WITHDRAWN: The Mediterranean basin: A population genetic study based on 25 X-chromosome SNPs

This book offers a comprehensive examination of the shape and impact of piracy in the eastern half of the Mediterranean and the Ottoman Empire’s administrative, legal, and diplomatic response. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, piracy had a tremendous effect on the formation of international law, the conduct of diplomacy, the articulation of Ottoman imperial and Islamic law, and their application in Ottoman courts. Piracy and Law draws on research in archives and libraries in Istanbul, Venice, Crete, London, and Paris to bring the Ottoman state and Ottoman victims into the story for the first time. It explains why piracy exploded after the 1570s and why the Ottoman state was largely unable to marshal an effective military solution even as it responded dynamically in the spheres of law and diplomacy. By focusing on the Ottoman victims, jurists, and officials who had to contend most with the consequences of piracy, Piracy and Law reveals a broader range of piratical practitioners than the Muslim and Catholic corsairs who have typically been the focus of study and considers their consequences for the Ottoman state and those who traveled through Ottoman waters. This book argues that what made the eastern half of the Mediterranean basin the Ottoman Mediterranean, more than sovereignty or naval supremacy—which was ephemeral—was that it was a legal space. The challenge of piracy helped to define its contours.

Download Full-text

Unfinished and Less Authored Texts

10.1093/oso/9780190848583.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Matthew D. C. Larsen

Keyword(s):

Late Antiquity ◽

Mediterranean Basin ◽

Written Texts ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

The Mediterranean Basin ◽

Jewish Writers

The concept of textual unfinishedness played a role in a wide variety of cultures and contexts across the Mediterranean basin in antiquity and late antiquity. Chapter 2 documents examples of Greek, Roman, and Jewish writers reflecting explicitly in their own words about unfinished texts. Many writers claimed to have written unfinished texts on purpose for specific cultural reasons, while others claimed to have written texts that slipped out of their hands somehow with their permission.

Download Full-text

The Alphabet and its Legacy

The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190499341.013.17 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 240-255

Author(s):

Madadh Richey

Keyword(s):

Mediterranean Basin ◽

Technological Development ◽

Greek Language ◽

Writing Systems ◽

Present Contribution ◽

Generative Power ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

Alphabetic Writing ◽

The Mediterranean Basin

The alphabet employed by the Phoenicians was the inheritor of a long tradition of alphabetic writing and was itself adapted for use throughout the Mediterranean basin by numerous populations speaking many languages. The present contribution traces the origins of the alphabet in Sinai and the Levant before discussing different alphabetic standardizations in Ugarit and Phoenician Tyre. The complex adaptation of the latter for representation of the Greek language is described in detail, then some brief attention is given to likely—Etruscan and other Italic alphabets—and possible (Iberian and Berber) descendants of the Phoenician alphabet. Finally, it is stressed that current research does not view the Phoenician and other alphabets as inherently simpler, more easily learned, or more democratic than other writing systems. The Phoenician alphabet remains, nevertheless, an impressive technological development worthy, especially by virtue of its generative power, of detailed study ranging from paleographic and orthographic specifications to social and political contextualization.

Download Full-text