Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100

Description

This volume looks at 'visions of community' in a comparative perspective, from Late Antiquity to the dawning of the age of crusades. It addresses the question of why and how distinctive new political cultures developed after the disintegration of the Roman World, and to what degree their differences had already emerged in the first post-Roman centuries. The Latin West, Orthodox Byzantium and its Slavic periphery, and the Islamic world each retained different parts of the Graeco-Roman heritage, while introducing new elements. For instance, ethnicity became a legitimizing element of rulership in the West, remained a structural element of the imperial periphery in Byzantium, and contributed to the inner dynamic of Islamic states without becoming a resource of political integration. Similarly, the political role of religion also differed between the emerging post-Roman worlds. It is surprising that little systematic research has been done in these fields so far. The 32 contributions to the volume explore this new line of research and look at different aspects of the process, with leading western Medievalists, Byzantinists and Islamicists covering a wide range of pertinent topics. At a closer look, some of the apparent differences between the West and the Islamic world seem less distinctive, and the inner variety of all post-Roman societies becomes more marked. At the same time, new variations in the discourse of community and the practice of power emerge. Anybody interested in the development of the post-Roman Mediterranean, but also in the relationship between the Islamic World and the West, will gain new insights from these studies on the political role of ethnicity and religion in the post-Roman Mediterranean. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Figures Abbreviations Introduction: Ethnicity, Religion and Empire Part I What Difference Does Ethnicity Make? Tribe and State: Social Anthropological Approaches 1 Envisioning Medieval Communities in Asia: Remarks on Ethnicity, Tribalism and Faith 2 Tribal Mobility and Religious Fixation: Remarks on Territorial Transformation and Identity in Imperial and Early Post-Imperial Tibet Identity and Difference in the Roman World 3 Zur Neustiftung von Identität unter imperialer Herrschaft: Die Provinzen des Römischen Reiches als ethnische Entitäten 4 The Nabataeans – Problems of Defining Ethnicity in the Ancient World 5 Political Identity versus Religious Distinction? The Case of Egypt in the Later Roman Empire Ethnic Identities in the Early Medieval West 6 How Many Peoples Are (in) a People? 7 The Providential Past: Visions of Frankish Identity in the Early Medieval History of Gregory of Tours’ Historiae (sixth–ninth century) 8 Inventing Wales Early Islamic Identities 9 Religious Communities in the Early Islamic World 10 Seventh-Century Identities: The Case of North Africa Christian Identities in the Middle East 11 Ethnicity, Ethnogenesis and the Identity of Syriac Orthodox Christians 12 Avoiding Ethnicity: Uses of the Ancient Past in Late Sasanian Northern Mesopotamia 13 Truth and Lies, Ceremonial and Art: Issues of Nationality in Medieval Armenia 14 Roman Identity in a Border Region: Evagrius and the Defence of the Roman Empire 15 Holy Land and Sacred History: A View from Early Ethiopia Part II Political Identities and the Integration of Communities Regional and Imperial Identites in the East 16 Anastasios und die ‚Geschichte‘ der Isaurier 17 Zur Stellung von ethnischen und religiösen Minderheiten in Byzanz: Armenier, Muslime und Paulikianer 18 Regional Identities and Military Power: Byzantium and Islam ca. 600–750 The Challenge of Difference: Early Medieval Christian Europe 19 ‘Faithful believers’: Oaths of Allegiance in Post-Roman Societies as Evidence for Eastern and Western ‘Visions of Community’ 20 „Einheit“ versus „Fraktionierung“: Zur symbolischen und institutionellen Integration des Frankenreichs im 8./9. Jahrhundert 21 Diaspora Jewish Communities in Early Medieval Europe: Structural Conditions for Survival and Expansion 22 New Visions of Community in Ninth-Century Rome: The Impact of the Saracen Threat on the Papal World View Part III Visions of Community, Perceptions of Difference Islamic Views 23 Arabic-Islamic Historiographers on the Emergence of Latin-Christian Europe 24 The Vikings in the South through Arab Eyes 25 Identities of the Ṣaqāliba and the Rūsiyya in Early Arabic Sources Byzantine Views 26 Gog, Magog und die Hunnen: Anmerkungen zur eschatologischen „Ethnographie“ der Völkerwanderungszeit 27 Strategies of Identification and Distinction in the Byzantine Discourse on the Seljuk Turks Western Views 28 ‘A wild man, whose hand will be against all’: Saracens and Ishmaelites in Latin Ethnographical Traditions, from Jerome to Bede 29 Where the Wild Things Are Conclusions Conclusions Conclusions Index