Jo van Steenbergen

Maya Termonia

"New Readings in Arabic Historiography contributes to research on Arabic texts of history from late medieval Egypt and Syria. Departing from dominant understandings of these texts through the prisms of authenticity and "literarization," it engages with questions of textual constructedness and authorial agency. This edited volume consists of 13 contributions by a new generation of scholars. Each of the volume's three parts represents a different aspect of their new readings of particular texts. Part one looks at concrete instances of textual interdependencies, part two at the creativity of authorial agencies, and part three at the relationship between texts and social practice. New Readings thus participates in the revaluation of late medieval Arabic historiography as a critical field of inquiry. Contributors: Rasmus Bech Olsen, Víctor de Castro León, Mohammad Gharaibeh, Kenneth A. Goudie, Christian Mauder, Evan Metzger, Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont, Clément Onimus, Tarek Sabraa, Iria Santás de Arcos, Gowaart Van Den Bossche, Koby Yosef"--

Proceedings of the Themed Day of the Fifth Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies

New Readings in Arabic Historiography from Late Medieval Egypt and Syria

Jonathan Shepard

Catherine Holmes

Björn Weiler

This comparative study explores three key cultural and political spheres – the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from Central Asia to the Atlantic – roughly from the emergence of Islam to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers' interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean.

Jo van Steenbergen

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