Suchergebnisse

AbstractLarge scale excavations at the ancient urban sites of Pella and Jarash (Gerasa) in Jordan have produced a statistically viable body of data on coin supply and circulation in Byzantine and early Islamic Palestine and Arabia. A comparison of the copper coins (folles and fractions) recovered at these sites reveals consistent trends, notably a major increase in supply during the reigns of Justin I and especially Justin II. After Justin II (d. 578) there is a marked decline in the supply and circulation of copper coins, even taking into account ß uctuating production levels and quality of folles in the later sixth and seventh centuries. The presence of a greater number of mints suggests no major consignments but only the local circulation of coins. A minor improvement in coinage levels at Pella in the late sixth to early seventh century may re ß ect the growing local strategic importance of the town. Support for this explanation can be seen in the expansion of Pella's Byzantine fort and, soon after, the important battle between the Islamic and Byzantine armies in 635.

The Liber pontificalis, the serial biography of the popes running from St Peter to the end of the ninth century, first compiled in Rome during the 'Gothic wars' in the sixth century and continued at various stages in the next three centuries, offers a distinctive narrative of the history of Rome and of the papacy in the early middle ages. This paper argues that the seventh- and early eighth-century sections, too often simply mined for nuggets of information about church buildings, represent the pope in a particular way both in relation to Byzantium in theological and political terms, and as the successor to St Peter in Rome. The papal narrative undermines the usual assumptions about the so-called Byzantine Reconquest and the Roman perception, if not the reality, of the degree to which 'Byzantine rule' was exercised in Italy between the middle of the sixth and first half of the eighth century. Lastly, these 'continuations' have important implications for any interpretation of the purpose and construction of the Liber pontificalis, and of its dissemination beyond Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries. ; This is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently under an indefinite embargo pending publication by Cambridge University Press.

Monetary systems are catalysts for economic, social and political progress. The interdependence between monetary, economic and political order is illustrated by currency competition between the Byzantine and Muslim empires in the seventh century. The evolution of an Islamic gold standard demonstrates that Byzantine and Muslim ruling circles were conversant with the dynamics of currency competition. In keeping with the theory of currency competition, the creation of the Muslim gold standard marked the beginning of a rapid economic outperformance by the Islamic empire.

The present paper is a study on the circulation of historiographical material across linguistic, religious and political borders in the seventh-century Near East and Mediterranean. Contrary to other scholars, who have tried to explain the similarities among certain historical texts looking only for shared written sources, the author points out the importance that oral transmission must have had in the circulation of historical information, before and beside written production, and finds evidence for that in eight medieval chronicles written in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic. ; " Narration des histoires " et " écriture de l'Histoire " dans le Proche-Orient du septième siècle. Cet article présente une étude sur la circulation des matériaux historiographiques à travers les frontières linguistiques, religieuses et politiques au Proche-Orient et à travers la Méditerranée au septième siècle. Les similarités que l'on observe entre certains textes historiques ont toujours été expliquées par l'utilisation de la même source écrite, mais l'auteur fait ici remarquer que la transmission orale devait aussi jouer un rôle très important dans la circulation des informations historiques, avant et à côté de la production écrite. On en trouve notamment des traces dans huit chroniques médiévales écrites en grec, latin, syriaque et arabe.

The present paper is a study on the circulation of historiographical material across linguistic, religious and political borders in the seventh-century Near East and Mediterranean. Contrary to other scholars, who have tried to explain the similarities among certain historical texts looking only for shared written sources, the author points out the importance that oral transmission must have had in the circulation of historical information, before and beside written production, and finds evidence for that in eight medieval chronicles written in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic. ; " Narration des histoires " et " écriture de l'Histoire " dans le Proche-Orient du septième siècle. Cet article présente une étude sur la circulation des matériaux historiographiques à travers les frontières linguistiques, religieuses et politiques au Proche-Orient et à travers la Méditerranée au septième siècle. Les similarités que l'on observe entre certains textes historiques ont toujours été expliquées par l'utilisation de la même source écrite, mais l'auteur fait ici remarquer que la transmission orale devait aussi jouer un rôle très important dans la circulation des informations historiques, avant et à côté de la production écrite. On en trouve notamment des traces dans huit chroniques médiévales écrites en grec, latin, syriaque et arabe.

The present paper is a study on the circulation of historiographical material across linguistic, religious and political borders in the seventh-century Near East and Mediterranean. Contrary to other scholars, who have tried to explain the similarities among certain historical texts looking only for shared written sources, the author points out the importance that oral transmission must have had in the circulation of historical information, before and beside written production, and finds evidence for that in eight medieval chronicles written in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic. ; " Narration des histoires " et " écriture de l'Histoire " dans le Proche-Orient du septième siècle. Cet article présente une étude sur la circulation des matériaux historiographiques à travers les frontières linguistiques, religieuses et politiques au Proche-Orient et à travers la Méditerranée au septième siècle. Les similarités que l'on observe entre certains textes historiques ont toujours été expliquées par l'utilisation de la même source écrite, mais l'auteur fait ici remarquer que la transmission orale devait aussi jouer un rôle très important dans la circulation des informations historiques, avant et à côté de la production écrite. On en trouve notamment des traces dans huit chroniques médiévales écrites en grec, latin, syriaque et arabe.

The present paper is a study on the circulation of historiographical material across linguistic, religious and political borders in the seventh-century Near East and Mediterranean. Contrary to other scholars, who have tried to explain the similarities among certain historical texts looking only for shared written sources, the author points out the importance that oral transmission must have had in the circulation of historical information, before and beside written production, and finds evidence for that in eight medieval chronicles written in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic. ; " Narration des histoires " et " écriture de l'Histoire " dans le Proche-Orient du septième siècle. Cet article présente une étude sur la circulation des matériaux historiographiques à travers les frontières linguistiques, religieuses et politiques au Proche-Orient et à travers la Méditerranée au septième siècle. Les similarités que l'on observe entre certains textes historiques ont toujours été expliquées par l'utilisation de la même source écrite, mais l'auteur fait ici remarquer que la transmission orale devait aussi jouer un rôle très important dans la circulation des informations historiques, avant et à côté de la production écrite. On en trouve notamment des traces dans huit chroniques médiévales écrites en grec, latin, syriaque et arabe.

The present paper is a study on the circulation of historiographical material across linguistic, religious and political borders in the seventh-century Near East and Mediterranean. Contrary to other scholars, who have tried to explain the similarities among certain historical texts looking only for shared written sources, the author points out the importance that oral transmission must have had in the circulation of historical information, before and beside written production, and finds evidence for that in eight medieval chronicles written in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic. ; " Narration des histoires " et " écriture de l'Histoire " dans le Proche-Orient du septième siècle. Cet article présente une étude sur la circulation des matériaux historiographiques à travers les frontières linguistiques, religieuses et politiques au Proche-Orient et à travers la Méditerranée au septième siècle. Les similarités que l'on observe entre certains textes historiques ont toujours été expliquées par l'utilisation de la même source écrite, mais l'auteur fait ici remarquer que la transmission orale devait aussi jouer un rôle très important dans la circulation des informations historiques, avant et à côté de la production écrite. On en trouve notamment des traces dans huit chroniques médiévales écrites en grec, latin, syriaque et arabe.

In 589, Reccared, king of the Visigoths in Spain, converted from Arian to Catholic Christianity. Arianism was banned, and after a brief period which saw the repression of rebellions, eliminated from the kingdom. All Goths were required to become Catholic. This watershed in Visigothic history both necessitated and facilitated a renegotiation of the parameters of Gothic identity. The entire kingdom was affected: the ruling Visigoths, the small population of recently conquered Sueves, and the Hispano-Romans who were left under the rule of the Goths when the Western Roman Empire fell apart.[1] This Roman population also included some Jews. While the Catholic Romans—the majority—now shared a common faith with their rulers and could therefore better assimilate with them, the Jewish Romans did not, and could not. In this paper, I will trace the process by which the Catholic Romans came to be identified as Goths after 589 and show how the rise of anti-Jewish legislation paralleled this phenomenon. While this observation is neither new nor particularly surprising—or perhaps because it is not—the precise dynamics of this process have been relatively unexplored. As a result, the process has been misunderstood as a shift from ethnic to religious identification or as the beginning of virulent anti-Semitism that foreshadows later persecution in the Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews in 1492. Interpretations of the 'othering' of Jews can be shaped by contemporary concerns as much as—if not more than—by a balanced assessment of the early medieval period. For example, in the nineteenth century, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo wrote a history that depicted an unbroken inheritance from the Visigoths to contemporary Spaniards. He equated modern Spanish identity with Gothic Catholic identity and used it to justify the exclusion of Jews and Muslims from the country in his own day.In this vein, I suggest that a careful look at the language in which Gothicness was expressed throughout the pivotal seventh century and the consequences of this language for Jewish identity reveals a shift in political, ethnic, and religious meanings that seems in many ways to not really be about the Jews at all.