Living with Nature and Things

Contributions to a New Social History of the Middle Islamic Periods

Bethany J. Walker, Abdelkader Al Ghouz, Bethany J. Walker, Abdelkader Al Ghouz

• Publisher: V&R Unipress
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783847111030
• eBook ISBN: 9783847011033
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: History

This edited volume represents the research results of two international conferences organized and sponsored by the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg: "Environmental Approaches in Pre-Modern Middle Eastern Studies" and "Material Culture Methods in the Middle Islamic Periods". The following work consists of three parts, which correspond to the themes of the aforementioned conferences (Contributions to Environmental History and Material Culture Studies) and a third which bridges the gap between the two approaches (Practice and Knowledge Transfer). The present contributions cover a wide range of such topics as urban pollution, local perceptions of weather, rural estate economy, Sufi understandings of nature and the body and mind, houses and socialization, text and gardens, local know-how and interdependence in medieval Syrian agriculture, crop selection and the medieval agricultural economy.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Editorial Introduction
• Body
• Bethany J. Walker: Introduction: The Physical World as a Social World
• Part One – Contributions to Environmental History
• Section One – Socialized Landscapes
• Anthony T. Quickel: A Medieval Garden City: Mamluk Cairo's Food Supplies and Urban Landscape
• Gül Şen: The Landscape of Southern Bilād al-Shām through the Eyes of the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Cosmographer Āşıḳ Meḥmed
• Christopher Braun: Equipped with Shovels, Pickaxes, and Books: Treasure Hunters and Grave Robbers in Medieval Egypt
• Section Two – Resource Management
• Hend El Sayed: Reassessing the Building Craze in Mamluk Cairo: Meeting the Demand of Building Material
• Stefan Peychev: Water and the City: Ottoman Sofia in the Early Modern Period
• Chiara Corbino: Animal Husbandry and Landscape Exploitation in Mamluk Southern Bilād-Shām: The Evidence from Tall Hisban
• Section Three – Disease and Environmental Crises
• Yossef Rapoport: 1068 in the Fayyum: A Micro-History of an Environmental Crisis
• Rachel Hoffman: The Local Ramifications of a Global Catastrophe: The Impact of the Black Death on the Mamluk Sultanate, 1341–1382
• Raymond Ruhaak: An Analysis of What Fostered Resilience of the Irish Sea Area Gaels and the Bedouin of the Mamluk Frontier Leading Up to the Black Death
• Part Two – Contributions to Material Culture Studies
• Section One – Complexity of Patronage
• Iman R. Abdulfattah: The Complex of Qalāwūn in Cairo: Connoisseurship in Early Mamluk Architecture
• Muhammad Hafez Shaaban: The Curious Case of a Fourteenth-Century Madrasa: Agency, Patronage and the Foundation of the Madrasa of Umm al-Sulṭān Shaʿbān
• Noha Abou-Khatwa: Shaping the Material Culture of Cairo in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century: A Case Study in the Patronage of Amir Ṣirghatmish al-Nāṣirī
• Miriam Kühn: Contextualizing the Patronage of Mamluk Minbars: A Case Study of the Minbar in the Mosque of ʿAṣalbāy in Madīnat al-Faiyūm
• Section Two – The Materiality of Identity
• Nicolò Pini: Walls of Identities: Built Environment as a Social Marker
• Elisa Pruno / Raffaele Ranieri / Chiara Marcotulli: The Material Culture in Shawbak Between Crusaders, Ayyubids and Mamluks: The Case-Study of Hospitaller's Chapel
• Nikolaos Vryzidis: Islamic Material Culture in Late Byzantine and Early Modern Greek Contexts: Shifting Meanings and Methodological Problems
• Section Three – The Materiality of Ritual
• Julie Bonnéric: Social and Cultural Interpretation of Material Culture: The Example of Lighting Devices in Mamluk Mosques
• Tobias Nünlist: Devotion and Protection: Amuletic Scrolls Dating from the 14th Century: A Contribution with Special Consideration of Is 1624 (Dublin)
• Bilal Badat: “By the Pen and what they inscribe”: A Study of Pen-Related Rituals in Ottoman Calligraphy
• Section Four – Decoding Daily Life
• Warren C. Schultz: Moving Beyond Dating: What Else Might the Presence of Mamluk Copper Coins in the Petra Region Represent?
• Gül Kale: Stuff of the Mind: Mother-of-Pearl Table Cabinets of Ottoman Scholars in the Early Modern Period
• Part Three – Bridging the “Gap”: Practice and Knowledge Transfer
• Aleksandar Shopov: The Vernacularization of Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Agricultural Science in its Economic Context
• Fien De Block: Timekeeper-Teachers and their Discursive Instruments: A Material Approach to Al-Jāmiʿ al-mufīd fī bayān uṣūl al-taqwīm wa-l-mawālīd
• Yehoshua Frenkel: The Contribution of European Travel Literature to the Study of the Environmental History of the Levant (13th-15th centuries)
• Biographies
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects and Places