive. If now rather out-of-date in its content, that article remains a useful baseline for discussing the relationship between empirical research and writing and theoretical reflection.‘“Jargon” vs. “the facts”‘?was a comment about the confrontation that at the time appeared to exist between, very broadly speaking, those who were interested in questioning the theoretical assumptions underlying and informing their research, and those who were not interested in such debates, preferring to see them either as irrelevant or as inaccessible. In my concluding remarks, I suggested that Byzantine Studies in the mid-1980s was in the process of what T. S. Kuhn would have called a ‘paradigm shift‘, that is to say, a process through which a traditional set (or sets) of assumptions and priorities, as well as theories and approaches, is replaced by different sets of ideas. While the changes in the nature of the subject that have occurred since then have not been particularly marked, there have nevertheless been some interesting and important developments that have altered the framework within which some ways of looking at the medieval eastern Roman world are carried on. The so-called ‘linguistic turn‘, for example, pushed Byzantinists, in particular, scholars of Byzantine literature and visual culture, to grapple with various aspects of what might very broadly be termed post-modernist and post-structuralist theory. This is evident in some of the writing and publishing of the later 1980s and 1990s in particular, and in some respects has now been incorporated into our ‘ways of seeing’ the Byzantine world.2In particular issues of intertextuality, of authorial intention, of reception, and of the relativizing of cultural interpretive possibilities (in respect of our own perspective) have become part and parcel of scholarly discourse, thus greatly enriching our discipline.3Represented by more recent work in literary studies and art history especially, I believe this shift also facilitated a much greater degree of cross-disciplinary reading, comparative thinking, and in respect of historical context and setting, a generally more open approach to the medieval west and the Islamic world in terms of both material and method.4

The Case Study of the Land of Navahrudak

The paper examines the process of forging a new historical memory in a particular area of the late medieval and early modern Eastern Europe. Because of contemporary intellectual controversy in present-day Lithuania and Belarus over its role in the early Grand Duchy of Lithuania, I have chosen for the study the historical land of Navahrudak. In order to elucidate the role of Navahrudak in the past, I have tried to investigate what a ruling class in Navahrudak did really remember of its past, as well as what was forgotten and why, in the specific conditions of the early sixteenth-century of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. First of all, by utilizing primarily such historical evidence as chronicles and by focusing mainly on the memories of dukes who had ruled in the region, I tried to understand the process of how the region’s historical memory was being forged. My research clearly reveals that most of what we actually know about Navahrudak’s past appears as nothing else as the sixteenth-century construction, initiated primarily by the contemporary Lithuanian chancellor Albertus Gastoldus and forged by a remarkable team of Renaissance intellectuals employed in the grand ducal chancellery. Their vision of the region’s past was greatly influenced by the actual political, social and even personal (familial) considerations and was clearly aimed at glorifying Navahrudak’s past, by highlighting especially Navahrudak as Lithuania’s first political center, where Albertus Gastoldus had began his political career and where also the political and economical interests of his kin were located.

A collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean? New results and theories on the interplay between climate and societies in Byzantium and the Near East, ca. 1000–1200 AD. (with seven appendices, including three tables and 33 figures)

This paper discusses a recently proposed scenario of a climate-induced Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 11th century AD. It demonstrates that such a scenario cannot be maintained when confronted with proxy data from various regions. On the other hand, data on the interplay between environment and economy in the Komnenian period (1081-1185) and evidence for a change of climatic conditions in the period of the Angeloi (1185-1204) is presented, arguing that climatic parameters should be taken into consideration when comparing socio-economic dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean with those in Western Europe. The necessity of further research on the regional as well as over-regional level for many aspects of the interaction between human society and environment in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean is highlighted.

Identity in Flux: Finding Boris Kolomanovich in the Interstices of Medieval European History

The politics of kinship and of monarchy in medieval eastern Europe are typically constructed within the framework of the modern nation-state, read back into the past. The example of Boris Kolomanovich, instead, highlights the horizontal interconnectivity of medieval Europe and its neighbors and demonstrates the malleability of individual identity within kinship webs, as well as the creation of situational kinship networks to advance individuals’ goals.

Moulded ware production in the Early Turkish/Beylik period in western Anatolia: A case study from Ephesus and Miletus

The beginning of the Turkish period in western Anatolia saw the arrival of new ceramic types in the local pottery repertoire, related to the ‘Islamic’ world. To study this evolution from Byzantine to Turkish times, we have focused in this paper on one of these types, moulded wares, and two sites, Miletus and Ephesus. At both sites, we were able to define or redefine chemical reference groups based on evidence of local production using wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WD-XRF). The identification of the origin of the finds or their attribution to as yet unlocated workshops, and the study of the distribution of wares manufactured in these workshops, provides the basis for discussing the introduction of moulded wares in western Anatolia. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses have also provided some preliminary insights into the emergence and development of new ceramic techniques in the region, whose ‘end-products’ are represented by the well-known Iznik Ware. This paper presents results from initial research carried out within the framework of the POMEDOR project (People, Pottery and Food in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean).

The Medieval Climate Anomaly and Byzantium: A review of the evidence on climatic fluctuations, economic performance and societal change

At the beginning of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, in the ninth and tenth century, the medieval eastern Roman empire, more usually known as Byzantium, was recovering from its early medieval crisis and experiencing favourable climatic conditions for the agricultural and demographic growth. Although in the Balkans and Anatolia such favourable climate conditions were prevalent during the eleventh century, parts of the imperial territories were facing significant challenges as a result of external political/military pressure. The apogee of medieval Byzantine socio-economic development, around AD 1150, coincides with a period of adverse climatic conditions for its economy, so it becomes obvious that the winter dryness and high climate variability at this time did not hinder Byzantine society and economy from achieving that level of expansion. Soon after this peak, towards the end of the twelfth century, the populations of the Byzantine world were experiencing unusual climatic conditions with marked dryness and cooler phases. The weakened Byzantine socio-political system must have contributed to the events leading to the fall of Constantinople in AD 1204 and the sack of the city. The final collapse of the Byzantine political control over western Anatolia took place half century later, thus contemporaneous with the strong cooling effect after a tropical volcanic eruption in AD 1257.We suggest that, regardless of a range of other influential factors, climate change was also an important contributing factor to the socio-economic changes that took place in Byzantium during the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Crucially, therefore, while the relatively sophisticated and complex Byzantine society was certainly influenced by climatic conditions, and while it nevertheless displayed a significant degree of resilience, external pressures as well as tensions within the Byzantine society more broadly contributed to an increasing vulnerability in respect of climate impacts.Our interdisciplinary analysis is based on all available sources of information on the climate and society of Byzantium, that is textual (documentary), archaeological, environmental, climate and climate model-based evidence about the nature and extent of climate variability in the eastern Mediterranean. The key challenge was, therefore, to assess the relative influence to be ascribed to climate variability and change on the one hand, and on the other to the anthropogenic factors in the evolution of Byzantine state and society (such as invasions, changes in international or regional market demand and patterns of production and consumption, etc.). The focus of this interdisciplinary study was to address the possible causal relationships between climatic and socio-economic change and to assess the resilience of the Byzantine socio-economic system in the context of climate change impacts.

Botanical view of the use of plants in medieval medicine in the Eastern Mediterranean according to the Cairo Genizah

This article presents the medicinal plants that were used by the inhabitants of the medieval Eastern Mediterranean (mainly tenth to thirteenth centuries AD) and analyzes their geographical/phyto-botanical origin and their frequency of use at the medieval time. It also discusses various issues such as their historical trade and the continuation of their use in present-day Middle Eastern traditional medicine.The Cairo Genizah is an historical source containing about 250,000 documents, found in a semi-archeological context (synagogue and graves). Since Cairo became the capital and consequently the economic and administrative center of the Muslim empire, the Jewish community had close connections with the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa, Southern Europe, Sicily and India. Therefore, these highly valued documents record every aspect of life and reflect on the whole Mediterranean region and beyond.The inventory of the practicalmateria medicawas reconstructed thanks to hundreds of documents such as prescriptions, list of drugs, and medical letters. It consists of 278 drugs, 223 of which are of plant origin. Asian medicinal plants became highly used in medieval Mediterranean medicine; the vast majority of them are still sold in Middle Eastern markets, although not with the same importance. It is important to note that some of them are sold today mainly for their other uses as spices, perfumes, incense, etc.

A migration-driven model for the historical spread of leprosy in medieval Eastern and Central Europe

Leprosy was rare in Europe during the Roman period, yet its prevalence increased dramatically in medieval times. We examined human remains, with paleopathological lesions indicative of leprosy, dated to the 6th–11th century AD, from Central and Eastern Europe and Byzantine Anatolia. Analysis of ancient DNA and bacterial cell wall lipid biomarkers revealed Mycobacterium leprae in skeletal remains from 6th–8th century Northern Italy, 7th–11th century Hungary, 8th–9th century Austria, the Slavic Greater Moravian Empire of the 9th–10th century and 8th–10th century Byzantine samples from Northern Anatolia. These data were analyzed alongside findings published by others. M. leprae is an obligate human pathogen that has undergone an evolutionary bottleneck followed by clonal expansion. Therefore M. leprae genotypes and sub-genotypes give information about the human populations they have infected and their migration. Although data are limited, genotyping demonstrates that historical M. leprae from Byzantine Anatolia, Eastern and Central Europe resembles modern strains in Asia Minor rather than the recently characterized historical strains from North West Europe. The westward migration of peoples from Central Asia in the first millennium may have introduced different M. leprae strains into medieval Europe and certainly would have facilitated the spread of any existing leprosy. The subsequent decline of M. leprae in Europe may be due to increased host resistance. However, molecular evidence of historical leprosy and tuberculosis co-infections suggests that death from tuberculosis in leprosy patients was also a factor.

К вопросу о назначении так называемых «реликвариев» эпохи средневековья Восточной Европы

К вопросу о назначении так называемых «реликвариев» эпохи средневековья Восточной Европы

Intestinal parasites in a mid-14th century latrine from Riga, Latvia: fish tapeworm and the consumption of uncooked fish in the medieval eastern Baltic region

The aim of this study was to investigate faecal material from a medieval latrine in the coastal town of Riga (Latvia) in order to identify the intestinal parasites present within the population. We identified very large numbers of the eggs of three species of parasitic intestinal worms that affect humans – fish tapeworm (Diphyllobothrium latum), whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), and roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides). The fish tapeworm evidence demonstrates that the population were eating large amounts of uncooked fish (perhaps raw, smoked, or pickled) since cooking prevents parasite transmission. ELISA analysis identified the presence of the parasite Entamoeba histolytica, which can cause dysentery in humans. We also noted two eggs of equid pinworm (Oxyuris equi) that affects horses and donkeys, demonstrating the presence of this parasite in farm animals of the region by the medieval period. We discuss the implications of these findings for our knowledge of intestinal parasites in coastal areas of the medieval Baltic region, of food consumption, of hygiene, and of the affects of the parasites upon the health of those living in medieval Riga, the most important city in the crusader state of Livonia.

The Baltic Finnic People in the Medieval and Pre-Modern Eastern European Slave Trade

Raids and the kidnapping of humans in East Europe together with a late medieval and pre-modern Black Sea slave trade are well known in the scholarly literature. This kind of slave trade also extended via the Volga to Caspia and Central Asia. Besides young male slaves, there was a market for small blond boys and girls in both regions, where they were expensive luxury items. Gangs from the Volga, at least, launched raids towards the north, and it is possible that the northern kidnapping raids and the transportation of prisoners from the northern forests to Novgorod were also connected with the southern slave trade.

New Technology or Adaptation at the Frontier? Butchery as a Signifier of Cultural Transitions in the Medieval Eastern Baltic

This paper focuses on a number of examples of cut marks on animal bones from a range of sites associated with the cultural transformations in the eastern Baltic following the Crusades in the 13th century. Recorded observational and interpretational characteristics are quantified and explained through more detailed selected case studies. The study represents a pilot project, the foundation for a more detailed and systematic survey of a larger dataset within the framework of the ecology of Crusading project. Relatively clear differences between sites are observable on the basis of the cut marks; however, the initial trends do not suggest a straightforward connection between butchery technology and colonisation in the east Baltic region.