Imperial Histories: Eurasian Empires Compared. Volume 1, Empires and Gods ; The Role of Religions in Imperial History / ed. by Jörg Rüpke, Michal Biran, Yuri Pines.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Benn, James A., Contributor.

Biran, Michal, Editor.

Biran, Michal, Contributor.

Bonnet, Corinne, Contributor.

Canepa, Matthew P., Contributor.

Olivelle, Patrick, Contributor.

Pines, Yuri, Contributor.

Pines, Yuri, Editor.

Preiser-Kapeller, Johannes, Contributor.

Rüpke, Jörg, Contributor.

Rüpke, Jörg, Editor.

Scales, Len, Contributor.

Tezcan, Baki, Contributor.

Wink, André, Contributor.

Series:

Imperial Histories: Eurasian Empires Compared ; Volume 1

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (VIII, 368 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2024]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Interaction with religions was one of the most demanding tasks for imperial leaders. Religions could be the glue that held an empire together, bolstering the legitimacy of individual rulers and of the imperial enterprise as a whole. Yet, they could also challenge this legitimacy and jeopardize an empire's cohesiveness. As empires by definition ruled heterogeneous populations, they had to interact with a variety of religious cults, creeds, and establishments. These interactions moved from accommodation and toleration, to cooptation, control, or suppression; from aligning with a single religion to celebrating religious diversity or even inventing a new transcendent civic religion; and from lavish patronage to indifference. The volume's contributors investigate these dynamics in major Eurasian empires-from those that functioned in a relatively tolerant religious landscape (Ashokan India, early China, Hellenistic, and Roman empires) to those that allied with a single proselytizing or non-proselytizing creed (Sassanian Iran, Christian and Islamic empires), to those that tried to accommodate different creeds through "pay for pray" policies (Tang China, the Mongols), exploring the advantages and disadvantages of each of these choices.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Foreword

Table of Contents

List of Maps

Empires and Religions: An Introduction

1 Imperial Ideology and Religious Pluralism in the Aśokan Inscriptional Corpus

2 Secular Theocracy? State and Religion in Early China Revisited

3 On Imperial Intermediaries: Elites and the Promotion of the Hellenistic Ruler Cult in Ptolemaic Phoenicia and Cyprus

4 Religion in, for, and against the Roman Empire

5 Envisioning Dualism and Emplacing the Eschaton: Apocalyptic Eschatology and Empire in Sasanian Iran

6 A Christian Roman Empire? Byzantium between Imperial Monotheism and Religious Multiplicity, Fourth to Ninth Century CE (and Beyond)

7 "Action Buddhism" in the Medieval Chinese Empire

8 Religions in the Mongol Empire Revisited: Exchanges, Conversion, Consequences

9 Religion and the Medieval Western Empire (CE 919-1519)

10 A Populist Reformation: The Early Modern Transformation of Islam in the Ottoman Empire

11 Religion and Politics in the Mughal Empire of India

List of Contributors

Index

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Mrz 2024)

ISBN:

3-11-134200-X

OCLC:

1433828874