OA-Book: Mechanisms of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire

Mechanisms of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire

Editors: Edmund Hayes and Petra M. Sijpesteijn

Date Published: November 2024

Hardback isbn: 9781009384261

Available in Open Access (gold)

" The success of Islamic imperialism in the period from the conquests to the Ayyubid dynasty has traditionally been explained as purely the result of military might. This book, however, adopts a bottom-up approach which puts social relationships and local power dynamics at the centre of the Islamic empire's cohesion. Its chapters draw on sources in diverse languages: not just Arabic, but also Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Hebrew, and Bactrian, showing how different linguistic communities intersected and contributed to a connected yet diverse empire. They highlight how not just literary and historical texts, but also physical documents and archaeological evidence should be incorporated into writing histories of the late antique and early medieval Middle East. Social institutions and relationships explored include oaths; petitions, decrees, and begging letters; and financial frameworks such as debt and taxation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Provides a new framework for understanding how the early Islamic empire, and pre-modern empires more broadly, worked together through cooperation and interdependence as well as through coercion

Shows how different linguistic communities intersected and contributed to a connected yet diverse empire

Uses physical documents and archaeological evidence as well as literary and historical texts in order to produce a broader picture"

OA Book: Venice and the Ottoman Empire: A Tale of Art, Culture, and Exchange

 Venice and the Ottoman Empire: A Tale of Art, Culture, and Exchange

"Accompanying a major traveling exhibition, this book examines the unique artistic and cultural exchange between the Republic of Venice and Turkish Ottoman culture and identity over a three-hundred-year period. 

From the early Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century, Venice held a central position in the global trade network. This book explores how artistic and cultural ideas originating in the Ottoman Empire arrived in Venice and were reinterpreted through the decorative arts, printed books, painting, drawing, and architecture. 

Featuring a richly diverse selection from the collections of the Musei Civici di Venezia, this volume showcases the creative contributions of well-known Venetian artists such as Vittore Carpaccio, Gentile Bellini, Michele Giambono, and Mariano Fortuny alongside works created by the best anonymous craftspeople both in Venice and the Ottoman Empire, including textiles, metalwork, armor, and ceramics. With newly researched essays by esteemed international scholars on topics such as trade routes, the involvement of international communities in Venice, diplomatic interactions, and military power dynamics, this important volume offers freshly reviewed and new perspectives on the intricate artistic relationship that existed between Venice and the Ottoman Empire. 

About The Author Stefano Carboni was the inaugural CEO of the Museums Commission of the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2019–23); director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Western Australia (2008–19); and curator and administrator in the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1992–2008). He is adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia."

URL: https://insight.randomhouse.com/widget/v4/?width=600&height=800&isbn=9780847838790 

OA Journal: The Arabist: Budapest Studies in Arabic

 

"A double-blind peer-reviewed journal in the field of Arabic and Islamic studies, founded in 1988.

ISSN: 0239-1619

Founding Editor: Alexander Fodor (1941-2014)

Editor-in-Chief: Kinga Dévényi

Editors:

Antonella Ghersetti 

Anne Regourd

Avihai Shivtiel

Review Editor: Tamás Iványi

Publisher: Eötvös Loránd University Chair of Arabic Studies & Csoma de Kőrös Society Section of Islamic Studies

For enquiries and submission of articles to the journal please write to arabist@korosicsomatarsasag.hu"

URL: https://arabist.hu/

Country of Words A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature

Country of Words :  A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature
Refqa Abu-Remaileh

"Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature is a digital-born project that retraces and remaps the global story of Palestinian literature in the twentieth century, starting from the Arab world and going through Europe, North America, and Latin America. Sitting at the intersection of literary history, periodical studies, and digital humanities, Country of Words creates a digitally networked and multilocational literary history—a literary atlas enhanced. The virtual realm acts as the meeting place for the data and narrative fragments of this literature-in-motion, bringing together porous, interrupted, disconnected, and discontinuous fragments into an elastic, interconnected, and entangled literary history."

İstanbul Ansiklopedisi: Reşad Ekrem Koçu

"A joint project initiated by Salt and Kadir Has University in 2018, istanbulansiklopedisi.org offers access to the printed volumes of Reşad Ekrem Koçu’s Istanbul Encyclopedia and thousands of related documents. It brings together over 40,000 digitized documents, incorporating published encyclopedia articles and a body of archival material that forms the basis for subsequent volumes. Enabling an in-depth analysis of the archive, the online platform provides a basis to trace and explore the visual and textual connections between various sources. 

Blending common facts with unusual accounts, the Istanbul Encyclopedia —and the relevance of the knowledge it entails— is worthy of further scrutiny."

URL: https://istanbulansiklopedisi.org/  

Accountability Archive

 

"The Accountability Archive is a crowdsourced record of journalists, politicians, and public figures endorsing or encouraging the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and/or defaming pro-Palestinian activists.
We have a vision of a public resource to be used by future historians, and researchers, helping understand how power holders attempted to manufacture consent for the genocidal aggression towards the Palestinian people. We hope this resource will serve to hold them to account."

Open Access Book: Early Civilization and the American Modern : Images of Middle Eastern origins in the United States, 1893–1939

Early Civilization and the American Modern : Images of Middle Eastern origins in the United States, 1893–1939

Author: Eva Miller
Published: UCL Press, 2024

Series: Modern Americas

ISBN: 9781800087200

"In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a particular story about the United States’ role in the long history of world civilization was constructed in public spaces, through public art and popular histories. This narrative posited that civilization and its benefits – science, law, writing, art and architecture – began in Egypt and Mesopotamia before passing ever further westward, towards a triumphant culmination on the American continent.

Early Civilization and the American Modern explores how this teleological story answered anxieties about the United States’ unique role in the long march of progress. Eva Miller focuses on important figures who collaborated on the creation of a visual, progressive narrative in key institutions, world’s fairs and popular media: Orientalist and public intellectual James Henry Breasted, astronomer George Ellery Hale, architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and decorative artists Lee Lawrie and Hildreth Meière. At a time when new information about the ancient Middle East was emerging through archaeological excavation, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia appeared simultaneously old and new. This same period was crucial to the development of public space and civic life across the United States, as a shared sense of historical consciousness was actively pursued by politicians, philanthropists, intellectuals, architects and artists."