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A sweeping history of the world through its oceans and seas and their interconnections.
The first English-language survey of medieval and modern Sardinia, this volume offers access to long-awaited European scholarship on a critical missing link in the Mediterranean. Based on new archaeological fieldwork and current research from a variety of academic perspectives— architecture, colonialism, ecclesiastic history, cartography, demography, law, musicology, politics, trade, and urban planning—the authors provide the foundation to incorporate Sardinia into a broader European history. Among other contributions, archaeology adds critical insight into the relationship between Christian, Muslim, and Jewish inhabitants of Sardinia, through examinations of urban and rural settlement patterns. This volume aims to stimulate further analysis of the critical role Sardinia has played as one of the largest and most strategically located islands in the Mediterranean. Contributors are Laura Biccone, Nathalie Bouloux, Henri Bresc, Marco Cadinu, Roberto Coroneo, Laura Galoppini, Henrike Haug, Michelle Hobart, Rossana Martorelli, Giampaolo Mele, Marco Milanese, Giovanni Murgia, Gian Giacomo Ortu, Daniela Rovina, Olivetta Schena, Cecilia Tasca, Raimondo Turtas, and Corrado Zedda.
Explores the impact of drugs introduced by the Arabs on medieval Mediterranean medicineFor more than one thousand years Arab medicine held sway in the ancient world, from the shores of Spain in the West to China, India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the East. This book explores the impact of Greek (as well as Indian and Persian) medical heritage on the evolution of Arab medicine and pharmacology, investigating it from the perspective of materia medica a reliable indication of the contribution of this medical legacy.Focusing on the main substances introduced and traded by the Arabs in the medieval Mediterranean including Ambergris, camphor, musk, myrobalan, nutmeg, sandalwood and turmeric the auth...
This book presents a new perspective on the Italian Renaissance court by examining the circulation, collection and exchange of art objects.
This work provides a new narrative for Orsanmichele in the era before the Renaissance. It examines Orsanmichele from the mid-thirteenth century, as the piazza transformed into the city’s grain market. It considers the market’s tandem confraternity, with its stunning Madonnas over three successive loggias. It examines the grain market and confraternity from a social, economic, political, and artistic perspective. It provides extensive data on the Florentine grain trade, sales at the market, and the nexus between traders, political leaders, and the confraternity. The work suggests that developments at Orsanmichele during the medieval period formed the basis for the Renaissance structure.
"First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Allen Lane"--T.p. verso.
Dante put Muhammad in one of the lowest circles of Hell. At the same time, the medieval Christian poet placed several Islamic philosophers much more honorably in Limbo. Furthermore, it has long been suggested that for much of the basic framework of the Divine Comedy Dante was indebted to apocryphal traditions about a “night journey” taken by Muhammad. Dante scholars have increasingly returned to the question of Islam to explore the often surprising encounters among religious traditions that the Middle Ages afforded. This collection of essays works through what was known of the Qur’an and of Islamic philosophy and science in Dante’s day and explores the bases for Dante’s images of Muhammad and Ali. It further compels us to look at key instances of engagement among Muslims, Jews, and Christians.
In this, the first revisionist biography of Frederick II, David Abulafia dispels Frederick's long-lived, distorted reputation as a monarch tolerant to the Jews and Muslims, defiant of papal rule, and eager to create a new, secular world order. Abulafia is the first to place Frederick in the wider historical context his enormous empire demands, portraying him as less tolerant and far-sighted in his cultural, religious, and politics ambitions than generally thought.
Contained in this history of the "Great Sea" are the stories of the birth of Western Civilization, the clash of warring faiths, and the rivalries of empires. David Abulafia leads a team of eight distinguished historians in an exploration of the great facts, themes and epochs of this region's history: the physical setting; the rivalry between Carthaginians, Greeks, and Etruscans for control of the sea routes; unification under Rome and the subsequent break up into Western Christendom, Byzantium, and Islam; the Crusades; commerce in medieval times; the Ottoman resurgence; the rivalry of European powers from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries; and the globalization of the region in the l...
In recent years, the 'medieval frontier' has been the subject of extensive research. But the term has been understood in many different ways: political boundaries; fuzzy lines across which trade, religions and ideas cross; attitudes to other peoples and their customs. This book draws attention to the differences between the medieval and modern understanding of frontiers, questioning the traditional use of the concepts of 'frontier' and 'frontier society'. It contributes to the understanding of physical boundaries as well as metaphorical and ideological frontiers, thus providing a background to present-day issues of political and cultural delimitation. In a major introduction, David Abulafia ...