Orthodoxy and Religious Antagonism in Byzantine Perceptions of the Seljuk Turks (Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries)

This paper focuses on religiously based concepts in the Comnenian dynasty's ideology when propagating Byzantium's political and military antagonism with the Muslim-Turkish principalities of Asia Minor. Whereas during the conquest period in the second half of the eleventh century Byzantine perceptions were mainly determined by the classical bipolarity of barbarism vs. Roman civilisation and therefore defined the Seljuk Turks as an ethnic rather than a religious entity, in the 1130s a tendency to identify them with the “sons of Hagar”, i.e. the Muslims, prevailed. At the same time the court rhetoricians of Emperor John II developed forms of imperial representation exhibiting allusions to Old Testament prototypes (Moses) and certain features of western crusader ideology. The image of his successor, Manuel I, instead draws more intensively on the idea of the emperor's Christ-like position and the motif of the tireless defender of the true faith.     

Middle-Class Fathers,Sons and Military Service in England, 1914–1918

The figure of the hyper-patriotic middle-class father, happy to sacrifice his sons to the war, while remaining snug at home, was a recurrent feature of post-First World War literature. This article places this view of wartime fatherhood under scrutiny, suggesting that middle-class fathers with sons of military age rarely behaved as straightforward enforcers of the state’s call to arms. Alongside expressions of vocal pride in sons who conformed to the manly ideal by volunteering, there were resistance, silence and fear, while support for sons who sought to avoid enlistment was a good deal more evident than any determination that sons should do their ‘bit’ at all costs.     

Louis IX in Medieval Arabic Sources: The Saint,the King,and the Sicilian Connection

This article examines the portrayal of Louis IX in medieval Arabic historiography to show the importance of cross-cultural Mediterranean interaction. It argues that the image of Louis was influenced by information originating from the Sicilian Hohenstaufen court and reports that Frederick II sent to Egypt. Arab historians connected to the courts of Frederick and Manfred disseminated a “Sicilian narrative” that shaped Louis's portrayal in Arabic historiography. This argument on the importance of cross-cultural transfer in understanding Arabic historiography is buttressed by reports about the King, the Pope, and the Emperor that are traced back to the entourage of prominent Muslims closely linked to Sicily. Moreover, it is argued that Arab authors were aware of Louis's proto-sanctity and pious reputation. This led to the infusion of medieval Arabic historiography with Western ideas about sacrosanctity. Finally, this research assesses how the portrayal of King Louis during his captivity was used in internal Muslim rivalries.     

Communities,Cultures and Conflict in Southern Italy,from the Byzantines to the Angevins*

When the Normans conquered southern Italy and Sicily during the eleventh century, a significant part of the population were Greek-rite Christians (mainly in southern Apulia, Calabria and north-east Sicily) or, on the island of Sicily, Muslims. To begin with, at least, it was very much in the interests of the new rulers to tolerate these groups, and hence the reputation of the Norman kingdom of Sicily for its diversity and multi-culturalism. But over the next two centuries this consensus slowly dissolved, the position of the Greek and Muslim communities weakened, and ultimately both disappeared. However, while with the Greeks much of the pressure for acculturation and Latinisation was unconscious and unintended, and the decline of the Greek rite and contraction of the Graecophone areas were very slow, the Muslims of Sicily were provoked into revolt at the end of the twelfth century, and had been almost entirely eliminated from the island by 1250. It has usually been assumed that most of the Muslims of Sicily were deported to Frederick II’s military colony at Lucera in the Capitanata. Yet when examined closely, this thesis seems improbable, and what happened to the Sicilian Muslims remains an enigma.     

A Thirteenth-Century Scholar in the Eastern Mediterranean: Sirāj al-Dīn Urmavī, Jurist,Logician, Diplomat

This essay examines the career of the Shafi?ī jurist and logician Sirāj al-Dīn Urmavī (1198–1283), who combined his scholarly and judicial activities with ambassadorial appointments to Frederick II, King of Sicily and Holy Roman Emperor, and the Ilkhan Hülegü. Originally from Azerbaijan, Sirāj al-Dīn spent most of his professional life in Ayyūbid Cairo and, from 1257, in Seljuk Konya, where he spent the final decades of his life as chief qadi. Through a contextualised reading of the extant biographical information for Sirāj al-Dīn, the article draws particular attention to two aspects of his physical and professional trajectory. First, the essay situates Sirāj al-Dīn's career in the context of processes of cultural change in thirteenth-century Anatolia. It seeks to demonstrate both the transfer and adaptation to the Anatolian urban milieu of social–cultural patterns attested for the a?yān in neighbouring predominantly Muslim societies, and the shaping of the social and cultural functions of immigrant scholars to Anatolia by local conditions. Second, the article identifies Sirāj al-Dīn as a prominent participant in an intellectual community engaged in inter-cultural exchange across political and confessional boundaries in the thirteenth-century eastern Mediterranean.     

“A Crusade from the First”: The Norman Conquest of Islamic Sicily, 1060–1091

In the creation myth of the Crusades, Pope Urban II (r. 1088–1099) is the founding father and 1095 is the critical year. During the twentieth century, French, Spanish, and English scholars challenged this myth; yet this myth remains as durable as ever. Because the origins of the crusading enterprise came to be associated with the so-called First Crusade (1095–1102), scholars have created a vision of crusading at odds with Pope Urban's vision, which views the “First” Crusade as the third part of a triptych: first, the Norman conquest of Sicily (1060–1091); then, the Castilian and Catalan advances in Iberia; and finally the 1095 Eastern Crusade. Today, the study of the Crusades is hampered by a failure to concentrate on the direct evidence and to take into account what contemporaries understood by crusading. To get a sense of what contemporaries understood by crusading, this paper examines the Norman Crusade in Sicily, drawing upon both Christian and Islamic sources.     

Solving the "Accursed Riddle" of the Diplomatic Relations between Catalonia and Egypt around 1430

The last Arabic diplomatic document in Barcelona's Crown of Aragon Archive (ACA) that is still to be edited and studied is ACA Arabic doc. 164. The document is a preliminary draft of the commercial and peace treaty drawn up in 1430 by Alfons the Magnanimous, King of Aragon, Naples and Sicily (1396-1458), and the Mamluk Sultan al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Barsbāy (825-841/1422-1437), signed in Rhodes (Ramadān 7 833/30 May 1430, ACA Arabic doc. 145), and published in 1939 by Ruíz Orsatti. Document 164 contained 111 folios, which were not in order, and for this reason specialists called it the "accursed riddle". The document was probably prepared for discussion during the summer of 1429, a few months before the definitive version was signed. It is longer than the final agreement, and contains an additional Chapter (33) which has not been published to date. Little documentary evidence of diplomatic negotiation between Muslim and Christian powers in Medieval times has survived, and this chapter provides us with a highly unusual example. In the first part of this study the document is described and its contents outlined. In sections 2 and 3 we edit and analyse the contents of the additional Chapter 33 and the Explicit that goes with it, which is absent from Ruíz Orsatti's version. We then present some historical data regarding the Catalan embassy to Rhodes, which will shed light on the diplomatic negotiations that concern us and the historical reasons for the censoring of Chapter 33.     

Heirs and Spares: Elite Fathers and Their Sons in the Literary Sources of Umayyad Iberia

ABSTRACT

In the medieval Islamic world, elite men were the benchmark of hegemonic masculinity and social power. A presumption of masculine authority within the household shaped the way early medieval rulers were described by chroniclers, and how medieval fathers related to their sons. The formal and informal ways in which they interacted with lower status men – whether their clients, their courtiers, or their sons – were hedged about with the symbolic language of gender. The article focuses on the ways in which certain Andalusī literary sources talk about relations of fathers and their sons with the ruling Umayyad family, to offer an additional dimension to our picture of how the dynasty conceptualised and legitimised its power.     

Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films: pursuing and escaping history

Abstract

This article situates Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films in the post Cold‐War global setting. It discusses two common interpretive approaches to Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films – French auteurism and ‘national allegory’ – and puts these two approaches within their historical context of Cold‐War and post Cold‐War global politics. The article places the rise of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films parallel to the rise of the mainland fifth generation of film directors, pointing out that their apparently opposite directions – Hou Hsiao‐Hsien going political in his Taiwan trilogy and the fifth generation film directors going apolitical – are part and parcel of the same phenomenon of alternative politics in its particular contexts and the reconstruction of a new identity politics. Particular attention is given to Hou’s Taiwan trilogy, Flowers of Shanghai, and Coffee Jikou.     

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,     

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.     

Sicily: A Frontier in the Centre of the Sea?

ABSTRACT

As part of the Ancient Maritime Dynamics project, this study uses a new interpretive methodology to model the creation and use of maritime places in the western-Mediterranean basin. In turn, the results of this modelling suggest that the waters around the island of Sicily acted as a frontier, distinguishing a distinct zone of activity in the western Mediterranean as well as a western maritime community that segregated itself from other sailors and merchants elsewhere in the sea.     

What the Butler Saw: Lee Daniels's Studies in Biography and History

The movie Lee Daniels’ The Butler is an example of a work that is meant not only to entertain but to convey an important attitude and offer important viewpoints. The movie deals with a deep issue in the history of movies and the history of the country: racial inequality. Three issues are discussed in this article: (a) African Americans in movies, (b) the contradictions of the servant role, and (c) the generational conflict between fathers and sons.     

The Deathbed of Lord Palmerston

ABSTRACT

Lord Palmerston died on 18 October 1865, still prime minister at the age of eighty. He was given a state funeral in Westminster Abbey on 27 October. By that time his stepson-in-law, Lord Shaftesbury, had begun spreading the word to a half-believing, half-unpersuaded public that Palmerston had died ‘the good [evangelical] death’, confessing in his last moments not only his sins but his belief in a life to come for all penitent believers in Christ's atoning sacrifice. This article reviews the surviving evidence of witnesses at Palmerston's deathbed and attempts to reconstruct the meaning(s) which Palmerston and his attendants (both family and medical) placed on the rituals in which they participated during the final days of Palmerston's life. A particular effort is made to provide a plausible cultural and intellectual context to Palmerston's participation in these rituals. Palmerston, it will be argued, was a ‘religious believer’ but in a very different sense from that wished on him by the younger generation who stage-managed the event.     

Seeing the Communist past through the lens of a CIA consultant: Guy J. Pauker on the Indonesian Communist Party before and after the ‘1965 Affair’

Abstract

This paper explores Guy J. Pauker’s works on Indonesia in the 1960s, particularly the ones concerning the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) before and after the killing of six top Army officers on 30 September 1965 (called the ‘1965 Affair’ for short). Of Western scholars working on Indonesia in 1960s, Pauker was indeed infamous. Being a consultant for the CIA‐sponsored RAND Corporation has made his academic integrity doubtful. In addition, his active roles in several historical events in Indonesia in the 1960s have given his scholarship a bad reputation. Consequently, it is his name, rather than his works, that has often been mentioned and associated with what happened in Indonesia in the 1960s. However, this paper argues that precisely because of such a position, his pre‐‘1965 Affair’ works were to give a cool report and analysis of the current history, through which one can understand better the PKI before it was exterminated due to being accused of masterminding the killing of six top Army officers. Through these works the narrative of the Communist past can ironically be freed from the demonizing image constructed by the New Order regime. Yet, his post‐‘1965 Affair’ works were not only in parallel with, but also a part – if not the core – of the demonization as such. Through his ways of seeing the PKI in 1960s, one can see the shift from Baconian knowledge/power to Foucaultian power/knowledge relations.     

The Power of a Single Mother: The Influence of Black Women on Their Sons' Academic Performance

This study examines the ways single Black mothers contribute to the educational success of their 11th-grade sons, despite the fact that their sons are enrolled in “failing schools.” Data from five interviews and one focus group reveal common characteristics of how single-Black mothers help their sons beat the odds.     

Malay(sian)’s image in Indonesian media prior to Konfrontasi era December 1962

This article presents the Malay(sian)’s image in Indonesian media in the early days of the Indonesia–Malaysia conflict at the beginning of 1960s. The dispute started when Tunku Abdul Rahman announced his plan to include Singapore, Brunei, Sarawak and North Borneo into the Federation of Malaya. Yet Indonesia regarded it as the British’s neocolonialist project. Left-wing nationalists expressed their opposition to this plan in their daily, Bintang Timur, with illustrations made by Delsy Syamsumar (1935-2001). His artworks may represent how Malaysia was seen by Indonesian artists during the dispute. On the other hand, most of Syamsumar’s artworks demonstrate his sympathy with Azahari, Borneo’s local political leader, who staged the insurgence against the plan on 8 December 1962. This article intends to highlight Syamsumar’s pioneering artworks, picturing the Indonesia–Malaysia dispute published in Bintang Timur in December 1962.     

Facing history with a sense of awe: an interview with Professor Mizoguchi Yūzō

In this wide-ranging interview and discussion with Kuan-Hsing Chen and Sun Ge, Mizoguchi Yūzō describes the origins of his interest in China studies and the process through which he developed his perspective on China, Japan, and the world. Mizoguchi details his break with both old-style Japanese Sinology and Western-influenced scholarship, which assumes Japanese superiority over China and takes Euro-American society and concepts as its standard. Mizoguchi suggests that historians can and should cultivate a new subjectivity for themselves and understanding of the history of the world as a whole through an approach to China that attempts to understand China’s own internal historical processes rather than assuming the universality of Western processes. He discusses his efforts to help reform the institutional structure of China studies in Japan, and further touches on the part played by Japan in China’s modern history as well as its historical relations with Taiwan and Korea.