Medieval Islamic History

This article surveys the most important Christian (Coptic and Melkite) and Islamic sources for the study of Egypt from the Arab conquest (641 ce) through the mid-ninth century. Beginning with a discussion of reference works, the article turns to narrative, hagiographic, and apocalyptic texts that focus specifically on Egypt. The latter section identifies the essential print and online resources for the study of Greek, Coptic, and Arabic papyri through the ninth century.

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Early human food cultures were plant-based. Major religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism have recommended a vegetarian way of life since their conception. The recorded history of vegetarian nutrition started in the sixth century bc by followers of the Orphic mysteries. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras is considered the father of ethical vegetarianism. The Pythagorean way of life was followed by a number of important personalities and influenced vegetarian nutrition until the 19th century. In Europe, vegetarian nutrition more or less disappeared during the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance era and in the Age of Enlightenment, various personalities practiced vegetarianism. The first vegetarian society was started in England in 1847. The International Vegetarian Society was founded in 1908 and the first vegan society began in 1944. Prominent vegetarians during this time included Sylvester Graham, John Harvey Kellogg, and Maximilian Bircher-Benner. A paradigm shift occurred at the turn o...

This contribution dwells on popular culture in Mamluk Egypt and Syria. Following a short examination of this topic and of the sources, the study focuses on three themes: the cycle of life, the cycle of the year and sacred topography. Popular manners and customs provoked opposition from religious circles. A condensed delineation of these voices is provided at the closing part of the article.

Among Native American peoples, there is a haunting and beautiful phrase to describe the often extraordinary moments of interaction between the world of animals and that of humans when both meet, often unexpectedly, in an almost magical form of communion. It is said that when that encounter occurs, and the bond of friendship is strengthened in a unique way, they have walked together "in the shadow of a rainbow." (The saying was widely introduced to the public through the work of Robert Franklin Leslie, whose book In the Shadow of a Rainbow, published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1974, recounted the true story of a remarkable friendship between a man and a wolf.) No better description can indeed be applied to the deep relationship established between companion animal and human caregiver during the precious and meaningful time referred to as animal hospice. For although both may have nurtured mutual love and deep respect during a lifetime together, it is the journey they undertake when they enter a hospice experience side by side that defines the personal transformation both undergo. They become one as they walk the path, accepting of each other's weaknesses yet cognizant of their inner strength, and increasingly aware that the journey is about to begin. It behooves us to better understand what animal hospice is and how it evolved into its present-day form by examining its history in relation to the development of human hospice, from which it derives its basic principles and to which it is closely allied. As the president and founder of the Nikki Hospice Foundation for Pets (the NHFP), the nation's first nonprofit organization devoted to the provision of home hospice care for No funding support was sought for this work. The author has nothing to disclose.

Scholars have made contesting claims about the nature and scale of works on religions by Muslim scholars before modern times. The present paper explores various primary and secondary sources, especially the classical bibliographical indexes that the scholarly tradition under scrutiny itself produced, and classifies these works into three types: (a) polemics, (b) works that present authentic knowledge about various faith traditions or introduce methodological novelties but carry some degree of apologetic undertone, and (c) descriptive writings on religions which resemble the modern-day academic study of religion. Based on these distinctions and an assessment of the number of works in each type, the paper maintains that a sprouting tradition of descriptive studies of religions existed in the pre-modern Muslim societies, which introduced certain methodical novelties such as comparative method, historiography, and, last but not least, textual criticism, which seems to have heralded the modern biblical studies in some respects. However, this tradition could not mature into a full-fledged discipline at par with many other branches of knowledge that flourished in the heyday of Muslim civilization. These findings imply that the descriptive study of religions other than one’s own is not necessarily a modern Western phenomenon. It can take root in multiple cultural settings.

The article describes the Fada'il-i Balkh—a thirteenth-century local history of Balkh, in eastern Khurasan—
and sets its historiographical elements within the wider context of Islamic historiography through a source critical
study. The author also uses the Fada'il-i Balkh in order to tackle the question of the relationship
between the proliferation of Arabic and Persian local histories in the tenth and eleventh centuries and the
contemporary changes in urban identities that occurred as local autonomy increased and the control of the
caliphate weakened.

Cranial deformation is known to influence many traditional craniometric variables, but its effects on nonmetric trait variation are not well characterized. In this study, we examine the effects of three types of deformation (annular, lambdoid flattening, and fronto-occipital) on nonmetric traits, using a large sample of protohistoric and prehistoric crania. Our results

Reading through the sources written in the Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1517), one receives the impression that the political borders between the Mamluk and Ilkhanid realms were just that-in no ways cultural or even serious physical barriers. This paper will demonstrate this by focusing on the biography of Niẓām al-Dīn Yaḥyā al-Ṭayyārī (685-760/1286/7-1358/9~). His father served under the Ilkhans as a physician and scribe, while Niẓām al-Dīn grew up into the Ilkhanid elite and became a prolific calligrapher, scribe and musician in his own right, being especially close to the Sultan Abū Sa'īd and his vizier, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad. After the death of Abū Sa'īd and the subsequent disintegration of the Ilkhanate, Niẓām al-Dīn made his way to the Mamluk Sultanate, where his artistic talents were very much appreciated, representing the glorious artistic tradition of the east. Despite his seemingly smooth reception in the ruling circles of the Mamluk Sultanate, Niẓām al-Dīn seems to have remained attached to his homeland, and to the lavish properties which he left behind him. He subsequently returned to Baghdad, where he was immediately reinstated to his former duties. Following and analyzing the career of Niẓām al-Dīn can grant insights into court culture of the Muslim world of his age, where similarities in taste and bureaucratic traditions probably outweighed the differences. We also learn about mobility, cultural exchange and artistic sensibilities between the two competing courts.

For the whole of the 20th century it was believed that the Black Death and all the plagues of Europe (1347-1670) were epidemics of bubonic plague. This review presents evidence that this view is incorrect and that the disease was a viral haemorrhagic fever, characterised by a long incubation period of 32 days, which allowed it to be spread widely even with the limited transport of the Middle Ages. It is suggested that haemorrhagic plague emerged from its animal host in Ethiopia and struck repeatedly at European/Asian civilisations, before appearing as the Black Death. The CCR5-Delta32 mutation confers protection against HIV-1 in an average of 10% of the people of European origin today. It is suggested that all the Deltaccr5 alleles originated from a single mutation event that occurred before 1000 BC and the subsequent epidemics of haemorrhagic plague gently forced up its frequency to 5 x 10(-5) at the time of the Black Death. Epidemics of haemorrhagic plague over the next three cent...

Abū Ḥanīfa has been seriously and repeatedly censured from various angles starting during his lifetime. One can easily come across these criticisms in biographical
literature such as the ṭabaqāt and rijāl works. It may be observed that it is his raʾycentered jurisprudence that is brought to the fore in the criticisms mostly pronounced by Ahl al-ḥadīth. Ḥanafīs have struggled to respond to the attacks on Abū Ḥanīfa through various strategies. One particular strategy was employed by Ibn Abī al-Wafāʾ Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qurashī (d.775/1373) in the concise biography of Abū Ḥanīfa found in the introductory section of his al-Jawāhir al-Muḍiyya fī Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanafiyya, one of the most voluminous biographical works dedicated to Ḥanafī jurists. In this article, I focus on how al-Qurashī presents Abū Ḥanīfa in his work: I discuss which aspects and qualities of Abu Ḥanīfa he highlights, what his sources for the biography are, and what kind of an Abū Ḥanīfa portrait he eventually depicts for his readers. I try to identify the original aspects of al-Qurashī’s biography by comparing it with how Abū Ḥanīfa is portrayed in earlier biographical entries (especially those found in ṭabaqāt-rijāl works). I conclude that al-Qurashī attempted to construct a biography significantly different from earlier perceptions of Abū Ḥanīfa: instead of presenting him as a great faqīh famous with his legal thinking and argumentation (raʾy), he chose to portray him as a muḥaddith, well-versed in ḥadīth transmission and rijāl criticism (al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl). Why al-Qurashī preferred to do this is furthermore discussed in the context of the intellectual and socio cultural milieu of the Mamlūk Egypt. One final goal of the article is to demonstrate through the example of Abū Ḥanīfa how and why the perception and presentation of
influential figures of the Islamic tradition are shaped and reshaped according to the developments, changes, and needs in the historical process.
Keywords: Abū Ḥanīfa, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qurashī, al-Jawāhir al-Muḍiyya, Ṭabaqāt Literature, Rijāl Literature, Islamic Biographical Literature, Mamlūks, Ḥanafīs, Ahl al-Ḥadīth, Ahl al-Raʾy.

Throughout the twelfth century, a number of Arabic-speaking Muslims produced poetry in the court of the Normans of Sicily. This article examines literary figures active under Roger II in the context of their interlocutors, professional colleagues, and other contemporaries around the western Mediterranean and North Africa. It argues that, in this context, most of the Sicilian Arab literary figures were only secondarily poets, their primary role being within a chancery or other administrative milieu, and that they continued to assert an undiminished Islamic identity, although living under Christian rule. This identity is mirrored in the intertextual play on topoi (maʿānī) found in Sicilian Arabic poetry, which was heavily engaged with cultural activity around the Mediterranean

The review article presents some of the history of how paleoparasitology started in Brazil, making highlight the great responsible Dr. Luiz Fernando Ferreira and Dr. Adauto Araújo, the trajectory of paleoparasitology in Brazil since 1978 and its performance in science to the present day. In sequence, it is made a presentation of parasitological findings on human remains found in archaeological sites in South America, highlighting Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru, where major discoveries have occurred. Many of the parasites found in archaeological material and mentioned in this review went out of Africa with the peopling of Europe and from there they dispersed around the world, where climatic conditions allow the transmission. However, humans have acquired other parasites of animals, since humans invaded new habitats or creating new habits adopting new technologies, thus expanding its range of influence on the environment. Thus, this review article is finalized with information tha...

Abstract – The study of the economic history of Bilād al-Shām during the Mamluk period is hampered by a lack of detailed sources. This makes the Syrian historian al-Jazarī's description of the agricultural production of the Damascus and the Ghūtạ plain in the 14th century CE and the organization of tax collections there all the more interesting. The present paper attempts to examine the variety of agricultural production in the greater Damascus area and to analyze the role of agriculture in its economic system. It does so also by focusing on the close connections between the city of Damascus and its hinterland at the end of the Middle Ages.

Keywords: Damascus - Ghūṭa - Mamluk period - agricultural products - tax system - prices

Résumé – L'histoire économique de Damas et du Bilād al-Shām à l'époque mamelouke demeure un champ de recherche difficile à explorer du fait de la rareté des documents d'archives disponibles et du caractère épars des informations dans les textes historiques. En prenant comme source principale un passage particulièrement détaillé de la chronique de l'historien al-Jazarī (VIIIe/XIVe siècle), cet article entend non seulement mettre en lumière la richesse et la diversité de la production agricole de Damas mais également contribuer à une meilleure connaissance de l'économie et du système fiscal de la ville et de sa campagne, la Ghūtạ , à la fin de la période médiévale.

Mots-clés : Damas - Ghūṭa - période mamelouke - production agricole - fiscalité - prix

A critical analysis was made of cucurbit descriptions in Dioscorides' De Materia Medica, Columella's De Re Rustica and Pliny's Historia Naturalis, works on medicine, agriculture and natural science of the 1st century ce, as well as the Mishna and Tosefta, compilations of rabbinic law derived from the same time period together with cucurbit images dating from antiquity including paintings, mosaics and sculpture. The goal was to identify taxonomically the Mediterranean cucurbits at the time of the Roman Empire. By ancient times, long-fruited forms of Cucumis melo (melon) and Lagenaria siceraria (bottle gourd) were selected, cultivated and used as vegetables around the Mediterranean and, in addition, bottle-shaped fruits of L. siceraria were employed as vessels. Citrullus lanatus (watermelons) and round-fruited forms of Cucumis melo (melons) were also consumed, but less commonly. A number of cucurbit species, including Bryonia alba, B. dioica, Citrullus colocynthis and Ecba...

This article traces the early transmission for ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī’s (539–632/1145–1234) influential Sufi treatise Benefits of Intimate Knowledge (ʿAwārif al-Maʿārif). Analyzing the biographical dictionaries, authorization certificates (ijāza), and audition (samāʿ) records in the early copies of the work, it aims to produce an initial yet complex map of scholarly networks that formally disseminated al-Suhrawardī’s masterpiece, with a focus on the first two centuries of its composition. These networks, as the article observes, go beyond the transmissions of the initiatic robe and the mystical formula of the Sufi order (ṭarīqa), insofar as some key figures in the early transmission were traditionists who neither received a Suhrawardian initiatic robe nor had any known connection with Sufism at large. The article suggests that the audition sessions of traditionist circles particularly in the Hijaz played a key role in the early transmission of ʿAwārif al-Maʿārif. Its transmission was part and parcel of the circulation of a broader set of works, those on prophetic traditions (ḥadīth) in particular, such as Musnad al-Dārimī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, and Ṣaḥīḥ al-Muslim. We find ʿAwārif al-Maʿārif in a long list of transmitted ḥadīth works, often together with another Sufi treatise, Al-Risāla penned by al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072).

Two geographically distant M. tuberculosis sublineages, Tur from Turkey and T3-Osaka from Japan, exhibit partially identical genotypic signatures (identical 12-loci MIRU-VNTR profiles, distinct spoligotyping patterns). We investigated T3-Osaka and Tur sublineages characteristics and potential genetic relatedness, first using MIRU-VNTR locus analysis on 21 and 25 samples of each sublineage respectively, and second comparing Whole Genome Sequences of 8 new samples to public data from 45 samples uncovering human tuberculosis diversity. We then tried to date their Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) using three calibrations of SNP accumulation rate (long-term=0.03 SNP/genome/year, derived from a tuberculosis ancestor of around 70,000 years old; intermediate=0.2 SNP/genome/year derived from a Peruvian mummy; short-term=0.5 SNP/genome/year). To disentangle between these scenarios, we confronted the corresponding divergence times with major human history events and knowledge on human genetic divergence. We identified relatively high intrasublineage diversity for both T3-Osaka and Tur. We definitively proved their monophyly; the corresponding super-sublineage (referred to as "T3-Osa-Tur") shares a common ancestor with T3-Ethiopia and Ural sublineages but is only remotely related to other Euro-American sublineages such as X, LAM, Haarlem and S. The evolutionary scenario based on long-term evolution rate being valid until T3-Osa-Tur MRCA was not supported by Japanese fossil data. The evolutionary scenario relying on shortterm evolution rate since T3-Osa-Tur MRCA was contradicted by human history and potential traces of past epidemics. T3-Osaka and Tur sublineages were found likely to have diverged between 800y and 2,000 years ago, potentially at the time of Mongol Empire. Altogether, this study definitively proves a strong genetic link between Turkish and Japanese tuberculosis. It provides a first hypothesis for calibrating TB Euro-American lineage

When the Seljuks won the battle of Dandanaqan in 431/1040 against the Ghaznavids, who had the strongest army in the region, became a state and in a short time captured the area from Anatolia to the Arabian Sea, from the Caucasus to the border of India and China. It is very clear that the main factor behind the Seljuks' taking control of a large geography in a short time was the campaign organization. The paper includes the gathering, inspection and mobilization of soldiers, which is an important stage of the campaign organization. In the first part, where the soldiers were mainly procured from, and how the soldiers distributed to different points of the state were gathered were discussed. In addition, the issue of the inspection of the army, which was of great importance for the Seljuk sultans, was discussed, and finally, the order in which the Seljuk armies, sometimes reaching tens of thousands, took action.

The province of Khurāsān constituted the centre of political, cultural, and religious life in the Sunni Islamic world from the ninth until the mid-twelfth century, after which Khurāsān was completely eclipsed. The question of how this occurred has remained almost completely unstudied; and the one study that there is does not consult the key primary literary sources for the time. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to re-examine what the primary sources reveal about the catastrophic cultural and political eclipse of Khurāsān in the mid-twelfth century, in order to demonstrate that this catastrophe was not due to “climate, cotton and camels” – in fact, Khurāsān was doing very well until the 1150s – but to concrete human agency and action: namely, the province's destruction by the rampaging Oghuz Turkmens after Sultan Sanjar had been taken captive by them in 1153, thus leading directly to the downfall of the Great Seljuq Sultanate.

Studies on the temporal deposition of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in peatlands are scarce, and none have been carried out in the Iberian Peninsula. To address this gap, ten PAHs were determined in a short peat core (spanning the last 1000 years) sampled in NW Iberian Peninsula, by HPLCfluorescence. Fluoranthene, pyrene, benzo[b]fluoranthene and indeno[1,2,3-cd]pyrene predominated in the upper layers (10 cm), whereas fluoranthene and pyrene were the most abundant in the lower layers (40 cm), which showed an absence of high molecular weight PAHs (benzo[ghi]perylene and Indeno[1,2,3-cd]pyrene). Although increased PAH contents have been detected since 1700 A.D., coinciding with the beginning of the Metallurgical and Industrial Revolution, high levels of fluoranthene and pyrene were present in peat samples dating back to the 12th century A.D. The results suggest that changes in sources, type of emission (global or local) and transport could be responsible for the different PAH content and composition of the peat core. These changes are consistent with the history of the use of natural resources in the NW of the Iberian Peninsula.

The Almohad movement (12th–13th centuries, Islamic West) had in the return to the direct study of the primary sources of Islam—the Qur’an and the Sunna—and in jihād, two of its most important pillars of legitimation and action. In this sense, it is an ideal period to study how both realities—Qur’an and jihād—were linked in a given historical context. During the Almohad period, the use of Qur’anic verses in accounts related to war episodes became widespread. We thus witness a “Qur’anization” of the war narrative, a resource adding greater religiosity and spirituality to the context of jihād, to its elaboration and discursive representation, and to its memory and remembrance through written testimonies. In this paper I study, through the main narrative and documentary sources of the period, how the Qur’an was inserted into and adapted to the Almohad war discourse. Likewise, this approach allows me to explore how the Qur’an came to life within the framework of the Almohad jihād, how it served for its justification and legitimation, and how it formed part of the ceremony and the war protocol of the Maghrebi caliphate, thus linking itself with other discursive and propaganda mechanisms such as architecture or military parades.

Available online at: http://isad.isam.org.tr/?blm=sncsym&sy=44&yil=2020&navdil=tr

Abstract: The city of Cairo in the Mamluk period was home to numerous educational institutions that offered courses and stipendiary positions (manṣibs) to ulama. In this period, some of the great mosques in the city had become waqf-based learning institutions through the waqfs founded by the sultans and high-ranking amirs. The Mosque of Ibn Ṭūlūn, one of these early mosques, was built by Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn in 265 (879) in the Ṭūlūnid city of Qatā’i‘. After remaining in a dilapidated state during the Ayyūbid and the early Mamluk periods, the mosque was rebuilt at the end of the 7th (14th) century by al-Malik al-Manṣūr Ḥusām al-Dīn Lāchīn, the Mamluk sultan. The endowment deed (waqfiyya), which turned the mosque into a prominent learning institution in Mamluk Cairo, was established during the rebuilding process. This article explores the waqf, lessons taught in the mosque, manṣibs assigned to ulama in the waqfiyya, definitions of these manṣibs, relations established between manṣibs and sciences, and the effect of these manṣibs on the ulama’s scholarly and professional activities.

Over much of its history, silver production has been tied to lead metallurgy. For the early Middle Ages in particular, it is widely accepted that galena, a lead sulfide, was the dominant source of silver. Since galena can be associated with silver in the range of 0.1–0.5%, rarely more, this implies that tons of lead must have been laboriously processed to extract kilograms of silver. While all extant physical evidence from mines, slag and the metal itself point to this being true, this study has found evidence that extremely rich silver ores must have played a key role in one of the major silver-using polities in the 8th and 9th centuries AD: the Early Islamic Caliphate. Metallography of 26 coins revealed that matte inclusions (silver-copper sulfides) are widely found in Umayyad and Abbasid dirhams, renowned for their exceptionally pure silver. Since matte preserved in the coins could not survive the strongly oxidising refining process required to separate lead from silver, this silver cannot have been produced solely from lead ore or through the use of lead. A new paradigm for the understanding of early medieval extractive metallurgy is required. ‘Dry’ silver ore consisting of nearly pure silver minerals were processed without lead and made a vital contribution to the Early Islamic silver supply. The results of this study have major technological and economic implications and overturn long-standing views on the history of silver metallurgy. They also have important consequences for provenance studies and the interpretation of elemental and lead isotope data.

The western Mediterranean witnessed a constant increase in maritime trade from the eleventh century. The Christian involvement in that field has been studied without due regard for Muslim merchants and shipping, who seem to have suddenly disappeared from the region. However, the evidence assembled here, though rather limited, reveals that the Muslims Ilfrîqiya continued to trade with other Muslim ports of the Maghreb, as well as with Christian cities such as Majorca and Valencia. They mostly used Christian ships and to a lesser extent Muslim vessels. The paper reviews the various factors held responsible for the decline in their activity and for their secondary role in that context, and offer a new explanation of that process.

Résumé : Cet article entreprend dans un premier temps de reconstituer des listes de scribes (kātib-s) et d’enquêteurs judiciaires (ṣāḥib-s al-masā’il-s) actifs à Fusṭāṭ entre le Ier/début VIIIe et le IVe/Xe siècle. L’identification de ces personnages permet, dans un second temps, de mieux comprendre le recrutement du personnel judiciaire égyptien. Leur réputation en tant que savants, ainsi que leur origine ethnique, géographique et tribale, montrent que la carrière judiciaire fut longtemps limitée par des barrières sociales. Jusqu’au IIIe/IXe siècle, les fonctions de scribe revinrent le plus souvent à des mawālī, les plus élevés d’entre eux pouvant éventuellement briguer le poste d’enquêteur, tandis que les cadis étaient arabes. Le cloisonnement de la judicature révèle ainsi une hiérarchie sociale complexe, allant au-delà de la distinction entre Arabes et non-Arabes. Les résultats de cette étude permettent accessoirement de réévaluer l’impact de la révolution abbasside sur la société égyptienne.

Abstract: This article undertakes first a reconstruction of lists of legal scribes (kātibs) and investigators (sāḥibs al-masāʾil) active in Fustāt ̣between the 1st/early 8th and the 4th/10th century. Identification of these people allows a better understanding of the recruitment of Egyptian judiciary staff. Their reputations as scholars, as well as their ethnical, geographical and tribal origins, show that legal careers were limited by social barriers for a long time. Up until the 3rd/9th century, the office of scribe was mostly held by mawālī—high-ranking clients could possibly aspire to the office of investigator—, whereas qāḍīs were recruited among Arabs. The partitioning of the judiciary reveals a complex social hierarchy beyond the mere distinction between Arabs and non-Arabs. The results of this study also allow a re-evaluation of the Abbasid revolution’s impact on Egyptian society.

Developing my paper "Rapporti commercial tra Firenze e Granada nel XV secolo", this paper aims to deepen in a hitherto bad known issue, the position of the Republic of Florence in the Nasri sultanate. To achieve this I have taken as reference the commercial mechanisms developed by the Tuscan merchants in their relationships with the Mediterranean Islam, from Mamlouk Egypt and the Ottoman Empire to the Magreb, between the Thirteenth and the Fifteenth Centuries, underlying the particularities observed in Grenade. A comparison with Avner Greif's "community responsibility system" proposed for the XII-XIII centuries and the Venetian model in the sultanate have proved very useful to explain particular Florentine features in the Nasri kingdom in the Late Middle Ages. To finish, I propose future lines of research.

The review summarizes the archive data on smallpox, history of ancient civilizations, and the most recent data on the genome organization of orthopoxviruses, their evolutionary relationships, and the time points of smallpox emergence. The performed analysis provides the grounds for the hypothesis that smallpox could have emerged several times as a result of evolutionary changes in the zoonotic ancestor virus and disappeared due to insufficient population size of ancient civilizations. Smallpox reemerged in the Indian subcontinent approximately 2500-3000 years before present, which resulted in endemization of this anthroponotic infection, which had been preserved until the smallpox eradication in the 20th century AD. The conclusion suggests a potential possibility of future variola virus reemergence, presenting a great menace for mankind, as well as the need for development of new safe smallpox vaccines, design of anti-smallpox drugs, and activation of the control of zoonotic human o...

Muslims captured vast lands following the early conquests by the Prophet and first caliphs, extending their control beyond the Arabian Peninsula. They accommodated the local social, administrative, and cultural heritage in order to take control over the region. Just like all civilizational “interactions,” certain practices remained similar to their earlier instantiations. One of these practices was the system of jund, which was applied following the conquest of Bilād al-Shām (Greater Syria). Jund (pl. ajnād), literally meaning “army—military districts,” described military-administrative districts established in Bilād al-Shām (a region covering Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and southern Turkey) in early Islamic history.
Full text is here: http://isad.isam.org.tr/vdata/sayi45/isad045_yilmaz.pdf

This paper looks, from a historian's point of view, at the black death and the epidemics of plague which succeeded it in Europe from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It identifies the controversial questions, of medical as well as historical interest, which have been raised bv recent work. These include the origins of plague epidemics, the role of rodents and insect vectors in them, and the reasons for their disappearance from western Europe.

Substitution of renal function through skin catharsis: Evidence detail the historical development of the use of the skin from the classical period to the Middle Ages. The skin's cleansas an alternative route for catharsis in edematous and/or ing capacity has been known for centuries and has been used uremic humans. The reviewed literature was vast. Hence, therapeutically and extensively for a great number of diseases.

This study illustrates the use of disease modeling and simulation techniques to the study of the spread of disease within and between social networks. A Reed-Frost type model of disease spread is used to construct a simulation of the spread of tuberculosis within three prehistoric populations of the Lower Illinois River Valley during Middle Woodland, Late Woodland, and Mississippian times. A high and low population size was modeled for each time period. Late Woodland model 2 (low population estimate) is the only model that experienced pathogen extinction with host survival. The rest of the models experienced rapid and severe host population decline. The results of the simulation suggest that a social network size of between 180 and 440 persons is required under the conditions of this model for host-pathogen coexistence k e. , endemicity) to occur. The severe population decline experienced by these populations suggests that tuberculosis as modeled here could not have existed in these populations. Future refinements of modeling and simulation techniques can provide additional insights into how disease spreads among social contacts.

Background: House mice (Mus musculus) are commensals of humans and therefore their phylogeography can reflect human colonization and settlement patterns. Previous studies have linked the distribution of house mouse mitochondrial (mt) DNA clades to areas formerly occupied by the Norwegian Vikings in Norway and the British Isles. Norwegian Viking activity also extended further westwards in the North Atlantic with the settlement of Iceland, short-lived colonies in Greenland and a fleeting colony in Newfoundland in 1000 AD. Here we investigate whether house mouse mtDNA sequences reflect human history in these other regions as well. Results: House mice samples from Iceland, whether from archaeological Viking Age material or from modern-day specimens, had an identical mtDNA haplotype to the clade previously linked with Norwegian Vikings. From mtDNA and microsatellite data, the modern-day Icelandic mice also share the low genetic diversity shown by their human hosts on Iceland. Viking Age mice from Greenland had an mtDNA haplotype deriving from the Icelandic haplotype, but the modern-day Greenlandic mice belong to an entirely different mtDNA clade. We found no genetic association between modern Newfoundland mice and the Icelandic/ancient Greenlandic mice (no ancient Newfoundland mice were available). The modern day Icelandic and Newfoundland mice belong to the subspecies M. m. domesticus, the Greenlandic mice to M. m. musculus. Conclusions: In the North Atlantic region, human settlement history over a thousand years is reflected remarkably by the mtDNA phylogeny of house mice. In Iceland, the mtDNA data show the arrival and continuity of the house mouse population to the present day, while in Greenland the data suggest the arrival, subsequent extinction and recolonization of house mice-in both places mirroring the history of the European human host populations. If house mice arrived in Newfoundland with the Viking settlers at all, then, like the humans, their presence was also fleeting and left no genetic trace. The continuity of mtDNA haplotype in Iceland over 1000 years illustrates that mtDNA can retain the signature of the ancestral house mouse founders. We also show that, in terms of genetic variability, house mouse populations may also track their host human populations.

""The Middle East was one of the most literate civilizations during the high and late medieval period and home to bustling book markets, voluminous libraries and sophisticated book production. After the 'paper revolution' of the 9th and 10th centuries the number of books and the availability of the written word increased dramatically. In the scholarly world the written word played an increasingly prominent role and reading was taken up by wider sections of the population.

This book discusses the history of reading in the high and late medieval period in the Middle East in depth. It offers a detailed and wide-ranging analysis of the period, exploring the key themes of literacy/orality/aurality, the teaching of reading skills in schools, and the accessibility and profile of libraries, as well as popular reading practices, often associated with the notion of the illicit. This much-needed overview of the history of reading places the emphasis on the combination of cultural and social history and provides a depth of historical insight to the gradual development of reading practices over the centuries. On the basis of documentary sources and medieval illustrations the book shows in what ways new groups in the Arabic speaking lands, especially craftsmen and traders, started to read and to participate in the written culture between the 12th and the 15th centuries. With this book the late and high medieval periods of Middle Eastern history are finally brought into the burgeoning field of the history of reading."

Winner of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Book Award 2012"