Humanities 1010 with Profs. Candyce Sweet & Rafalowski

Instead, she places Islamic civilization in the longer trajectory of Mediterranean civilizations and sees the ‘Abbasid Empire (750–1258 CE) as the inheritor and interpreter of Graeco-Roman traditions. At its zenith the ‘Abbasid caliphate stretched over the entire Middle East and part of North Africa and influenced Islamic regimes as far west as Spain.

When the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad dynasty in 750 CE, an important element in legitimizing their newly won authority involved defining themselves in the eyes of their Islamic subjects. Nadia Maria El Cheikh shows that ideas about women were central to the process by which the Abbasid caliphate, which ushered in Islam's Golden Age, achieved self-definition.In most medieval Islamic cultures, Arab Islam stood in opposition to jahl, or the state of impurity and corruption that existed prior to Islam's founding.

This book is an attempt to explain how, in the face of increasing religious authoritarianism in medieval Islamic civilization, some Muslim thinkers continued to pursue essentially humanistic, rational, and scientific discourses in the quest for knowledge, meaning, and values. Drawing on a wide range of Islamic writings, from love poetry to history to philosophical theology, Goodman shows that medieval Islam was open to individualism, occasional secularism, skepticism, and even liberalism.

Scandinavia, highlighting such key aspects of Viking life as power and politics, social and kinship networks, gifts and feasting, religious beliefs, women's roles, social classes, and the Viking economy, which included farming, iron mining and metalworking, and trade.Drawing of the latest archeological research and on literary sources, namely the sagas, Sigurðsson depicts a complex and surprisingly peaceful society that belies the popular image of Norsemen as bloodthirsty barbarians. Instead, Vikings often acted out power struggles symbolically, with local chieftains competing with each other through displays of wealth in the form of great feasts and gifts, rather than arms.

For three centuries, the Vikings changed the political world of northern and western Europe. This encyclopedia explores exactly how they did it in a highly readable and informative resource volume.How did the Vikings know when to strike? What were their military strengths? Who were their leaders? What was the impact of their raids? These and many more questions are answered in this volume, which will benefit students and general readers alike.The only encyclopedia devoted specifically to the topic of conflict, invasions, and raids in the Viking Age, this book presents detailed coverage of the Vikings, who are infamous for their violent marauding across Europe during the early Middle Ages. Featuring extracts of poetry and prose from the Viking Age, the book provides cultural context in addition to an in-depth analysis of Viking military practices.

This latest title in the highly successful Ancient Textiles series is the first substantial monograph-length historiography of early medieval embroideries and their context within the British Isles. The book brings together and analyzes for the first time all 43 embroideries believed to have been made in the British Isles and Ireland in the early medieval period. New research carried out on those embroideries that are accessible today, involving the collection of technical data, stitch analysis, observations of condition and wear-marks and microscopic photography supplements a survey of existing published and archival sources. The research has been used to write, for the first time, the ‘story'of embroidery, including what we can learn of its producers, their techniques, and the material functions and metaphorical meanings of embroidery within early medieval Anglo-Saxon society.

This engaging study focuses on the role of assemblies in later Anglo-Saxon politics, challenging and nuancing existing models of the late Anglo-Saxon state. Its ten chapters investigate both traditional constitutional aspects of assemblies - who attended these events, where and when they met, and what business they conducted - and the symbolic and representational nature of these gatherings. Levi Roach takes into account important recent work on continental rulership, and argues that assemblies were not a check on kingship in these years, but rather an essential feature of it. In particular, the author highlights the role of symbolic communication at assemblies, arguing that ritual and demonstration were as important in English politics as they were elsewhere in Europe. Far from being exceptional, the methods of rulership employed by English kings look very much like those witnessed elsewhere on the continent, where assemblies and ritual formed an essential part of the political order.

This groundbreaking study of coinage in early medieval England is the first to take account of the very significant additions to the corpus of southern English coins discovered in recent years and to situate this evidence within the wider historical context of Anglo-Saxon England and its continental neighbours. Its nine chapters integrate historical and numismatic research to explore who made early medieval coinage, who used it and why. The currency emerges as a significant resource accessible across society and, through analysis of its production, circulation and use, the author shows that control over coinage could be a major asset. This control was guided as much by ideology as by economics and embraced several levels of power, from kings down to individual craftsmen. Thematic in approach, this innovative book offers an engaging, wide-ranging account of Anglo-Saxon coinage as a unique and revealing gauge for the interaction of society, economy and government.

The Staffordshire Hoard is one of the great discoveries of British archaeology, an unparalleled treasure of the early Anglo-Saxon period. Chanced upon in summer 2009, in an ordinary field north of Birmingham, its hundreds of objects of the 6th to 7th centuries AD amount to a total of 4kg of gold and 1.7kg of silver. An archaeological excavation at the site was followed by a dedicated research project to understand why this trove of warriors and kings was buried, and what part it had played in the bloody cauldron of conflict that shaped early England. This book is an accessible account of the Staffordshire Hoard project and its findings. It tells of the discovery of the Hoard, the fundraising campaign to save it for the nation, and the scientific methods used to study it. Its many extraordinary objects are described in detail and lavishly illustrated: hundreds of gold, garnet and silver weapon fittings, unique sacred objects, Christian crosses, one magnificent helmet and more. The book also provides information on the places, people and events that place this remarkable find in context, with sections on the kingdom of Mercia and its neighbours, Anglo-Saxon warfare, religion, craft techniques and comparable archaeological sites.