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The Barbarian Plain
During the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. there arose on the Euphrates frontier, between the empires of Rome and Iran, a city girded with glittering gypsum walls. Within these walls stood a great church, a shrine for the relics of Saint Sergius, who was martyred there, at Rusafa, in the early fourth century. Around Rusafa stretched the "Barbarian Plain," inhabited by Rome's Arab allies, many of whom revered the saint. Elizabeth Key Fowden examines the rise of the cult of Sergius in late antiquity, drawing on literary accounts, inscriptions, archaeology, images, and the landscape itself to construct a many-faceted picture of the role of religion in this frontier society. Focusing on the socio...
Cities as Palimpsests?
The metaphor of the palimpsest has been increasingly invoked to conceptualize cities with deep, living pasts. This volume seeks to think through, and beyond, the logic of the palimpsest, asking whether this fashionable trope slyly forces us to see contradiction where local inhabitants saw (and see) none, to impose distinctions that satisfy our own assumptions about historical periodization and cultural practice, but which bear little relation to the experience of ancient, medieval or early modern persons. Spanning the period from Constantine’s foundation of a New Rome in the fourth century to the contemporary aftermath of the Lebanese civil war, this book integrates perspectives from schol...
Studies on Hellenism, Christianity and the Umayyads
The present volume offers a partial presentation of research that has been prosecuted, in one form or another, over the past decade and more. Some early, misguided ideas about the relationship between Hellenism and the Umayyads as manifest in the paintings of Qusayr Arma appeared in chapter 6 of Garth Fowden, "Empire to commonwealth : Consequences of monotheism in late antiquity (1993) ; while in chapter 6 of "The Barbarian Plain : Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran" (1999), Elisabeth Key Fowden looked at the relationship between Christianity and Islam in Umayyad al Rusafa. A three-year grant from the "Aristeia" programme of the Greek Ministry of Development, General Secretariat for Research and Technology, within the European Union's 3rd Community Support Framework, has encouraged us to concentrate on specific aspects of these cultural interactions. A more rounded interpretation of the material, with due emphasis on the wider Islamic environment, will be published elsewhere.
Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem
In Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem, Lawrence Nees analyzes early Islamic monuments on the Haram al-Sharif, or the Temple Mount: the Dome of the Chain, and the capitals with figures of eagles in the Dome of the Rock.
Crossing Confessional Boundaries
Arguably the single most important element in Abrahamic cross-confessional relations has been an ongoing mutual interest in perennial spiritual and ethical exemplars of one another’s communities. Ranging from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages, Crossing Confessional Boundaries explores the complex roles played by saints, sages, and Friends of God in the communal and intercommunal lives of Christians, Muslims, and Jews across the Mediterranean world, from Spain and North Africa to the Middle East to the Balkans. By examining these stories in their broad institutional, social, and cultural contexts, Crossing Confessional Boundaries reveals unique theological insights into the interlocking histories of the Abrahamic faiths.
Envisioning Islam
The first Christians to encounter Islam were not Latin-speakers from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speakers from Constantinople but Mesopotamian Christians who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Under Muslim rule from the seventh century onward, Syriac Christians wrote the most extensive descriptions extant of early Islam. Seldom translated and often omitted from modern historical reconstructions, this vast body of texts reveals a complicated and evolving range of religious and cultural exchanges that took place from the seventh to the ninth century. The first book-length analysis of these earliest encounters, Envisioning Islam highlights the ways these neglected texts challenge the m...
Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond
The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one, the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon. The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as an external comparator that was not caug...
Arms and Armour of the Warrior Saints
This study investigates whether military equipment shown in images of warrior saints reflects items used by the mid-Byzantine Army or repeats Classical forms. This in turn answers questions on the originality of Byzantine art and its reliability as a historical source.
The Enneads of Plotinus
Volume 2: "An English-language commentary on the Fourth and Fifth Enneads of Plotinus"--
Byzantium and Islam
This magnificent volume explores the epochal transformations and unexpected continuities in the Byzantine Empire from the 7th to the 9th century. At the beginning of the 7th century, the Empire's southern provinces, the vibrant, diverse areas of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, were at the crossroads of exchanges reaching from Spain to China. These regions experienced historic upheavals when their Christian and Jewish communities encountered the emerging Islamic world, and by the 9th century, an unprecedented cross- fertilization of cultures had taken place. This extraordinary age is brought vividly to life in insightful contributions by leading international scholars, accompanied...
