This paper argues for the utility of the concept of creolization in relation to Latin Europe during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. It further suggests that it offers possibilities for exploring other medieval societies, including making global comparisons. The paper draws on linguistics, early modern Atlantic history, and Roman archaeology, to offer an ideal type of medieval creolization. Creolization in this instance is understood to involve social and cultural processes, not merely linguistic phenomenon. In this sense, creolization mixes “superstrate” and “substrate” practices, acknowledging disparities of power and allowing for the dispersal of agency. This avoids problems inherent in notions of Europeanization, especially teleology, and a dichotomy between active core and passive periphery. Creolization offers a frame for asking why in specific circumstances some “superstrate” practices were adopted, but not others, and why we see such a variety of polities and cultures around Latin Europe in this period, with the self-conscious cultivation of distinctiveness, alongside the adaptation of common “superstrate” practices. These insights are applied to brief sketches from the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries of Scottish politics and Polish salt mining. Discussion is then extended to non-Latin European cases and possibilities for global comparisons.

This article uses Arabic sources to examine the Islamic-era mowbed (Zoroastrian chief priest) in Abbasid society, in what I argue is the conscious continuation of the mowbed’s pre-Islamic role as judge, scholar, sage, and advisor to kings. Moreover, I argue that the mowbed used his status to promote the standing of the Zoroastrian community, as well as to assert the authority of the priesthood within that community – an authority which was negotiated under Muslim rule and through Islamic and particularly Shiʿi figures, above all ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 661 CE). Muslims were already debating the status of Zoroastrians, or Magians, as part of the ahl al-dhimma – with Shiʿi strands of tradition supporting more favorable views of the Magians. We should understand mowbeds as part of this dialectic, seeking the favor of caliphs, amirs, and sometimes rival sectarian leaders. As well as providing a survey of Arabic references to mowbeds in the Islamic period, this article will study two relevant Arabic texts: the first is a previously untranslated risāla composed in 986 on behalf of the Buyid amir Ṣamṣām al-Dawla by Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Ṣābi ̉ (d. 994), in which Magians, and specifically »the sons of Ādhurbādh b. Mārsfand«, claim to have a letter of protection from ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib which grants them an exemption from paying the jizya; the second is a passage in al-Bīrūnī’s (d. 1048) al-Āthār al-bāqiya, which also asserts that the Zoroastrian priesthood was descended from Ādhurbādh b. Mārsfand – and moreover that access to knowledge of the Avesta was certified through written documents.

medieval worlds provides a forum for comparative, interdisciplinary and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. Its aim is to overcome disciplinary boundaries, regional limits and national research traditions in Medieval Studies, to open up new spaces for discussion, and to help developing global perspectives. We focus on the period from c. 400 to 1500 CE but do not stick to rigid periodization. medieval worlds is open to submissions of broadly comparative studies and matters of global interest, whether in single articles, companion papers, smaller clusters, or special issues on a subject of global/comparative history. We particularly invite studies of wide-ranging connectivity or comparison between different world regions. Apart from research articles, medieval worlds publishes ongoing debates and project and conference reports on comparative medieval research. Medieval Biographical Collections: Perspectives from Buddhist, Christian and Islamic Worlds Guest editors: Daniel Mahoney, Diarmuid Ó Riain and Giorgia Vocino Editorial Walter Pohl and Ingrid Hartl Introduction Medieval Biographical Collections in Comparison Daniel Mahoney and Giorgia Vocino Introductory Comparative Chapters Compilation Strategies Daniel Mahoney and Diarmuid Ó Riain Writing Strategies Reinier Langelaar, Giorgia Vocino and Veronika Wieser Audience and Reception Rutger Kramer and Graeme Ward Case Studies Many Lives, One Story: The Gesta Sanctorum Rotonensium and the Making of Redon Rutger Kramer Biography and Hierarchy: The Tibetan Ruling House of Phag-mo-gru and the Singular Volume of the Rlangs (Rlangs-kyi-po-ti-bse-ru) Reinier Langelaar Reading Jerome’s De viris illustribus in the Post-Roman World: Cataloguing Community in Gennadius of Marseille and Frechulf of Lisieux Graeme Ward and Veronika Wieser Shaping Community through Biographical Collections from South Arabia: A Comparison of Two Ṭabaqāt-works Johann Heiss Compiling the Deeds of Salzburg Saints: The 12th-Century De episcopis Salisburgensibus and the Monastery of Admont Diarmuid Ó Riain Obituaries in Service of the Rasūlid Sultanate in Yemen at the Turn of the 9th/15th Century Daniel Mahoney Creating a Sense of Glorious Destiny. Mastery of Speech in the Libellus de Situ Civitatis Mediolani (Late 10th-Early 11th Centuries) Giorgia Vocino Conclusion Communities and Contexts: Concluding Thoughts on Medieval Biographical Collections Diarmuid Ó Riain

The Islamic conquest of the seventh century marked the beginning of a process that pulled the Far and Central Maghreb into the emerging Islamic world. This process was, however, not straightforward. Step by step, commercial, political and intellectual bonds linked the Maghreb with the Middle Eastern centers, while religious missionaries and political dissidents arrived there and sought for adepts amongst the newly converted population. Umayyads and Fatimids used this territory to fight their battles. The conflicts between these rival regional macro-powers forced the Berber imamates to increase their dependence on the Western Umayyads in Al-Andalus. Economically the Maghreb had become part of a transregional commercial network (slave- trade) and eventually became part of the Islamicate world sharing legal practices, religious doctrines and globally connected scholarly elites. The growing influence of Maliki scholars and practices prepared the terrain for the adoption of the Maliki legal school and the marginalization of local forms of Islam. Finally, the Maghreb became part of a “Sunni” mainstream Islam throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries.

This paper explores Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist, a major primary source for Abbasid intellectual history. Although its importance for the field has been acknowledged since its first edition at the end of the nineteenth century, the studies dealing with this encyclopedic work as a whole are remarkably rare, since its material has mostly been used by researchers looking for biographic details regarding specific scholars of the Islamic Middle Ages. Our research aims to examine how Ibn al-Nadīm depicts the religious affiliation of scholars and cases of interaction between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim intellectuals. It focuses on the seventh section (maqāla) of the work, which deals with the rational sciences, a field well known for involving scholars from different religious backgrounds in Abbasid centers of knowledge, especially in the context of translation activities. After some methodological remarks, two main lines of inquiry guide our study. First, we analyze whether Ibn al-Nadīm explicitly acknowledges the religious identity of the scholars he mentions, with what vocabulary, and in which circumstances. Second, we investigate the cases of »interreligious scholarly collaboration«, when Ibn al-Nadīm depicts scholars from different religious backgrounds working together, in order to determine his conception of the knowledge produced by the Abbasid intellectual milieu. We will argue that the way he deals with interreligious relations results in emphasizing the existence of a common knowledge, in Arabic, that is shared beyond communal boundaries. By focusing on the inner structure of this work, we aim to shed new light on the question of interreligious collaboration in Abbasid society, as well as to lay the groundwork for a better understanding of the relationship between the Fihrist and its social and cultural context.

This chapter examines De episcopis Salisburgensibus, a late 12th-century collection of texts concerning the bishops and history of Salzburg that was seemingly compiled by monks belonging to the Benedictine monastery of Admont in Styria, Austria. It discusses the structure, sources, manuscript tradition and reception of this little-known collection, which focuses primarily on the ›glorious‹ early centuries of the archiepiscopal see but through the inclusion of the Lives of later bishops and a bishops’ list also stresses continuity in the sanctity and importance of the Salzburg institution. This latter message was particularly apt at the time of writing, which followed decades of upheaval due to conflict between the Salzburg archbishops and Emperor Frederick I. The compilation of this propagandistic collection by Admont monks was in keeping with the close historical and cultural relationship between the monastery and the archepiscopal see and the long-standing role of Admont as a centre for the composition and compilation of hagiographical and historiographical works concerning Salzburg and its bishops. Building upon a detailed appraisal of the manuscript evidence, this chapter shines light on the compilation strategies employed by the compilers of De episcopis Salisburgensibus and discusses the collection in the context of the special relationship between Salzburg and Admont.

This article scrutinizes two extraordinary funerary monuments to members of the Ilioni family from Genoa through paleographical methods. Erected in 1342 and 1344 respectively, they commemorate Caterina and Antonio, two children of an Italian merchant that died as members of the small Catholic community in the central Chinese trade hub of Yangzhou. Although well known in recent debates on the history of medieval travel and occasionally discussed in an art-historical context, they have not yet received an in-depth epigraphic analysis. In doing so for the first time, the article argues for the importance of such material, as processes of acculturation can be traced in the development of the scripts themselves. The epigraphy of these monuments is both in line with contemporary letter styles from northern Italy and, at the same time, epigraphic observations show how the influences of Chinese characters were slowly included in the Latin text. In sum, the authors argue that it is most likely that a Franciscan missionary gifted with some craftmanship as a stonemason generated this part of the two funerary slabs, and that this in turn forces us to think about late medieval practices of epigraphic production in Europe at the time, too. What seemed at first an exotic case of “global epigraphy” reveals itself on second glance as an example that teaches a valuable lesson about the role of friars in the epigraphy of Latin Europe more widely.

medieval worlds provides a forum for comparative, interdisciplinary and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. Its aim is to overcome disciplinary boundaries, regional limits and national research traditions in Medieval Studies, to open up new spaces for discussion, and to help developing global perspectives. We focus on the period from c. 400 to 1500 CE but do not stick to rigid periodization. medieval worlds is open to submissions of broadly comparative studies and matters of global interest, whether in single articles, companion papers, smaller clusters, or special issues on a subject of global/comparative history. We particularly invite studies of wide-ranging connectivity or comparison between different world regions. Apart from research articles, medieval worlds publishes ongoing debates and project and conference reports on comparative medieval research. Urban Agencies: Reframing Anatolian and Caucasian Cities (13th-14th Centuries) Guest Editors: Bruno de Nicola and Matthew Kinloch Preface Matthew Kinloch and Bruno de Nicola Reframing Medieval Anatolia, Caucasia, and the Aegean: Narratives, States, and Cities Matthew Kinloch Urban Agency and the City Notables of Medieval Anatolia A. C. S. Peacock Cities and Imperial Authority in the Western Provinces of the Byzantine Empire, 12th-14th Centuries Teresa Shawcross A Conceptual Account of Market Morals that Resonated in Medieval Anatolia under Christian and Muslim Rule İklil Selçuk Merchant Capital, Taxation and Urbanisation. The City of Ani in the Global Long Thirteenth Century Nicholas S. M. Matheou Looking for Urban Agency in a City of Memorials: Tomb Towers of Late-Thirteenth-Century Ahlat Oya Pancaroğlu Urban Agency in the Borderlands: Turkmen Rulers and Administrative Elites in 13th-century Kastamonu Bruno De Nicola “These are the narratives of bygone years”: Conquest of a Fortress as a Source of Legitimacy Dimitri Korobeinikov Movement and Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean: Changing Perspectives from Late Antiquity to the Long-Twelfth Century, II Guest Editors: Christopher Heath, Clemens Gantner and Edoardo Manarini The Sicilian Tithe Business: State and Merchants in the Eleventh-Century Islamic Mediterranean Lorenzo M. Bondioli "Eager to Go to the Desert": Ambiguous Views on Ascetic Women’s Holy Travels in Late Antiquity Andra Jugănaru Where the Long Way Ends: Descriptions of the Mediterranean Sea and Holy Land and the Criticism of Crusading at the Court of Henry II of England (1154-1189) Fabrizio de Falco Individual Articles "I am a virgin woman and a virgin woman’s child". Critical Plant Theory and the Maiden Mother Conceit in Early Medieval Riddles Alaric Hall and Shamira A. Meghani Latin and Hebrew Analogues to The Old Norse Leek Riddle Alaric Hall

One of the manuscripts of the famous Corpus Pelagianum contains a square world map that is simultaneously a genealogical chart of peoples that are descended from the sons of Noah. In combining a geographical imagination of the world with genealogies, this illustration becomes an impressive intellectual achievement of the high medieval Iberian Peninsula and differs considerably from other forms of medieval world maps. In this article the characteristics of this cartographical and genealogical figure will be investigated in general, but also with regard to the map’s context in the manuscript Madrid, BNE, 1513. Hence, the map will be contextualised in relation to the text corpus that follows it and, therefore, its interaction with the textual heritage of Christian-Iberian historical writing, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, will be illuminated. In particular, the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville were an important source, both for the textual content of this codex and for the information displayed on the map. Accordingly, this article is, after some introductory passages on the composition of the codex BNE 1513, divided into two parts. The first describes the characteristics of the geographical chart and compares them with other contemporary world maps. The second part addresses peoples of the world that appear in this illustration and discusses how their identification correlates with the historiographical texts in BNE 1513. So far, these parallels have not been taken into account in research on this codex.

This article addresses the themes of urban agency and state-centrism by analysing the agency of merchant capital and taxation in processes of urbanisation. The case study is the city of Ani, a now abandoned site in central south Caucasia straddling the Turkish-Armenian border, in the long thirteenth century c.1200-1350. This global-historical conjuncture is defined by the height of the medieval Commercial Revolution and its central Eurasian expression, the Silk Road. By 1200 Ani had developed as a thriving commercial centre for over two hundred years, with merchants coming to dominate the political economy in the city and its environs. By the mid-fourteenth century, however, this wealthy commercial class was no longer in evidence, with Ani’s urbanising process fundamentally transformed, beginning a rapid deurbanisation. Utilising contemporary theories of (de)urbanisation found in Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddima, this article first outlines Ani’s development up to 1200, focusing on the role of interregional and intercontinental commerce, and the urban elite’s rising dominance in landholding. Having established the mercantile and rentier regime of accumulation on which Ani’s development depended, we turn to the period of Zakarian-Mkhargrdzeli rule under the Georgian kingdom c.1200-1236, finding a wealthy commercial class hegemonic in the city’s political regime as well as the regime of accumulation. The final section, then, details the urban elite’s fortunes under Mongol Eurasian hegemony, and particularly the effects of drastically increased taxation in this political realisation of the medieval Silk Road. Ultimately the story of Ani in the global long thirteenth century forms a crucial case study for the combined agency of taxation and capital in urbanisation, both beneath and within the level of the state system, speaking to their contradictory symbiosis. At the same time, the city as a site of accumulation forms a crucial bridge in the Armenian merchant bourgeoisie’s trajectory from the medieval Commercial Revolution into the coalescence of capitalist modernity.