Frankish Captives in Mamlūk Cairo

Latin presence in the Middle East came to an end with the fall of Acre in 690/1291. Among the last prisoners, Roger of Stanegrave, who gave testimony of his captivity in Cairo, was released around 715/1315. Therefore, how can we explain that Egyptian chroniclers kept on telling the life and tribulations of “Frankish captives” (asārā min al-Afranj) in Cairo as late as the last decades of the fourteenth century? This article looks first at the conditions of the Latin prisoners in Mamlūk Cairo and at their forced labour on the building sites of the city. It investigates afterwards the astonishing life and business of their descendants, trading wine and dealing with entertainment and prostitution in the city centre of Cairo, before being confronted with repression by Mamlūk authorities and being scattered over the most disreputable areas of the city. The history of Cairo and its urban fabric gives a unique opportunity to bring to light the life of people still referred to as “Frankish captives”, one century after the end of the crusader wars, and to understand how they finally became indigenous.     

The Execution of the Forty-two Martyrs of Amorion: Proposing an interpretation

On the 6th of March 845 the Arabs executed forty-two Byzantine prisoners, some of them very eminent, who had been captured after the fall of the city of Armorion in Asia Minor. This seems, on the face of it, to defy logic, as it was common practice in those days to keep prisoners in custody while negotiating an exchange, particularly of high-ranking officials. It seems even more perverse when one considers that the forty-two prisoners had been kept in custody for six-and-a-half years before their execution and that an agreement for an exchange had been concluded between the caliph and the emperor some months before. Moreover, the Byzantines had a greater number of Arab prisoners awaiting exchange. However, by looking at the internal policies of the caliph, al-Wāthiq, one can see a different picture: His determination to impose the religious Mu'tazila doctrine, by force if necessary, provoked a series of uprisings (842, 844-46). The public decapitation of the forty-two officers after they had refused to pray with the caliph, was a valuable propaganda exercise, a show of power, which mattered much more to him in those circumstances than the freedom of a number of his soldiers and officials.     

State Practice,Nationalist Politics and the Hunger Strikes of the Lahore Conspiracy Case Prisoners, 1929–39

ABSTRACT

This article examines the hunger strikes of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, a small group of revolutionary prisoners in India's jails in the midst of the nationalist movement. It examines the everyday practices of the state and demonstrates that the legal powers and medical duties designed to guide prison administrators in fact provided room for individual officers to improvise non-standard means of causing prisoners physical distress in order to end the strike. In these daily encounters, the prisoners adapted novel forms of resistance to meet each new technique. The second purpose of this article is to explore the reasons why their hunger strikes brought these men to the forefront of India's nationalist movement. It is argued, that although many members of the Indian National Congress were ambivalent about these revolutionaries, Congressmen nonetheless used the patriotic sacrifices of these prisoners to mobilize ordinary Indians for the nationalist cause.     

“Lift Up a Living Nation”: Community and Nation,Socialism and Religion in The English Hymnal, 1906

The lead editors of The English Hymnal (1906), Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams, found Victorian hymnody in need of serious revision, and not just aesthetically. This musical book was intended as an expression of the editors' Christian socialist politics involving in the participation of the congregation. This article examines how they achieved this by the encouragement of active citizenship through communal music-making, using folksong tunes alongside texts which affirmed community. This article argues that the editors wedded religion and high-quality music with a focus on citizenship drawn from British Idealism; using a cultural movement to seek social change.     

Killing at god's command: Niketas Byzantios' polemic against Islam and the Christian tradition of divinely sanctioned murder

My article has two objectives: I discuss aspects of the Byzantine debate about the principles on which a Christian value system should be based and I show how this debate was mirrored in Byzantine polemics against Islam. My starting point is a ninth‐century controversy between the Byzantine philosopher Niketas Byzantios (fl. c. 850) and an anonymous Muslim author. The Muslim author justified the concept of holy war by arguing that murder can be either licit or illicit, depending on whether or not the action is approved of by God. Niketas rejected this argument as irreconcilable with Christian ethics, maintaining that for Christians murder is always bad. However, in doing so Niketas departed from earlier Christian positions, developed in anti‐Manichaean polemic and Biblical exegesis, which either defined killing as a neutral act or rejected an essentialist approach in favour of God's will as the overriding criterion.     

Martyrdom and Crusading in the Thirteenth Century: Remembering the Dead of Louis IX's Crusades

Death and remembrance of the dead were of great significance to Christians in the Middle Ages, and those men and women who were believed to have died as martyrs for the faith were worthy of particular renown. In the context of the crusades, during which thousands of Christian participants placed their lives at risk, the possibility that those who died were martyrs was therefore inevitably raised. Belief relating to the martyrdom of crusaders has interested historians for some time. Thus far, though, attention has largely been focused on the earliest stages of the crusade movement and the first crusade in particular. These studies suggest that after this time a popular belief that crusaders could be, and often were, martyrs was firmly established. This paper is intended to extend this debate, which has largely ignored how ideas relating to Christian martyrdom developed beyond the initial stages of the crusade movement. For, while the possibility that crusaders might achieve martyrdom is consistently present in our source material for later crusades, this does not necessarily mean that the issue had become uncontroversial. This subject will be tackled through an examination of material relating to the campaigns of the French king Louis IX (d. 1270) in North Africa and the Levant during the mid- and later-thirteenth century. The first part of the paper is intended to illustrate some of the inconsistencies present in approaches to the subject of the martyrdom of crusaders in this period. The second part will focus on a specific text, the Vie de saint Louis of John of Joinville (d. 1317), in order to show that the lack of clarity which characterises the wider picture concerning martyrdom and crusading should not deter us from trying to explore and explain the attitudes of individuals.     

St Francis of Assisi and Islam: A Theological Perspective on a Christian-Muslim Encounter

In 1219 an encounter took place between a Christian from Italy, Francis of Assisi, and the Muslim Sultan of Egypt, al-Malik al-Kāmil. This meeting took place at Damietta in northern Egypt during the progress of the Fifth Crusade. Over a period of perhaps three weeks, religious dialogue took place between Francis and al-Kāmil, after which time the Sultan had Francis escorted safely back to the Christian camp. It is possible to discern from the writings of Francis after his return from Egypt that the meeting had had a deep religious impact upon him, realised in the latter years of his life. It can be said that both Francis and al-Kāmil experienced through their encounter what the Christian theologian Bernard Lonergan has spoken of as a conversion into a new horizon. The historical encounter between Francis and the Sultan witnesses to the fact that through religious conversion, it is possible for members of different religious faiths to arrive at a common vision of universal peace and reconciliation.     

Welfare and Charity in a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Community in Egypt: A Study of Genizah Documents

Musta?rib is a term that refers to the local Arabic-speaking Jews in Syria, Palestine and Egypt. The article discusses the Musta?rib community of Cairo in the late sixteenth century. Like other Medieval Jewish communities, the Musta?rib of Cairo had an advanced system for support of the needy. It included regular support for the poor, for widows and orphans, and occasional help for foreign travellers, captives, and more. Based on Genizah documents in Judaeo-Arabic, the article discusses the mechanism of welfare in that community and proves the influence of European Jewish immigrants on the construction of this system.

The Musta?ribs are romanticised in classic Zionist historiography as deeply rooted farmers. The article argues that the Musta?ribs were first and foremost members of an urban population. It also suggests that contrary to the classic image of them as a fixed and unchanging population, which resided in the same area for successive generations, the Musta?rib society should be viewed as a society in motion. They adjusted to historical changes, were influenced by other Jewish cultures, and applied changes to improve their welfare system.     

The politics of sexual morality and evangelical activism in Hong Kong

This paper aims to review the discourse of sexual morality as recently staged by Christian evangelical groups in Hong Kong and the effects of this new round of evangelical activism on the shaping of recent political culture in Hong Kong. Unlike the moral campaign against decriminalization of homosexuality in the 1980s, which eventually lost to the reasoning of British rule of law implicit in Hong Kong legislature, this new Christian movement for the defense of sexual morality in Hong Kong is situated at the juncture of political contestation between the local democratic movement and the pro-establishment political forces, including pro-Beijing businessmen, political organizations and personnel. With a high degree of ideological and strategic affinity with the Christian Right movement, which collaborates with conservative Republican groups in the United States, the evangelical campaigners of Hong Kong, whether consciously or not, have gained much political currency in collaborating with the pro-establishment forces of Hong Kong. As a result, sexual morality articulated in the name of the preservation of traditions, whether they are Christian or Chinese, has fed an autocratic political movement of Hong Kong that partakes the dangerously divisive politics of the fundamentalist religious movements around the globe.     

Why do christian churches,and not universities,facilitate intercultural engagement for Chinese international students?

The paper offers new, significant insights into the Church engagement experiences of Chinese international students in the UK. Based on a mixed-method research and focusing on a group of international Chinese students participating in local Christian churches, it explores the motivations (for), dynamics and types of connections students establish and maintain with the church communities, and the implications for stakeholders in facilitating intercultural engagement with the local community. The limited cross-cultural interactions alongside other structural and contextual factors often deprive meaningful engagement between international students and host nationals within the campus. According to the research participants, internationalised university is promising and promoting intercultural experiences but not delivering them. Chinese students of usually non-Christian background gravitate towards Christian churches as alternative places to gain desired intercultural experiences. The findings encourage universities to reflect on the quality of intercultural engagement for international students and draw from the reciprocal and respectful intercultural connections that some students discovered through engaging with Christian churches.     

Modes of victim blaming in a case of stabbing: Victim and offender ethnicity and observer ethnicity and religious affiliation

This study examined the effects of ethnicity on victim-blaming in a case of stabbing by addressing victim and offender ethnicity as well as observer ethnicity and religion. Jewish (n = 285), Muslim Arab (n = 249), and Christian Arab (n = 51) students from Israeli universities and colleges read a single stabbing scenario, in which we manipulated victim (Arab/Jewish) and offender ethnicity (African/Arab/Jewish). The results showed that participants blamed a Jewish victim more than an Arab victim. Also, our findings indicated that Christian Arabs expressed significantly higher victim-blaming than Jews. However, victim-blaming among Christian Arabs did not significantly differ from victim-blaming among Muslim Arabs, and victim-blaming among Muslim Arabs did not significantly differ from victim-blaming among Jews. Furthermore, the interactions between observer and victim ethnicity and between observer and offender ethnicity were significant. The discussion addresses the findings in the context of prejudice against members of African and Arab communities, the black sheep effect, and defensive attribution. In addition, the discussion suggests that observer ethnic and religious background may be related to blame-attribution mode: fixed (not affected by victim and offender ethnicity) or modular (affected by victim and offender ethnicity). From the practical standpoint, our findings suggest a need for further education on prejudice against minorities and promoting ethnic diversity among practitioners assisting and treating victims.     

Book Reviews

Religion and Culture in Medieval Islam RICHARD G. HOVANNISIAN and GEORGES SABAGH (Eds), 1999 Giorgio Levi della Vida Conferences, 14 Cambridge, Cambridge University Press viii_118 pp., UK£32.50 ISBN 0-521-623502 This book contains the proceedings of a conference whose speakers and theme were chosen by Professor George Makdisi, recipient of the Giorgio Levi della Vida Award in 1993. Although the theme is quite wide, the tone and viewpoint of the book are consistent with each other and coherent with Makdisi's own position, which he summarises in the first chapter, "Religion and culture in classical Islam and the Christian West". Here, Makdisi gives an overview of the fascinating theory which he has expounded in several works over the past decades (especially his The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh, 1981) and The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West (Edinburgh, 1990)), explaining how came to be interested in this subject and linking it to the modern-day American situation. Makdisi's view is that the European scholastic and humanistic movements had their origin in two equivalent movements that had begun some centuries earlier in the Middle East and, through Spain and Sicily, reached the West. This first chapter sets the tone of the whole book, which deals with several Arabo-Islamic subjects, making ample references to equivalent or parallel themes in the medieval (and occasionally modern) Christian (and occasionally Jewish) world. W. Montgomery Watt's essay on The future of Islam" compares Jewish reactions to Hellenism in Antiquity with contemporary Muslim reactions to the Western, Christian culture. It is a very stimulating piece, and the daring juxtapposition of past and present provokes important questions: to what extent can one think, today, of different parts of our globalised world simply Muslim or Christian, albeit with varying degrees of secularism? How can one deal with the fact that large portions of all societies do not identify themselves in any religion? Returning to a medieval subject, the following two chapters illustrate aspects the relation between religion and literature. Merlin Swartz writes on "Arabic rhetoric and the art of the homily in medieval Islam", pointing to the lack of secondary scholarship on this genre, whose Christian parallel has instead received great attention. Swartz begins filling this gap by describing in great detail the norms laid out in two handbooks for preachers written by Ibn al-Jawzý¯ (d. 597/1201). The fourth chapter, by Irfan Shahý¯d ("Medieval Islam: the literary-cultural dimension") reflects on the Qur'a¯nic idea of i'ja¯z (inimitability) and its consequences for the field of literature, from the times of Muh_ammad to the present day. This is followed by George Saliba's more specific illustration of how three prominent Ash'arite authors refute astrology ("The Ash'arites and the science of the stars"); the issue is placed within the context of the Islamic-Arabic approach to classical Greek heritage. Roger Arnaldez ("Religion, religious culture, and culture") provides an outline of the development of Islam from starting point as a religion containing ancient practices whose origins were forgotten,     

From Invitation to Provocation: “Holy Cruelty” as Christian Mission in Ninth-Century Córdoba

Ninth-century treatises written by Eulogius (d. 859) and Paulus Alvarus (fl. ninth century) have been studied in some detail for their anti-Muslim rhetoric and for what they have to say about a group of ninth-century martyrs killed in Córdoba, Spain. Less attention is given to how the authors pair their views of Christian mission with what one of them refers to as “holy cruelty”. With this in mind, this study examines how Eulogius’ construction of Islam as a Christian heresy informed his view of mission. Building off of this, we will also examine how Alvarus saw his notion of hatred for the enemies of God as a justified means for engaging Muslims.     

Prelude to a stronger involvement in the middle east: french attacks on beirut in the years 1403 and 1520

The aim of this article is to explain the evolution of French Levant policy from crusade to diplomacy. Traditionally French policy towards the Levant was dominated by the hope of the Most Christian Kings to re-conquer the Holy Land from the “infidels” until the early sixteenth century. In the course of the sixteenth century this changed and a new approach of treating Muslim powers in the same way as Christian neighbours emerged. The reason why the latter concept became predominant shall be explained by showing the examples of two French attacks on Beirut in the years 1403 and 1520. Although both were initially undertaken in the spirit of the crusades, France reversed its policy in the aftermath of the 1520 failure and sought co-operation with a Muslim state. Severely threatened on several borders by Habsburg Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, France henceforth looked to the Ottomans as allies and gave up on further crusading projects. This reconsideration of its foreign policy aims culminated in the French–Ottoman treaty of 1536.     

The Struggle over Arabisation in Medieval Arabic Christian Hagiography

The process of Arabisation and Islamisation that began shortly after the Muslim conquests in greater Syro-Palestine was still in full swing well after the ‘Abbāsid revolution. One of the neglected sources for unravelling the nuances of the cultural transformations that were taking place is the Christian hagiography of the period. This article argues that the contrast between Byzantine and Arab Christian hagiography from the late eighth through the ninth century provides an important window in the process of Arabisation and Islamisation in the Early Islamic period. In particular when the Byzantine account of the Twenty Martyrs of Mar Saba is compared to the Arabic account of the Martydom of Raw[hdot] al-Qurayshī, an Arab Christian, many of the significant features of the process of cultural change come to the fore.     

The Arabs in Anatolia and the Islamic law of war (fïqh al‐jihād) seventh–tenth centuries)

This article deals with the Islamic background of the Arab penetration of Byzantine Anatolia in the seventh to tenth centuries A.D. It focuses in particular on the implicit references to the Islamic law of war (fiqh al‐jihād), as found in the Arabic historical sources dealing with Muslim raids, the accumulation and distribution of booty, and the ideological framework in which these events occurred. There was a theological dimension to this discourse: Muslim writers at times refer to the absolute determination of the outcome of battles and sieges through divine will. It appears that fiqh al‐jihād had acquired standing as a species of international law by the end of this period, becoming the dialectical cognate of customary law of nations recognised by the late Roman jurists. This becomes evident through an analysis of negotiations for the surrender of cities, and in the periodic exchange of captives for which there are detailed records between 830–946 A.D. Recognised norms were sometimes violated: one sees this particularly in the killing of monks during Arab military operations. It is anticipated that the present study will be the first step in a comparative study of Byzantine and Islamic jurisprudence on the regulation of armed conflict.     

The Left and Indonesia’s 1960s: the politics of remembering and forgetting

Abstract

This article examines a pivotal decade in the recent history of Indonesian society: the 1960s. It examines the context within which the Left came to be decisively, and violently, defeated as a social and political force. It then studies the consequences of this defeat for Indonesia’s subsequent historical trajectory. The article also suggests that history‐writing anywhere is nothing less than the politics of remembering (and forgetting). What is at stake in these exercises is ultimately tied up with the legitimacy of entire social orders and systems of power. Thus, in Indonesia, the trauma of 1965 and its aftermath banished, from the collective memory of Indonesians, the political role of the Left – except in the form that runs through New Order‐era discourse on Indonesian communism. For Indonesians born or raised after 1965, the ‘communist treason’ became, arguably, the most critical element of the grand narrative of post‐colonial Indonesian history, which was so important in legitimising New Order authoritarianism. The current inability of Indonesian society and its elites to acknowledge and confront the reality of the horrors of the 1960s might prove to be a major impediment to a more genuine and substantive democratisation process.     

Return of the Kyai: representations of horror,commerce, and censorship in post‐Suharto Indonesian film and television 1

Abstract

In about half a decade since May 1998, changes have taken place in the content, production, distribution, exhibition, and discourse of Indonesian cinema. During Reformasi (1999–2001), the rules and regulations of cinema authorized under the New Order government of President Suharto began to be contested and re‐negotiated. The rise of new film genres and changes in concepts about existing genres and formats took place, new discourses emerged, and different communities and institutions arose that identified themselves with certain film genres or which used the medium of film for particular means, such as a medium for advocacy of human rights issues. Five to six years after 1998, it is apparent that besides changes, there are also many continuities: many old film institutions and structures for film production, distribution, and exhibition are still in place, and topics of discourses often recall past discourses of the New Order period or those held in the newly independent 1950s. This paper considers some of the changes in the understanding of genres and formulas within horror films, and discusses modes of representation and constraints in choices of subject matter in narrative practices in contemporary Indonesian cinema.     

Solomon,his Demons and Jongleurs: the Meeting of Islamic,Judaic and Christian Culture

The legend of Solomon's special ability to control demons originated in Jewish-Hellenistic circles and became widespread in later Judaic, Islamic and Christian culture. In the Qur’ān, as well as in the earlier Babylonian Talmud and other rabbinic sources, the legend was adopted with a clear tendency to avoid the pragmatic demonic aspects of the story. In a similar vein, Qur’ānic commentators presented the relations between Solomon and the demons as an expression of the supernatural rule of the king over the cosmos and ignored his shameful end. The inclusion of the legend in the most sacred canonical text of Islam, and its connotation of eternity may explain the frequent representation in Muslim art. On the other hand, the avoidance by the Christian establishment authorities and the relegation to profane literature mocking the king may account for its absence in western official art. A combination between the high and low aspects of Solomon is seen in an illuminated medieval Hebrew Mahzor from South Germany. The divine aspect of Solomon as he appears in the Mahzor is paralleled in the Muslim examples. These similarities are the result of close textual traditions deriving from the same sources. Yet a possible pictorial testimony linking East and West may be discerned in the Ottoman illuminated Book of Suleiman, possibly based on a western tradition.