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After Expulsion
A “groundbreaking” portrait of the migration and resettlement of Spain’s Jewish community after 1492, and how the Sephardic identity emerged (American Historical Review). Honorable Mention, Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History presented by the Association for Jewish Studies On August 3, 1492, the same day that Columbus set sail from Spain, the long and glorious history of that nation’s Jewish community officially came to a close. The expulsion of Europe’s last major Jewish community ended more than a thousand years of unparalleled prosperity, cultural vitality, and intellectual productivity. Yet, the crisis of 1492 also gave rise to a dynamic and ...
Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society
Gender was a key social indicator in Byzantine society, as in many others. While studies of gender in the western medieval period have appeared regularly in the past decade, similar studies of Byzantium have lagged behind. Masculine and feminine roles were not always as clearly defined as in the West, while eunuchs made up a 'third gender' in the imperial court. Social status indicators were also in a state of flux, as much linked to patronage networks as to wealth, as the Empire came under a series of external and internal pressures. This fluidity applied equally in ecclesiastical and secular spheres. The present collection of essays uncovers gender roles in the imperial family, in monastic...
Contested Treasure
In Contested Treasure, Thomas Barton examines how the Jews in the Crown of Aragon in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries negotiated the overlapping jurisdictions and power relations of local lords and the crown. The thirteenth century was a formative period for the growth of royal bureaucracy and the development of the crown’s legal claims regarding the Jews. While many Jews were under direct royal authority, significant numbers of Jews also lived under nonroyal and seigniorial jurisdiction. Barton argues that royal authority over the Jews (as well as Muslims) was far more modest and contingent on local factors than is usually recognized. Diverse case studies reveal that the monarchy...
The Hungry City
The Hungry City is the story of medieval Barcelona, retold through the lens of food and famine. Between the summer of 1333 and the spring of 1334, severe weather-related grain shortages spread throughout the Mediterranean, and Barcelona's leaders struggled to bring food to the city as its residents grew increasingly desperate. Employing the perspectives of historical actors whose stories are drawn from the records of that catastrophic year, Marie A. Kelleher uses Barcelonans' varied responses to crisis in the food system to present multiple ways of understanding the city—as a physical space, as the center of a network of Mediterranean commerce, as one powerful entity within a broader monar...
Victory's Shadow
At the beginning of the eleventh century, Catalonia was a patchwork of counties, viscounties, and lordships that bordered Islamic al-Andalus to the south. Over the next two centuries, the region underwent a dramatic transformation. The counts of Barcelona secured title to the neighboring kingdom of Aragon through marriage and this newly constituted Crown of Aragon, after numerous failed attempts, finally conquered the Islamic states positioned along its southern frontier in the mid-twelfth century. Successful conquest, however, necessitated considerable organizational challenges that threatened to destabilize, politically and economically, this triumphant regime. The Aragonese monarchy's eff...
A Cumulative Bibliography of Medieval Military History and Technology, Update 2003-2006
This is the second update of A Cumulative Bibliography of Medieval Military History and Technology, which appeared in 2002. It is meant to do two things: to present references to works on medieval military history and technology not included in the first two volumes; and to present references to all books and articles published on medieval military history and technology from 2003 to 2006. These references are divided into the same categories as in the first two volumes and cover a chronological period of the same length, from late antiquity to 1648, again in order to present a more complete picture of influences on and from the Middle Ages. It also continues to cover the same geographical area as the first and second volume, in essence Europe and the Middle East, or, again, influences on and from this area. The languages of these bibliographical references reflect this geography.
The Measure of Woman
By the end of the Middle Ages, the ius commune—the combination of canon and Roman law—had formed the basis for all law in continental Europe, along with its patriarchal system of categorizing women. Throughout medieval Europe, women regularly found themselves in court, suing or being sued, defending themselves against criminal accusations, or prosecuting others for crimes committed against them or their families. Yet choosing to litigate entailed accepting the conceptual vocabulary of the learned law, thereby reinforcing the very legal and social notions that often subordinated them. In The Measure of Woman Marie A. Kelleher explores the complex relationship between women and legal cultu...
Breaching the Bronze Wall: Franks at Mamluk and Ottoman Courts and Markets
Breaching the Bronze Wall deals with the idea that the words of honorable Muslims constitutes proof and that written documents and the words of non-Muslims are of inferior value. Thus, foreign merchants in cities such as Istanbul, Damascus or Alexandria could barely prove any claim, as neither their contracts nor their words were of any value if countered by Muslims. Francisco Apellániz explores how both groups labored to overcome the ‘biases against non-Muslims’ in Mamlūk Egypt’s and Syria’s courts and markets (14th-15th c.) and how the Ottoman conquest (1517) imposed a new, orthodox view on the problem. The book slips into the Middle Eastern archive and the Ottoman Dīvān, and scrutinizes sharīʿa’s intricacies and their handling by consuls, dragomans, qaḍīs and other legal actors.
