scholarly journals The Clay Paw Burial Rite of the Åland Islands and Central Russia: A Symbol in Action

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-46
Author(s):  
Johan Callmer

The clay paw burial rite is a special feature of the Åland Islands. It is introduced already in the seventh century shortly after a marked settlement expansion and considerable cultural changes. The rite may be connected with groups involved in beaver hunting since the clay paws in many cases can be zoologically classified as paws of beavers. On the Åland Islands only minor parts of the population belong to this group. Other groups specialized in contacts with the Finnish mainland. The clay paw group became involved in hunting expeditions further and further east and in the ninth century some of the members established themselves in three or four settlements on the middle Volga. There is a later expansion into the area between the Volga and the Kljaz'ma. The clay paw burial rite gives us an unique possibility to identify a specific Scandinavian population group in European Russia in the ninth and tenth centuries. With the introduction of Christian and semi-Christian burial customs ca. A.D. 1000 we cannot archaeologically distinguish this group any more but some historical sources could indicate its existence throughout the eleventh cetury in Russia. The clay paw burial rite brings to the fore questions about local variations and special elements in the Pre-Christian Scandinavian religion. Possibly elements of Finno-ugric religious beliefs had a connection with the development of this rite.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 636-646
Author(s):  
Samad P. Parvin ◽  
◽  
Saeid S. Sattarnejad ◽  
Elham H. Hendiani ◽  
◽  
...  

Research objectives: The main purpose of this article is to study the Quranic inscription of the Imamzadeh Ma’sum Temple in Maragheh. This inscription shows the evolution of religious beliefs during the Ilkhanid period in Iran which started from the se­venth century AH and continued until the eighth century AH. The main religions of the Ilkhanid rulers were Buddhism and Christianity, but they gradually adopted Islam as the official religion of government. The influence of the process of conversion has left traces in some of the inscriptions of this period. Another purpose of this study is to introduce the Imamzadeh Ma’sum temple as one of the Buddhist temples in Iran. Research materials: In this study, the authors have used two methods, namely field research and library surveys. Regarding the first method, the temple of Imamzadeh Ma’sum was examined. Regarding the second method, the historical sources of the Ilkhanid period, such as the Jami’ al-tawarikh of Khajeh Rashid al-Din Faḍlullah Hamadani, were used. These works refers to the situation of Buddhists in Iran during the Ilkhanid period (i.e. the seventh century AH). Results and novelty of the research: The results of the authors’ research in this article have demonstrated that the temple of Imamzadeh Ma’sum of Maragheh was one of the Buddhist temples in Iran. This Buddhist temple was changed to an Islamic mosque after the conversion of Ghazan Khan in 694 AH. The surviving Qur’anic inscription inside the buil­ding refers to the victory of Islam over Buddhism.


1993 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Barnes ◽  
Mark Whittow

1992 was the first season of the Oxford University/British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara Survey of Medieval Castles of Anatolia. Over the next five years it is planned to survey and record in as much detail as practicable five Byzantine castles in the area of the Büyük and Küçük Menderes river systems in western Turkey. The five castles will eventually be published in a single monograph where they can be discussed as a group and placed in their historical and geographical context. An annual preliminary report will appear in Anatolian Studies, which we hope will serve as a forum to test ideas, raise problems, and encourage other historians and archaeologists to suggest further ways of obtaining the most from these sites.The five sites—indicated on Fig. 1—are Mastaura kalesi (near Bozyurt, in Aydın ili, Nazilli ilçesi, merkez bucağı); Yılanlı kalesi (on the side of the Boz dağ near Kemer in İzmir ili, Ödemiş. ilçesi, Birgi bucağı); Çardak kalesi (near Çardak in Denizli ili, Çardak ilçesi, merkez bucağı); Yöre kalesi (near Yöre köy in Aydın ili, Kuyucak ilçesi, Pamukören bucağı); and Ulubey kalesi (on the Kazancı deresi near Ulubey in Uşak ili, Ulubey ilçesi). None has received more than brief notice before; none has been planned or studied in any detail. They have been chosen to cover the whole period of Byzantine rule in the area from the seventh century to the early fourteenth, and a variety of the different types and functions of Byzantine castles. Yılanlı is possibly a late seventh-century fortress, built in the context of the Arab attempts to take Constantinople and the consequent struggle to control the western coastlands of Asia Minor. Çardak appears to have been built between the seventh and the ninth century principally to act as a look-out point in the Byzantine defensive system against Arab raids.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 70-77
Author(s):  
Anna K. Gagieva

The article discusses the social charity of “local community” in Ust -Sysolsk in the second half of the XIX century. We define “local community” as a voluntary, self-determining citizens association, designed or not properly executed legally for the solution of urgent problems of non-productive and non-commercial nature. The aim of the work is to study public charity as an activity of “local community” in Ust-Sysolsk in the second half of the XIX century. The provisions of the work can be used for educational and methodological materials on the subject “History of Finno-Ugric regions and countries”, “History of everyday life”, “History of the Komi Republic” and others. The research methodology is based on a systematic approach, which includes structural, legal, historical and other methods of research. The materials are based on published and unpublished historical sources, such as legislative materials, statistics, documentation, as well as archival materials. Central Russia and the Urals had already introduced charities in the mid of XX century, while in the research area public charity was just beginning and was manifested through the social work of the Russian Orthodox Church, amateur associations and companies. Forms of public charity varied: fundraising, purchase of tools, equipment and materials for events and others. Public charity, “local community”, in Ust-Sysolsk developed within the framework of modernization processes of the second half of the nineteenth century. It led to the evolution of «local community» into a civil society. The emergence of new public organizations and active public charity contributed to the development of new forms of self-organization. In the city of Ust-Sysolsk, there was an upsurge of public life and public performance. The appearance of self-governing organizations “local community” was facilitated by the loyal policies of the district and provincial government. As historical sources show that we can talk about mutual understanding and cooperation between the authorities and the “local community”. Carrying out public charity, it provided public functions of traditional culture maintenance, the organization of leisure, cultural and educational activities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 1301-1321
Author(s):  
Andrey S. Desnitsky

This article, the second in a series, briefly describes the main problems connected with the reconstruction of emerging Christianity. First of all, it is the scarcity of historical sources. They speak almost exclusively about religious beliefs and leave aside all other aspects of life. Then, it is the clearly expressed interest of both ancient authors and modern researchers to present a “rightful” and ideal picture. As a result, emerges an idealized image of such a Christian community that a modern scholar would like to belong to. A possible methodological solution to this problem can be found in the model of religious studies suggested by the modern German scholar Gerd Theissen. Concerning the practical method, one can suggest an analysis of the polemics as reflected in the early Christian texts, mainly epistles.


Author(s):  
Keith Ray ◽  
Julian Thomas

By the later part of the third millennium BCE, Britain had become connected to mainland Europe by the so-called ‘Beaker network’. This appears to have involved the circulation of people, materials, and cultural innovations over trans-continental distances. Most tellingly, it included direct evidence for cross-Channel contact and the movement of individual people into Britain who had lived much or most of their lives in continental Europe. However, the evidence for such contact during the previous few centuries is very much sparser. If, as it seems reasonable to infer, developed passage tombs were ultimately an Atlantic European phenomenon that was adopted in idiosyncratic ways in Ireland, Scotland, and finally Scandinavia during the course of the fourth millennium, routine interactions with the Continent are less easy to identify thereafter. In marked contrast with this, the period after 3000 BCE saw the emergence of a range of new interregional connections within Britain and Ireland. These have been less consistently recognized, as they conflict with the traditional narrative in which populations in central and south-west Asia engaged in periodic wholesale migration northward and westward. Such a narrative of external stimulus to change is less secure in this period because we now realize that the social and cultural changes that overtook Britain in the earlier third millennium originated predominantly in the northern and western parts of these islands. Some of the most significant innovations of the third millennium throughout Britain were ultimately generated in the Orkney archipelago and its immediate sphere of contact. While aspects of the unique developments that took place in the Orkneys can be attributed to connections with Ireland and the Western Isles, these contributed to the emergence of a distinctive social formation that was at once highly competitive and spectacularly creative. By the start of the third millennium, Orkney had become a crucible of social and cultural change, but developments in the islands arguably began to diverge from those on the mainland soon after the Neolithic began, perhaps during the thirty-seventh century BCE.


Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 360
Author(s):  
Manuel Lopez

In this article, I would like to reframe our understanding of the role played by doxographies or classification of views (Skt. siddhānta, Ch. panjiao 判教, Tib. grub mtha’) in the Buddhist tradition as it pertained to Tibetan attempts at defining and organizing the diversity of Buddhist contemplative practices that made their way into Tibet since the introduction of Buddhism to the Tibetan plateau in the seventh century, all the way up to the collapse of the Tibetan Empire in the ninth century. In order to do that, this article focuses on one such doxography, the Lamp for the Eye in Meditation (bsam gtan mig sgron), composed in the 10th century by the Tibetan scholar Nupchen Sangyé Yeshé. The first part of the article will place Nupchen’s text in the larger historical and intellectual context of the literary genre of doxographies in India, China, and Tibet. The second part of the article will argue that Nupchen used the doxographical genre not only as a vehicle for organizing and articulating doctrinal and contemplative diversity, but also as a tool for the construction of a new and original system of Tibetan Buddhist practice known as ‘the Great Perfection’ (rdzogs chen). Finally, and as a small homage to the recent passing of the great religious studies scholar Jonathan Z. Smith, I would also like to reflect on the importance that the issues of definition, comparison, and classification—central concerns of Nupchen’s as well as of Smith’s works—have in creating and articulating religious difference.


1999 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 159-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veli Sevin

The Urartian Kingdom, as is well known, played a major power role on the stage of history in eastern Anatolia in the second half of the ninth century BC and remained powerful until the second half of the seventh century BC. With their highly advanced architectural traditions and organised state structure, the Urartians take their place among the most exciting civilisations of the first half of the first millennium BC in the Near East.Extensive detailed research and publication has been carried out on Urartian civilisation for over a hundred years, but the origin and dynamics of the development of this civilisation are still obscure. The Assyrian annals, which start from the 13th century BC, are at present the only source for understanding the early periods. These records were intended as propaganda and their accuracy is in many instances thus questionable.


Slavic Review ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-219
Author(s):  
Horace G. Lunt

The lucid account of the Moravian mission of Constantine–Cyril and Methodius that Professor Dvornik has given is a persuasive and up–to–date statement of widely accepted views. Yet scarcely a single specialist would be willing to agree unhesitatingly with all the details even in such a brief résumé of the quarter-century of relations between the emerging Slavic nations and their neighbors. Indeed, some, as his footnotes suggest, might take exception to certain of his major points.The difficulty lies in our historical sources–in their paucity, their unclear allusions, their omissions, and, worst of all, their contradictions. First of all, so little of the ninth–century material has survived that we are dependent on the views written decades or even centuries after the events. Then, even the contemporary writings have come down to us in modified form, owing to varying amounts of recopying and editing, with inevitable distortions, omissions, reinterpretations, and interpolations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioanna N. Stefanaki ◽  
Sue Shea ◽  
Manolis Linardakis ◽  
Emmanouil K. Symvoulakis ◽  
Robin Wynyard ◽  
...  

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 9-19
Author(s):  
Andrew Jotischky

The monastery founded in the fifth century by St Sabas, in the Kidron Valley a few kilometres south-east of Bethlehem, has been described as ‘the crucible of Byzantine Orthodoxy’. The original cave cell occupied by Sabas himself grew into a monastic community of the laura type, in which monks lived during the week in individual cells practising private prayer and craft work, but met for communal liturgy on Saturdays, Sundays and feast days. The laura, which differed from the coenobium in the greater emphasis placed on individual meditation, prayer and work, was the most distinctive contribution of the Palestinian tradition to early Christian monasticism. The first laura had been founded in the Judean desert in the fourth century by Chariton, and cenobitic monasteries had been in existence in Palestine both in the desert and on the coastal strip since the same period. Nevertheless, partly as a result of an extensive network of contacts with other foundations, both laurae and cenobitic monasteries, partly through Sabas s own fame as an ascetic, and partly through a burgeoning reputation for theological orthodoxy, St Sabas became the representative institution of Palestinian monasticism in the period between the fifth century and the Persian invasion of 614. The monastery’s capacity to withstand the Persian and Arab invasions of the seventh century, and to adapt to the cultural changes brought by Arabicization, ensured not only its survival but also its continued importance as a disseminator of monastic practice throughout the early Middle Ages. In 1099, when the first crusaders conquered the Holy Land, it was almost the sole survivor of the ‘golden age’ of Palestinian desert monasticism of the early Byzantine period. The monastery continued to prosper under crusader rule. It was an important landowner and its abbot was in the twelfth century a confrater of the Knights Hospitaller. Moreover, it is clear both from varied genres of external documentary sources – for example, pilgrimage accounts and hagiographies – and from the surviving manuscripts produced in the monastery between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, that the monastery’s spiritual life also flourished in this period. The role of St Sabas and Palestinian monasticism within the broader scope of Byzantine monastic reform of the eleventh and twelfth centuries suggests that the continuing function of the monastery at the centre of a wider network of practices and ideals across the Orthodox world engendered a revival of early monastic practices in a period more often associated with decline and the struggle to preserve the integrity of monastic life.


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