medieval worlds • no. 17 • 2022
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Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
A-1011 Wien, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2
Tel. +43-1-515 81/DW 3420, Fax +43-1-515 81/DW 3400 https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at, e-mail: verlag@oeaw.ac.at |
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DATUM, UNTERSCHRIFT / DATE, SIGNATURE
BANK AUSTRIA CREDITANSTALT, WIEN (IBAN AT04 1100 0006 2280 0100, BIC BKAUATWW), DEUTSCHE BANK MÜNCHEN (IBAN DE16 7007 0024 0238 8270 00, BIC DEUTDEDBMUC)
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medieval worlds • no. 17 • 2022 ISSN 2412-3196 Online Edition ISBN 978-3-7001-9354-8 Online Edition 2022 License: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Indexed by: ERIH-PLUS, Crossref, DOAJ, EZB
Thomas A. Carlson,
Jessica S. Mutter
S. 185 - 197 doi:10.1553/medievalworlds_no17_2022s185 Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften doi:10.1553/medievalworlds_no17_2022s185
Abstract: The medieval Middle East, at the crossroads of Africa and Eurasia, included more distinct yet intersecting literary traditions in more languages than any other part of the premodern world. While several of these literary traditions were religiously demarcated, others such as Arabic and Persian were multireligious written cultures. Despite this, the religious diversity of this region is often conceptualized as separate communities who sometimes interacted. Religion was certainly a socially relevant category employed by medieval people to organize their world, and yet people from every religion wrote about the same government, the same society, and largely the same culture, a culture expressed in religious multiplicity. A new digital research project has developed a reference tool (the Historical Index of the Medieval Middle East, HIMME) to demonstrate the shared culture and society of the diverse medieval Middle East. It provides a union index to selected primary sources in Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Persian, and Syriac, indexing the people, places, and practices mentioned in each literary tradition. The result is that someone interested in, for example, the famous counter-Crusader Saladin (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn) can search a database and discover relevant primary sources in unexpected languages such as Syriac as well as the expected Arabic and Latin sources, while the later conqueror Timur Lenk is also mentioned in Greek and Armenian texts that might easily be missed. This article offers an overview of the research tool (published on August 1, 2021), and a discussion of its scope, as well as suggestions for how it might be used to research Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the medieval Middle East. Keywords: digital humanities, diversity, multilingualism, Middle East, Arabic, Armenian, Syriac, Persian, Greek, Hebrew Published Online: 2022/11/30 13:02:38 Object Identifier: 0xc1aa5572 0x003ddaca Rights:https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
medieval worlds provides a forum for comparative, interdisciplinary and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. Its aim is to overcome disciplinary boundaries, regional limits and national research traditions in Medieval Studies, to open up new spaces for discussion, and to help developing global perspectives. We focus on the period from c. 400 to 1500 CE but do not stick to rigid periodization.
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Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
A-1011 Wien, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2
Tel. +43-1-515 81/DW 3420, Fax +43-1-515 81/DW 3400 https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at, e-mail: verlag@oeaw.ac.at |