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Aksum and Nubia assembles and analyzes the textual and archaeological evidence of interaction between Nubia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, focusing primarily on the fourth century CE. Although ancient Nubia and Ethiopia have been the subject of a growing number of studies in recent years, little attention has been given to contact between these two regions. Hatke argues that ancient Northeast Africa cannot be treated as a unified area politically, economically, or culturally. Rather, Nubia and Ethiopia developed within very different regional spheres of interaction, as a result of which the Nubian kingdom of Kush came to focus its energies on the Nile Valley, relying on this as its main...
Aksum and Nubia assembles and analyzes the textual and archaeological evidence of interaction between Nubia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, focusing primarily on the fourth century CE. Although ancient Nubia and Ethiopia have been the subject of a growing number of studies in recent years, little attention has been given to contact between these two regions. Hatke argues that ancient Northeast Africa cannot be treated as a unified area politically, economically, or culturally. Rather, Nubia and Ethiopia developed within very different regional spheres of interaction, as a result of which the Nubian kingdom of Kush came to focus its energies on the Nile Valley, relying on this as its main...
A comprehensive and innovative reconstruction of the emergence of early Muslim religion and polity in their historical, religious and ethnological contexts. Intended principally for scholars of late antiquity, Islamic studies and the history of religions, the book opens up many novel directions for future research.
Leading historian G.W. Bowersock provides a narrative account of a fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history — the holy war between Christian Ethiopians and Jewish Arabs in the sixth century AD.
This study develops a methodology for approaching homilies that draws on a broader understanding of audience as both the physical audience and the readership of sermons. It then offers a case study on the Syriac preacher Jacob of Serguh whose metrical homilies form one of the largest sermon collections in any language from late antiquity.
South Arabia, an area encompassing all of today’s Yemen and neighboring regions in Saudi Arabia and Oman, is one of the least-known parts of the Near East. However, it is primarily due to its remoteness, coupled with the difficulty of access, that South Arabia remains under-researched, for this region was, in fact, very important during pre-Islamic times. By virtue of its location at the crossroads of caravan and maritime routes, pre-Islamic South Arabia linked the Near East with Africa and the Mediterranean with India. The region is also unique in that it has a written history extending as far back as the early first millennium BCE—a far longer history, indeed, than any other part of the Arabian Peninsula. The papers collected in this volume make a number of important contributions to the study of the history and languages of ancient South Arabia, as well as the history of the modern study of South Arabia’s past, which will be of interest to scholars and laypeople alike.
This volume looks at 'visions of community' in a comparative perspective, from Late Antiquity to the dawning of the age of crusades. It addresses the question of why and how distinctive new political cultures developed after the disintegration of the Roman World, and to what degree their differences had already emerged in the first post-Roman centuries. The Latin West, Orthodox Byzantium and its Slavic periphery, and the Islamic world each retained different parts of the Graeco-Roman heritage, while introducing new elements. For instance, ethnicity became a legitimizing element of rulership in the West, remained a structural element of the imperial periphery in Byzantium, and contributed to ...
How the Qur’ān reflects on and responds to the regional cultural, religious and political currents swirling in Western Arabia and neighboring areas during the great war, 603-630, between the Roman and Sasanian empires? The book approaches the Qur’ān through six case studies. The first two consider the era 200-800 CE, which classicist Peter Brown dubbed late antiquity. The second two contextualize quranic stories and tropes in the era of Herakleios and Khosrow II. The final pair consider issues in how the Qur’ān was constituted, both physically and stylistically, and also sets these processes in their late antique context. The book treats the constitution of the quranic text, first physically and then rhetorically. The use in the Qur’ān of the technique of narrative apostrophe is for the first time subjected to a concerted analysis. These themes are all united by a concern to understand better issues in why the Qur’ān makes certain narrative choices, how the narrative changes over time, and how it articulates with other texts and perspectives.
Ethiopia and Eritrea are home to Africa's oldest written historical tradition, which began in the third century with the monuments and manuscripts of Aksum and has continued to the present day. This study explores the development of this rich tradition, focusing in particular on the dramatic lives and original thought of a group of early twentieth-century Ethiopian and Eritrean historians. James De Lorenzi examines how these scholars used historiography to not only record the past but also grapple with the changes of the modern era. Through their history writings, they made provocative political claims, explored the nature of their communal ties, assessed their inherited institutions and ideas, and critically evaluated the people and cultures of the wider world. Opposing the view that historiography is a uniquely Western intellectual pursuit, Guardians of the Tradition provides new evidence of an African historical consciousness and the vibrancy of history writing outside the West. James De Lorenzi is associate professor of history at John Jay College, City University of New York.
The House of Serenos, Part II (Amheida VI) is the latest monograph in the Amheida series and the second volume dedicated to the archaeology of the large élite residence now known as the “House of Serenos,” at Amheida, or the ancient city of Trimithis, in the Dakhla Oasis of the Western Desert of Egypt. The Amheida project started in 2001 and since 2008 New York University has been the primary sponsoring institution. The House of Serenos was one of the three main areas under investigation between 2004 and 2010. For more information about the Amheida Project, please follow this link. In this volume Paola Davoli provides an authoritative account of the architectural and archaeological hist...