Pub Date : 2020-04-28DOI: 10.1177/0971945820905289
Catherine B. Asher
This article examines temple construction under Mughal rule by significant Rajput rulers—some reluctant and some amenable—to accepting Mughal authority. During the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries high ranking Hindu nobles who easily found favour with the Mughal court built on both their ancestral lands and on crown lands, but those who accepted Mughal hegemony under duress had a more complicated attitude towards temple construction. The temples that the latter group provided were largely in their own territories, often at pilgrimage sites or at sites they intended to transform into pilgrimage sites. The main questions which is article addresses are: Where did these rulers build temples, why and what forms did they take? How does temple construction provide insights into cultural and political aspirations of Rajput kingdoms? Finally, what were the problems arising out of neglect associated of their maintenance and upkeep?
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Pub Date : 2020-04-28DOI: 10.1177/0971945820907406
H. Mukhia
Abu’l Fazl is often invested with a dichotomy between reason and religion, grandly upholding the majesty of reason (mā’qūlāt) over received blind faith (taqlīd), drawing inspiration from varied sources but falling short of going the distance towards ‘scientific rationality’. Abu’l Fazl’s rationality had little in common with it; it was rooted in a new dichotomy he was constituting, one between universal religiosity and denominational religions, thus redefining dīn. Sulh-i kul (Absolute peace) in the midst of religious strife was his rationality. It is suggested that the main inspiration for this dichotomy came from the saint-poet Kabir, even as Abu’l Fazl was greatly influenced by the Sufi doctrines of ‘Illumination’ of the Eastern School and wahdat al-wujūd of Ibn al-‘Arabi.
{"title":"A Rationality Immersed in Religiosity: Reason and Religiosity in Abu’l Fazl’s Oeuvre","authors":"H. Mukhia","doi":"10.1177/0971945820907406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0971945820907406","url":null,"abstract":"Abu’l Fazl is often invested with a dichotomy between reason and religion, grandly upholding the majesty of reason (mā’qūlāt) over received blind faith (taqlīd), drawing inspiration from varied sources but falling short of going the distance towards ‘scientific rationality’. Abu’l Fazl’s rationality had little in common with it; it was rooted in a new dichotomy he was constituting, one between universal religiosity and denominational religions, thus redefining dīn. Sulh-i kul (Absolute peace) in the midst of religious strife was his rationality. It is suggested that the main inspiration for this dichotomy came from the saint-poet Kabir, even as Abu’l Fazl was greatly influenced by the Sufi doctrines of ‘Illumination’ of the Eastern School and wahdat al-wujūd of Ibn al-‘Arabi.","PeriodicalId":42683,"journal":{"name":"MEDIEVAL HISTORY JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0971945820907406","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41303849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-11DOI: 10.1177/0971945820907409
Pratyay Nath
modern historiography (‘a rather recent historiographical fiction’ (p. 158), as it is styled here), as well as a dominant trope in the modern historical record, but this separation was an affective manoeuvre, a valorisation of a politics of masculinity conceived narrowly, to serve political interests conceived equally narrowly. It is an idea that still has political currency (see the unsupportable reason-boosting of Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, for example). This has not only misrepresented medieval life by implication but modern life too, and it is in this observation that the real importance of works such as Boquet and Nagy’s becomes clear. Here, the ‘evolution of scholarly thought towards a natural philosophy of the emotions’, of the human as an ‘emotive creature endowed with reason’ began in the twelfth century (p. 135), with a ‘science of emotion’ in place by the end of the 13th. Human beings are deeply complex creatures, deeply subject to change over time, at the level of the body, the brain, and of culture. There is nothing more complex about modern human beings or their ideas than about medieval human beings, and explaining what differences there are over time, in feeling, in expression, in bodily and affective practices, in epistemology, cannot be carried out through the mode of increasing complication. Beautifully rich and elegant as a work of medieval history, this work should also prompt modernists to check their assumptions and their starting points. Truly foundational, Medieval Sensibilities is an ideal introduction for those who wish to embrace ‘the infinite cultural malleability of the strange, affective material from which we are made’ (p. 248).
{"title":"Book Review: Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman and Mughal Empires: Social History in the Early Modern World","authors":"Pratyay Nath","doi":"10.1177/0971945820907409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0971945820907409","url":null,"abstract":"modern historiography (‘a rather recent historiographical fiction’ (p. 158), as it is styled here), as well as a dominant trope in the modern historical record, but this separation was an affective manoeuvre, a valorisation of a politics of masculinity conceived narrowly, to serve political interests conceived equally narrowly. It is an idea that still has political currency (see the unsupportable reason-boosting of Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, for example). This has not only misrepresented medieval life by implication but modern life too, and it is in this observation that the real importance of works such as Boquet and Nagy’s becomes clear. Here, the ‘evolution of scholarly thought towards a natural philosophy of the emotions’, of the human as an ‘emotive creature endowed with reason’ began in the twelfth century (p. 135), with a ‘science of emotion’ in place by the end of the 13th. Human beings are deeply complex creatures, deeply subject to change over time, at the level of the body, the brain, and of culture. There is nothing more complex about modern human beings or their ideas than about medieval human beings, and explaining what differences there are over time, in feeling, in expression, in bodily and affective practices, in epistemology, cannot be carried out through the mode of increasing complication. Beautifully rich and elegant as a work of medieval history, this work should also prompt modernists to check their assumptions and their starting points. Truly foundational, Medieval Sensibilities is an ideal introduction for those who wish to embrace ‘the infinite cultural malleability of the strange, affective material from which we are made’ (p. 248).","PeriodicalId":42683,"journal":{"name":"MEDIEVAL HISTORY JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0971945820907409","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41751429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-03DOI: 10.1177/0971945820907408
R. Boddice
{"title":"Book Review: Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy, Medieval Sensibilities: A History of Emotions in the Middle Ages","authors":"R. Boddice","doi":"10.1177/0971945820907408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0971945820907408","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42683,"journal":{"name":"MEDIEVAL HISTORY JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0971945820907408","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46551850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-04DOI: 10.1177/0971945819895898
U. Shachar
The study of castles has formed a major part of crusade historiography since its inception in the early nineteenth century. Fortification has been taken to represent the magnificence of the efforts to rule the Holy Land and the battle between Christianity and Islam. Recently, however, scholars have recognised that, inasmuch as castles were celebrated as the epitomes of resilience and hostility, military architecture was far more dialogical than previously noticed. The design of castles involved a highly nuanced familiarity with the culture from which they were intended to defend. This article seeks to show that not only the physical characteristics of castles but also ideas about what made them religiously successful, in their capacity to enact and protect ritual spaces, were shaped through a dynamic inter-religious dialogue. Taking Safed as a case study, this article brings together three narratives—in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew—that share the attempt to laud the castle by drawing a dialectic between its strategic might and the sanctity of the soil upon which it is built. While the three accounts differ radically in their political stakes, the rhetorical strategies they employ in order to contemplate the spiritual efficacy of the castle is profoundly entangled.
{"title":"Enshrined Fortification: A Trialogue on the Rise and Fall of Safed","authors":"U. Shachar","doi":"10.1177/0971945819895898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0971945819895898","url":null,"abstract":"The study of castles has formed a major part of crusade historiography since its inception in the early nineteenth century. Fortification has been taken to represent the magnificence of the efforts to rule the Holy Land and the battle between Christianity and Islam. Recently, however, scholars have recognised that, inasmuch as castles were celebrated as the epitomes of resilience and hostility, military architecture was far more dialogical than previously noticed. The design of castles involved a highly nuanced familiarity with the culture from which they were intended to defend. This article seeks to show that not only the physical characteristics of castles but also ideas about what made them religiously successful, in their capacity to enact and protect ritual spaces, were shaped through a dynamic inter-religious dialogue. Taking Safed as a case study, this article brings together three narratives—in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew—that share the attempt to laud the castle by drawing a dialectic between its strategic might and the sanctity of the soil upon which it is built. While the three accounts differ radically in their political stakes, the rhetorical strategies they employ in order to contemplate the spiritual efficacy of the castle is profoundly entangled.","PeriodicalId":42683,"journal":{"name":"MEDIEVAL HISTORY JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0971945819895898","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45115175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0971945819897435
S. Faroqhi
Very often, the editors responsible for collections of articles will state that they have joined originally disparate contributions into coherent publications that resemble single-author books. Put differently, these editors claim to have established strong connections between the pieces entrusted to them by individual authors. Often these editors will go so far as to rename the articles at issue, now calling them ‘chapters’. By contrast, the present collection is consciously eclectic, and the editor does not aim at presenting the eight articles appearing here as parts of a unified whole. Rather, I hope that readers will be able to visualise, at least in part, the diversity of approaches to pre-1850s Ottoman social history as practiced today. Moreover, this collection should make visible some trends that may be relevant for the future, the historians at issue—with the exception of the present author—being either young scholars or else in mid-career.
{"title":"Introduction","authors":"S. Faroqhi","doi":"10.1177/0971945819897435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0971945819897435","url":null,"abstract":"Very often, the editors responsible for collections of articles will state that they have joined originally disparate contributions into coherent publications that resemble single-author books. Put differently, these editors claim to have established strong connections between the pieces entrusted to them by individual authors. Often these editors will go so far as to rename the articles at issue, now calling them ‘chapters’. By contrast, the present collection is consciously eclectic, and the editor does not aim at presenting the eight articles appearing here as parts of a unified whole. Rather, I hope that readers will be able to visualise, at least in part, the diversity of approaches to pre-1850s Ottoman social history as practiced today. Moreover, this collection should make visible some trends that may be relevant for the future, the historians at issue—with the exception of the present author—being either young scholars or else in mid-career.","PeriodicalId":42683,"journal":{"name":"MEDIEVAL HISTORY JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0971945819897435","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47675991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0971945819890444
Kayhan Orbay
The Ottoman Empire had inherited the waqf (charitable foundation) as an institutionalized form of charity from the Near Eastern Islamic states, which had preceded it. Over time, new forms of charitable foundations emerged, while with the expansion of the Empire, waqfs grew in number and spread geographically. Donors created over fifty thousand charitable foundations, making them into the most widespread institution in Ottoman history. Some waqfs, the largest ones in particular, survived for many centuries. However, sometimes continued functioning was under severe threat, due to wars, epidemics, natural disasters, and rebellions. To overcome financial straits, the waqfs resorted to a variety of measures. Occasionally, a royal waqf in difficulty received assistance from other foundations established by sultans and/or their relatives. Administrators reduced current expenditures, sometimes even suspending salaries and charitable services. Moreover, through long-term lease contracts involving substantial down payments by the lessees, waqf administrators often raised the money needed to restore damaged properties. In the present paper, we study Ottoman royal waqfs when exposed to adversities and financial hardships. As administrators reacted with considerable flexibility, the claim that the waqfs were rigid institutions is in obvious need of revision.
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Pub Date : 2019-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0971945819893033
I. Kadı
The role of non-Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire has been a topic of debate among scholars who approached the issue from various perspectives at different times. One thread in this debate focused on these communities’ role in Ottoman trade with Europe and emphasized their relations with western capital in explanation of their prominence in the Ottoman economy. This article attempts to explain the vitality of non-Muslim merchants through the centuries in the face of Western economic penetration of the Ottoman Empire, by focusing on transaction costs and market imperfections in North-western Anatolia. The article focuses on the trade in mohair yarn and cotton, which were the most important commodities exported to the Netherlands from the Ottoman Empire. Relying on data obtained from Dutch archives on cotton and mohair yarn consignments from Ankara and Izmir to Amsterdam, the article emphasises the diversity and complexity of the various transactions and expenses required to deliver these consignments to Amsterdam. It suggests that the local merchants were able to take advantage of the market imperfections and high transaction costs in North Western Anatolia while interacting with European merchants in the region.
{"title":"Explaining the Vitality of Eighteenth-century Non-Muslim Ottoman Merchants: How to Cope with Transaction Costs","authors":"I. Kadı","doi":"10.1177/0971945819893033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0971945819893033","url":null,"abstract":"The role of non-Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire has been a topic of debate among scholars who approached the issue from various perspectives at different times. One thread in this debate focused on these communities’ role in Ottoman trade with Europe and emphasized their relations with western capital in explanation of their prominence in the Ottoman economy. This article attempts to explain the vitality of non-Muslim merchants through the centuries in the face of Western economic penetration of the Ottoman Empire, by focusing on transaction costs and market imperfections in North-western Anatolia. The article focuses on the trade in mohair yarn and cotton, which were the most important commodities exported to the Netherlands from the Ottoman Empire. Relying on data obtained from Dutch archives on cotton and mohair yarn consignments from Ankara and Izmir to Amsterdam, the article emphasises the diversity and complexity of the various transactions and expenses required to deliver these consignments to Amsterdam. It suggests that the local merchants were able to take advantage of the market imperfections and high transaction costs in North Western Anatolia while interacting with European merchants in the region.","PeriodicalId":42683,"journal":{"name":"MEDIEVAL HISTORY JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0971945819893033","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45109003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0971945819871154
S. Faroqhi
The subject of our discussion is the travelogue of Evliya Çelebi, born in 1611 to a goldsmith of the sultans’ palace known as Derviş Mehemmed Zılli and who probably died in Cairo around 1685. It is intriguing for a multitude of reasons, one of them especially relevant for the present purpose: While Evliya’s work covers the entire Ottoman Empire and adjacent territories in ten substantial volumes, we do not know the patrons and/or other addressees that the author may have envisaged. While the author often mentioned two grand viziers and other figures of the highest levels of the Ottoman elite, who employed him and with whom he had good relations, by the mid-1680s they had mostly predeceased him, sometimes by several decades.
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Pub Date : 2019-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0971945819890447
F. Yaşa
Time is the only phenomenon that encompasses the past, present, and future, giving vitality to all living beings. Throughout history, people have tried to understand this phenomenon by determining its cycles and dividing them into segments. In pre-modern societies, the powerlessness of people against nature made them view time and space as closely connected (time-space continuum). In traditional Ottoman society, it was thus difficult to measure time. People made calculations using lunar movements. Court astrologers observed the moon and stars, advising sultans when to hold imperial accession ceremonies, celebrate princely births and weddings, or launch ships. In larger towns, at least the prayer times could be determined with assurance: However, villagers were mostly aware only of the day, month, season, and year. Hence, the understanding of time was quite different on the higher and lower rungs of the social ladder. In this paper, I attempt to answer the following questions: To what extent is it possible to measure time by studying the phases of the moon? What were the meanings that the Ottoman ruling class attached to the moon? For what reasons did ordinary people try to document in the qadi court at what time they saw the new moon, finding witnesses and having the court scribes record their testimonies? My sources are the qadi court records of Anatolian and Crimean cities, with additional information from travelogues and chronicles.
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