Globalization of knowledge in the post-antique Mediterranean, 700-1500 / edited by Sonja Brentjes and Jürgen Renn.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Brentjes, Sonja, editor.

Renn, Jürgen, 1956- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Culture and globalization.

History.

Intellectual life.

Mediterranean Region--Intellectual life.

Mediterranean Region.

Culture and globalization--Mediterranean Region--History.

Mediterranean Region--History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 234 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London : Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2016.

Summary:

The contributions to this volume enter into a dialogue about the routes, modes and institutions that transferred and transformed knowledge across the post-antique Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Each contribution not only presents a different case study but also investigates a different type of question, ranging from how history-writing drew on cross-culturally constructed stories and shared sets of skills and values, to how an ancient warlord was transformed into the iconic hero of a newly created monotheistic religion. Between these two poles, the emergence of a new, knowledge-related, but market-based profession in Baghdad is discussed, alongside the alongside the long-distance transfer of texts, doctrines and values within a religious minority community from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the mountains of the southern Arabian Peninsula. The authors also investigate the outsourcing of military units and skills across religious and political boundaries, the construction of cross-cultural knowledge of the balance through networks of scholars, patrons, merchants and craftsmen, as well as differences in linguistic and pharmaceutical practices in mixed cultural environments for shared corpora of texts, drugs and plants. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction / Jürgen Renn and Sonja Brentjes

From one universal historiography to the other: the reorientation of ancient historiography in Byzantium and its reception in Arabic

The Islamic organization of written memory / Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis

Aspects of craft in the Arabic book revolution / Beatrice Gruendler

Contexts and contents of Thābit ibn Qurra's (died 288/901) construction of knowledge on the balance / Sonja Brentjes and Jürgen Renn

Monarchs and minorities: "Infidel" soldiers in Mediterranean courts / Hussein Fancy

The Synonyma literature in the Twelfth and Thirteenth centuries / Charles Burnett

The cultural transfer of Zaydī and non-Zaydī religious literature from Northern Iran to Yemen (Sixth/Twelfth century through Eighth/Fourteenth century) / Hassan Ansari and Sabine Schmidtke

Iskandar the Prophet: religious themes in Islamic versions of the Alexander legend / Anna A. Akasoy

Postface / Sonja Brentjes and Jürgen Renn.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781472456564

1472456564

OCLC:

933218924

Publisher Number:

99969734757