The March of Tuscany

The growth of Hucpolding landed possessions in Tuscia is marked by two distinct phases. The first covers the second half of the ninth century, when key elements of their presence included two monasteries in the Florentine area and close relationships with the Adalbertings; the second, the second half of the tenth century after the group achieved the marchisal office, when the full resources of the fisc became available to them. Chapter 5 examines the evolution of parental assets in the march, aligned with the pathway to marchisal authority. It proposes that the marchisal office was fundamental to the expansion of their power in the region – a power that proved transitory, however, after the loss of the public office.

Христијанизација Нубијe и везе са Византијом до X века

Indications of the first baptismal endeavors in Nubia can be traced back to the apostolic period. The final baptism of all three Nubian states (Nobatia, Makuria, Alodia) took place in the 6th century. A strong and lasting alliance with Byzantium implied cultural, religious and trade contacts. The historiography is dominated by the theory of the collapse of Nubian- Byzantine ties after the Islamic Conquest of Egypt in the 7th century. The similarity of Nubian society with Byzantine after the seventh century is explained by the theory of memory of Byzantium in Nubia. On the other hand, relying on the Arab-Byzantine sources, the trade relations between Nubia and Byzantium can be traced back to the 10th century. According to Ibn Yahya the Nubians appear as a guard of emperors in Constantinople. The general Byzantine term of the Ethiopians mainly denoted various East African peoples in Byzantine sources. In the tenth century, it is possible to identify Nubians in such mentions.

The Peace of God

Scholars have argued that the politically fractured landscape of medieval Western Europe was foundational to the evolution of constitutionalism and rule of law. In making this argument, Salter and Young (2019) have recently emphasized that the constellation of political property rights in the High Middle Ages was polycentric and hierarchical; holders of those rights were residual claimants to the returns on their governance and sovereign. The latter characteristics—residual claimancy and sovereignty—imply a clear delineation of jurisdictional boundaries and their integrity. However, historians’ description of the “feudal anarchy” that followed the tenth-century disintegration of the Carolingian Empire does not suggest clearly delineated and stable boundaries. In this paper, I highlight the role of the Peace of God movement in the 11th and 12th centuries in delineating and stabilizing the structure of political property rights. In terms of historical political economy, the Peace of God movement provides an important link between the early medieval era and the constitutional arrangements of the High Middle Ages.

Between Qum and Qayrawān: Unearthing early Shii ḥadı̄th sources

In this article, I develop and test a new methodology of unearthing early Shii ḥadı̄th sources that served as the basis for the later collections of the fourth/tenth century. This method, besides answering the question of historicity, enables us to understand the dissemination of texts across times and regions. As a case-study, I examine what is alleged to have been the first Shii legal ḥadı̄th collection, a work attributed to ʿUbaydullāh b. ʿAlī al-Ḥalabī (d. c. 148/765). By comparing the reports transmitted on the authority of al-Ḥalabī in the Twelver ḥadı̄th compendium originating in Qum, al-Kulaynī's al-Kāfī, and an Ismaili legal ḥadı̄th composition, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān's al-Īḍāḥ, composed in Qayrawān, I demonstrate that both works trace their material to an earlier Kūfan source of the second/eighth century, with each work drawing on the same material independently. A cross-regional textual analysis of later ḥadı̄th compendia, in this case composed by contemporaneous scholars, residing in different regions, affiliated to dissimilar religious persuasions, reveals the transmission of identical material; this finding contributes to our understanding of both geographical transmission of early sources and compositional arrangements of the later ḥadı̄th compendia.

The Emperor of Dunhuang: Rethinking Political Regionalism in Tenth Century China

The political history of medieval China is written primarily on the basis of official records produced at centers of political power by victors in the preceding trans-dynastic war. With the help of alternative sources, one can hope to challenge the triumphalist and teleological narrative imbedded in these records. In this article, I use documents preserved in the Dunhuang “library cave” to uncover a failed attempt to establish a regional state with imperial pretensions in Dunhuang immediately after the fall of the Tang. This kind of political regionalism seen in Dunhuang is also found in several other post-Tang states in Sichuan and Guangdong. My investigation of their similarities exposes the teleological nature of the conventional framework of “Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms,” and demands that we rethink the political history of China after the fall of the Tang.

Place-Names in Three Prophecies from the «Book of Taliesin»

The Book of Taliesin (now at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth) is a fourteenth-century manuscript of Welsh poetry, with some of its material going back to the late sixth century. But it includes poems of later date. Amongst them are three political prophecies: 'Taliesin's Verdant Song'; 'The Contention of Gwynedd and Deheubarth'; 'A Short Poem About Lludd's Discussion'. The first two are of the tenth century, the last of the eleventh. What follows deals with place-names in each. The first can be shown to allude to the English victory over Vikings and Scots at Brunanburh, near Durham, in 937. It is therefore somewhat later, of the period 940 to 987, and not of before 937, as has been thought. The second, dated to 942 x 960, is a polemic by a poet of Gwynedd or north-west Wales against the men of Deheubarth or southern Wales. Its author makes mocking reference to places which can be identified as in North Britain or on the Welsh border: even if Gwynedd's enemies flee there, they will not escape vengeance. Of most interest to Spanish readers is the third text. Its obscure references to enemies will be to Arab and Berber invaders of Andalusia in 1086, after which Alphonso vi appealed for international help. The poem can hence be dated to 1087 or 1088, and will be the earliest reference to Spain in Welsh poetry.