Mediterranean Captivity through Arab Eyes, 1517-1798 /
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The post-Lepanto Mediterranean was the scene of "small wars," to use Fernand Braudel's phrase, which resulted in acts of piracy and captivity. Thousands upon thousands of Europeans, Arabs, and Turks were seized into bagnios stretching from Cadiz to Valletta and from Salé to Tripoli. After returning to their homelands, dozens from England and France, Germany and Spain, Malta and Italy wrote about their captivities. Their accounts were printed, distributed, translated, and plagiarized, making captivity a key subject in Europe's Mediterranean history. While Europeans wrote extensively about their ordeals, the Arabs wrote little because their religious culture militated against such writings, which would be construed as expressing disaffection with the will of God. Nor were there detailed records and registers of captives - their names, places of origin, and ransom prices - similar to what was kept in the European archives. Contrary, however, to what some historians have claimed, there was a distinct Arabic narrative of captivity that survives in anecdotes, recollections, reports, miracles, letters, fatawa, exempla and short biographies in both verse and prose. Cumulatively, these sources constitute the Arabic qiṣṣas al-asrā, or stories of the captives, in the native language and idiom of the men and women of the early modern Mediterranean.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004440258
9789004440241
Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa : Entering the 21st Century /
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A scholarly volume devoted to an understanding of contemporary nomadic and pastoral societies in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume recognizes the variable mobile quality of the ways of life of these societies which persist in accommodating the 'nation-state' of the 20th and 21st century but remain firmly transnational and highly adaptive. Composed of four sections around the theme of contestation it includes examinations of contested authority and power, space and social transformation, development and economic transformation, and cultures and engendered spaces.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047417750 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Aghlabids and their neighbours : art and material culture in 9th-century North Africa /
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The first dynasty to mint gold dinars outside of the Abbasid heartlands, the Aghlabid (r. 800-909) reign in North Africa has largely been neglected in the scholarship of recent decades, despite the canonical status of its monuments and artworks in early Islamic art history. The Aghlabids and their Neighbors focuses new attention on this key dynasty. The essays in this volume, produced by an international group of specialists in history, art and architectural history, archaeology, and numismatics, illuminate the Aghlabid dynasty's interactions with neighbors in the western Mediterranean and its rivals and allies elsewhere, providing a state of the question on early medieval North Africa and revealing the centrality of the dynasty and the region to global economic and political networks.
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1 online resource (xxxviii, 688 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004356047 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Amulets and Talismans of the Middle East and North Africa in Context : Transmission, Efficacy and Collections /
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In this volume amulets and talismans are studied within a broader system of meaning that shapes how they were manufactured, activated and used in different networks. Text, material features and the environments in which these artifacts circulated, are studied alongside each other, resulting in an innovative approach to understand the many different functions these objects could fulfil in pre-modern times. Produced and used by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the case studies presented here include objects that differ in size, material, language and shape. What the articles share is an all-round, in-depth approach that helps the reader understand the complexity of the objects discussed and will improve one's understanding of the role they played within pre-modern societies. Contributors Hazem Hussein Abbas Ali, Gideon Bohak, Ursula Hammed, Juan Campo, Jean-Charles Coulon, Venetia Porter, Marcela Garcia Probert, Anne Regourd, Yasmine al-Saleh, Karl Schaefer and Petra M. Sijpesteijn.
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In the volume amulets and talismans produced by Muslims and non-Muslims in the Islamicate world, are studied within a broader system of meaning, focussing on the complex role these objects played in pre-modern societies. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004471474
9789004471481
La langue berbère au Maghreb médiéval : textes, contextes, analyses /
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La langue berbère au Maghreb médiéval constitue un nouvel apport aux études historiques et linguistiques dans la mesure où de nombreux matériaux sur la langue berbère font l'objet d'une monographie spécifique. Plusieurs faits de langue sont reliés par une trame précise et ils sont réunis afin de mettre en relief les indices textuels puisés dans diverses sources écrites en arabe et en berbère. Dans les quatre parties du livre, il est tour à tour question des apports de la documentation narrative, de la littérature hagiographique et des textes ibadites ainsi que de l'importance des contacts entre le berbère et les langues africaines à travers la littérature narrative et l'épigraphie islamique. Ce livre a été conçu comme un essai documentaire mais également afin d'attirer l'attention des chercheurs sur la présence relativement bien documentée de la langue berbère dans les textes produits en milieu arabo-musulman du Moyen Âge à l'époque moderne. La langue berbère au Maghreb médiéval is a new contribution to the historical and linguistic studies in that many materials on the Berber language are the subject of a specific monograph. Several facts of language are connected by an accurate frame and are gathered to highlight textual clues collected from various sources written in Arabic and Berber. The four parts of the book treat contributions of narrative documentation, hagiographical literature and Ibadi texts and the importance of contacts between Berber and African languages through the narrative literature and Islamic epigraphy. This book was conceived as a documentary essay, but also to attract the attention of researchers on the relatively well-documented presence of the Berber language in the texts produced in Arab-Muslim environment from the Middle Ages to Modern era.
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1 online resource (xvi, 479 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004302358 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.