Matt Cook, with Robert Mills, Randolph Trumbach, and H. G. Cocks. A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex between Men since the Middle Ages. Oxford: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007. Pp. 256. $49.95 (cloth). - Rebecca Jennings. A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex between Women since 1500. Oxford: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007. Pp. 227. $49.95 (cloth).

In the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam. This book argues that key to understanding these dramatic religious transformations are ordinary religious believers, often called “the simple” in late antique and medieval sources. Largely agrarian and illiterate, these Christians outnumbered Muslims well into the era of the Crusades, and yet they have typically been invisible in our understanding of the Middle East's history. What did it mean for Christian communities to break apart over theological disagreements that most people could not understand? How does our view of the rise of Islam change if we take seriously the fact that Muslims remained a demographic minority for much of the Middle Ages? In addressing these and other questions, the book provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the religious history of the medieval Middle East. The book draws on a wealth of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources to recast these conquered lands as largely Christian ones whose growing Muslim populations are properly understood as converting away from and in competition with the non-Muslim communities around them.

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HAJJ AND THE RULERS OF

Journal of look to the past ◽

10.26739/2181-9599-2019-18-03 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 18 (2) ◽

pp. 24-37

Author(s):

D.X. Sangirova ◽

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Sacred Place ◽

History Of ◽

Ancient Times ◽

The Middle Ages

Revered since ancient times, the concept of "sacred place" in the middle ages rose to a new level. The article analyzes one of the important issues of this time - Hajj (pilgriamge associated with visiting Mecca and its surroundings at a certain time), which is one of pillars of Islam and history of rulers who went on pilgrimage

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Forma Dat Esse

History of Philosophy and Logical Analysis ◽

10.30965/26664275-02302007 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 423-446

Author(s):

Sylvain Roudaut

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Progressive Decline ◽

De Trinitate ◽

Late Middle Ages ◽

History Of ◽

The Middle Ages

Abstract This paper offers an overview of the history of the axiom forma dat esse, which was commonly quoted during the Middle Ages to describe formal causality. The first part of the paper studies the origin of this principle, and recalls how the ambiguity of Boethius’s first formulation of it in the De Trinitate was variously interpreted by the members of the School of Chartres. Then, the paper examines the various declensions of the axiom that existed in the late Middle Ages, and shows how its evolution significantly follows the progressive decline of the Aristotelian model of formal causality.

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Muslim Contributions to the History of Religions

American Journal of Islam and Society ◽

10.35632/ajis.v8i3.2603 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 8 (3) ◽

pp. 409-421

Author(s):

Ghulam-Haider Aasi

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Comparative History ◽

History Of Religions ◽

History Of ◽

Muslim Spain ◽

Muslim Scholars ◽

The Middle Ages

History of Religions in the WestA universal, comparative history of the study of religions is still far frombeing written. Indeed, such a history is even hr from being conceived, becauseits components among the legacies of non-Western scholars have hardly beendiscovered. One such component, perhaps the most significant one, is thecontributions made by Muslim scholars during the Middle Ages to thisdiscipline. What is generally known and what has been documented in thisfield consists entirely of the contribution of Westdm scholars of religion.Even these Western scholars belong to the post-Enlightenment era of Wsternhistory.There is little work dealing with the history of religions which does notclaim the middle of the nineteenth century CE as the beginning of thisdiscipline. This may not be due only to the zeitgeist of the modem Wstthat entails aversion, downgrading, and undermining of everything stemmingfrom the Middie Ages; its justification may also be found in the intellectualpoverty of the Christian West (Muslim Spain excluded) that spans that historicalperiod.Although most works dealing with this field include some incidentalreferences, paragraphs, pages, or short chapters on the contribution of thepast, according to each author’s estimation, all of these studies are categorizedunder one of the two approaches to religion: philosophical or cubic. All ofthe reflective, speculative, philosophical, psychological, historical, andethnological theories of the Greeks about the nature of the gods and goddessesand their origins, about the nature of humanity’s religion, its mison dsttre,and its function in society are described as philosophical quests for truth.It is maintained that the Greeks’ contribution to the study of religion showedtheir openness of mind and their curiosity about other religions and cultures ...

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Allegra Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects: A Study in the Solomonic Tradition. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xi, 235 pp., 19 b/w images, 2 tables.

Mediaevistik ◽

10.3726/med.2019.01.13 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 252-254

Author(s):

Albrecht Classen

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Literary Texts ◽

Modern World ◽

State University ◽

Eastern Culture ◽

Historical Objects ◽

History Of ◽

Religious Objects ◽

The Middle Ages

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.

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