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Artillery in the Era of the Crusades provides a detailed examination of the use of mechanical artillery in the Levant through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Rather than focus on a selection of sensational anecdotes, Michael S. Fulton explores the full scope of the available literary and archaeological evidence, reinterpreting the development of trebuchet technology and the ways in which it was used during this period. Among the arguments put forward, Fulton challenges the popular perception that the invention of the counterweight trebuchet was responsible for the dramatic transformation in the design of fortifications around the start of the thirteenth century. See inside the book.
In Reinventing Jihād, Kenneth A. Goudie provides a detailed examination of the development of jihād ideology from the Conquest of Jerusalem to the end of the Ayyūbids (c. 492/1099–647/1249). By analysing the writings of three scholars - Abū al Ḥasan al Sulamī (d. 500/1106), Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176), and ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Sulamī (d. 660/1262) - Reinventing Jihād demonstrates that the discourse on jihād was much broader than previously thought, and that authors interwove a range of different understandings of jihād in their attempts to encourage jihād against the Franks. More importantly, Reinventing Jihad demonstrates that whilst the practice of jihād did not begin in earnest until the middle of the twelfth century, the same cannot be said about jihād ideology: interest in jihād ideology was reinvigorated almost from the moment of the arrival of the Franks.
This book uses photographs as documentary evidence to study Islamic architecture. The Creswell photographic archive at the American University in Cairo is an invaluable resource of over 12,000 printed images of Islamic architecture, mainly in Cairo, but also including buildings in other important cities such as Cordoba and Baghdad. Creswell's own photographs constitute the majority of the collection, but he also assembled work by photographers active in the decades before he began his systematic recording in the 1920s.
The focus of this collection of articles by Donald J. Kagay is the effect of the expansion of royal government on the societies of the medieval Crown of Aragon. He shows how the extensive episodes of warfare during the 13th and 14th centuries served as a catalyst for the extension of the king's law and government across the varied topography and political landscape of eastern Spain. In the long conflicts against Spanish Islam and neighbouring Christian states, the relationships of royal to customary law, of monarchical to aristocratic power, and of Christian to Jewish and Muslim populations, all became issues that marked the transition of the medieval Crown of Aragon to the early modern states of Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia, and finally to the modern Spanish nation.
This collection of eighteen essays focuses on various phases of warfare around the medieval Mediterranean. Topics of these essays range from crusading activity to the increasing use of mercenaries to the spread of gunpowder weaponry.
The ongoing conflict in Syria has made clear just how limited the general knowledge of Syrian society and history is in the West. For those watching the headlines and wondering what led the nation to this point, and what might come next, this book is a perfect place to start developing a deeper understanding. Based on decades of living and working in Syria, My House in Damascus offers an inside view of Syria’s cultural and complex religious and ethnic communities. Diana Darke, a fluent Arabic speaker who moved to Damascus in 2004 after decades of regular visits, details the ways that the Assad regime, and its relationship to the people, differs from the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya—and why it was thus always less likely to collapse quickly, even in the face of widespread unrest and violence. Through the author’s firsthand experiences of buying and restoring a house in the old city of Damascus, which she later offered as a sanctuary to friends, Darke presents a clear picture of the realities of life on the ground and what hope there is for Syria’s future.
This book is the first archival study of the Mudejar or conquered Muslim community of Xàtiva from 1240 until 1327. It is a long overdue model study of the largest and most important Mudejar community in the kingdom of Valencia.
A Plural Peninsula embodies and upholds Professor Simon Barton’s influential scholarly legacy, eschewing rigid disciplinary boundaries. Focusing on textual, archaeological, visual and material culture, the sixteen studies in this volume offer new and important insights into the historical, socio-political and cultural dynamics characterising different, yet interconnected areas within Iberia and the Mediterranean. The structural themes of this volume --the creation and manipulation of historical, historiographical and emotional narratives; changes and continuity in patterns of exchange, cross-fertilisation and the recovery of tradition; and the management of conflict, crisis, power and authority-- are also particularly relevant for the postmedieval period, within and beyond Iberia. Contributors are Janna Bianchini, Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Simon R. Doubleday, Ana Echevarría Arsuaga, Maribel Fierro, Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo, Fernando Luis Corral, Therese Martin, Iñaki Martín Viso, Amy G. Remensnyder, Maya Soifer Irish, -Teresa Tinsley, Sonia Vital Fernández, Alun Williams, Teresa Witcombe, and Jamie Wood. See inside the book
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.
Highlights the range and richness of scholarship on medieval warfare, military institutions, and cultures of conflict that characterize the field. History 95 (2010)