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Economy and Material Culture in the Early Islamic Empire
Bi-Weekly, Wednesday, 4-6 pm CEST Starting April 6, 2016

Islamic Material Culture

The Universität Bonn (Bethany Walker), the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (Andreas Kaplony), The Bard Graduate Center in New York (Abigail Balbale), and Universität Hamburg (Stefan Heidemann) are co-operating in setting up a series of webinars in Archaeology of the Middle East, Arabic Papyrology, Islamic Arts and material Culture, and Numismatics of the Middle East.

Why Agriculture?

Why agriculture and the Early Islamic Empire in material culture? Not least Bulliet’s book about the cotton boom (2009) in the Early Empire has stimulated discourse about agriculture and elite culture of the Early Islamic Empire. The webinar tutorial explores different aspects of this agriculture boom in case studies from Central Asia to the Iberian Peninsula. We see a continuation and improvement in efficiency of established forms of irrigation from Late Antiquity to the Early Islamic Empire. The new Muslim elites turned into a landholding class establishing estates and luxurious mansions. The new imperial metropolises created an unprecedented demand in foodstuffs, which was answered by bringnig more land under cultivation and introducing more efficient ways of production. Food had to be transported, and maritime and river routes were established. While some of these developments can be explored through text, material culture and archaeology allows new ways to see this boom in detail. Guest lecturers will include Corisande Fenwick (University College London), Abigale Balbale (The Bard Graduate Center, New York), Sören Stark, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World), and Kristoffer Damgaard (Carsten Niebuhr Institute, Copenhagen), and Bethany Walker (Universität Bonn).

The webinar is part of the ‘Webinar Initiative in Islamic Material Culture’ jointly organized by the Bard Graduate Center, New York, Universität Bonn, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, and Universität Hamburg.
Prerequisites for participation

Spoken and written proficiency in English language. The course is open to all advanced students in B.A., M.A., and PhD programs of Islamic studies, historians, art historians, and archaeologists of the Middle East. All students need a computer, a reliable internet connection, and a headset. In a personal online short skype interview in early April 2016, we will check whether all technical assets are working. Students from Hamburg have to sign up in the campus system ‘Stine’ and to contact Stefan Heidemann as early as possible to register and get the necessary introduction to the technology. Students from universities other than Universität Hamburg are welcome and have to apply with a short CV and a motivation letter in English until March, 15, 2016. These will be emailed to Prof. Stefan Heidemann at: stefan.heidemann@uni-hamburg.de. Preference is given to students from universities within the network of the webinar initiative “Islamic Material Culture”.

http://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/voror/Personal/agricultural-empire-sommer-2016.html

The women of Iran – 120 years ago

Antoin Sevruguin, the father of Iranian society photography, captured portraits of Iranian women in the early 20th century, from well-known ladies at the court to women from various tribes around the country.

Click here to see the photographs.

You can download fifty years of publications by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for free. Yes, for free. There are books on the art of Islamic Spain, Egypt, the Near East, etc. Check it out here.

Early Medieval Muslim Graves in France: First Archaeological, Anthropological and Palaeogenomic Evidence

Yves Gleize ,
Fanny Mendisco ,
Marie-Hélène Pemonge,
Christophe Hubert,
Alexis Groppi,
Bertrand Houix,
Marie-France Deguilloux,
Jean-Yves Breuil

Published in PLOS/ONE, February 24, 2016

Abstract

The rapid Arab-Islamic conquest during the early Middle Ages led to major political and cultural changes in the Mediterranean world. Although the early medieval Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula is now well documented, based in the evaluation of archeological and historical sources, the Muslim expansion in the area north of the Pyrenees has only been documented so far through textual sources or rare archaeological data. Our study provides the first archaeo-anthropological testimony of the Muslim establishment in South of France through the multidisciplinary analysis of three graves excavated at Nimes. First, we argue in favor of burials that followed Islamic rites and then note the presence of a community practicing Muslim traditions in Nimes. Second, the radiometric dates obtained from all three human skeletons (between the 7th and the 9th centuries AD) echo historical sources documenting an early Muslim presence in southern Gaul (i.e., the first half of 8th century AD). Finally, palaeogenomic analyses conducted on the human remains provide arguments in favor of a North African ancestry of the three individuals, at least considering the paternal lineages. Given all of these data, we propose that the skeletons from the Nimes burials belonged to Berbers integrated into the Umayyad army during the Arab expansion in North Africa. Our discovery not only discusses the first anthropological and genetic data concerning the Muslim occupation of the Visigothic territory of Septimania but also highlights the complexity of the relationship between the two communities during this period.

For the complete article, click here.

Andreas Kaplony, H-Mideast-Medieval, Saturday, January 2, 2016

The Arabic Papyrology Database (APD) team wishes you a happy New Year. Our present: new, handy features implemented in the APD and many, many more documents . Please, check www.naher-osten.lmu.de/apd under

(a) “Documents”. For 2,571 published documents, we provide the full text of the document and information on the document, while for another 6,281 published and unpublished documents, we give information on the document only. We are proud to offer not only records from Egypt and the Middle East, but also a quite comprehensive list of Arabic documents from Sicily and Spain: click on “Origin” and choose Sicily or Spain. Weekly updates! – For full bibliographical details, check at www.naher-osten.uni-muenchen.de/apb.

(b) “Text”: This is our full text search tool. Many features, including search restricted by time, provenance, document type, etc.

(c) “Lexicon”: This site is completely new and allows you to access the lexicon of all implemented texts in several ways: Looking for a lemma, you will have an overview on all actual realizations, with hyperlinks giving you direct access. You might look for a root, a verbal stem, or a shape/morpheme type (e.g. fāʿil or faʿʿāl). Or try Word categories (functional categories) and Domains (semantic categories), independently or in combined searches.

We would be happy to have your feedback on the new features.

Best regards, Eva Youssef-Grob (evamira.youssef@uzh.ch), for the Arabic Papyrology Database team

8 Rules of Engagement Taught by the Prophet Muhammad

Extremism ‘experts’ are everywhere these days. Assertions thrive about what Shariah law allows, especially when it comes to warfare and ‘Jihad’. Two very unlikely bedfellows, Islamophobes and extremists, have taken up one allegation, that Islam is violent, and run with it. They both misquote Islamic sources to prove their shared fantasies, and to good effect, with media outlets falling over themselves to give them a platform. This convenient lie has become the Blood Libel of the Muslims, which is spread by various groups to achieve their own agendas.

So here is a list of actual rules of engagement taken from Islamic law, together with their original sources. This is what forms the basis of what Muslims believe and follow. These 8 laws expose the ‘Islam is violent’ line as lazy and shamefully dishonest.

N.B. War is unfortunately an inevitable part of civilization and at times countries need to respond to aggression. Islam allows the use of force to stop evil and bring security to a country’s citizens therefore a set of laws pertaining to war has been laid out by the Prophet Muhammad himself.

What follows are mainstream laws of Islam as taught by the orthodoxy of the religion. This is what the vast majority of Muslims around the world observe as their religion. It does not mean however, that all those who claim to be Muslim actually follow orthodox Shariah laws. Such groups and individuals would rightly be labelled as heretics for inventing new beliefs that run counter to explicit statements found in original sources of Islamic law. (more…)

Family bond: Two colourful sisters, hand in hand, pose for a photograph in Kabul, surrounded by trading locals

The Daily Mail, a British newspaper, has an online gallery of photographs taken in Afghanistan by Dr. Bill Podlich, who worked on a UNESCO project there in the 1960s. This was Afghanistan before the Taliban.

Commentary on MENA Tidningen.