Medieval Empires and the Culture of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts

Samuel England

book: Medieval Empires and the Culture of Competition

Open Access Published by Edinburgh University Press 2017

Medieval Empires and the Culture of Competition

Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts

Samuel England

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474425247

Overview
Contents

About this book

Shows how the interactive, confrontational practice of courtly arts shaped imperial thought in the Middle Ages

A probing inquiry into medieval court struggles, this book shows the relationship between intellectual conflict and the geopolitics of empire. It examines the Persian Buyids’ takeover of the great Arab caliphate in Iraq, the counter-Crusade under Saladin, and the literature of sovereignty in Spain and Italy at the cusp of the Renaissance. The question of high culture—who best qualified as a poet, the function of race and religion in forming a courtier, what languages to use in which official ceremonies—drove much of medieval writing, and even policy itself. From the last moments of the Abbasid Empire, to the military campaign for Jerusalem, to the rise of Crusades literature in spoken Romance languages, authors and patrons took a competitive stance as a way to assert their place in a shifting imperial landscape.

Key Features

Covers Classical Arabic poetry and official prose, Spanish court documents, Galician Portuguese lyric and Italian narrative works from 950-1350 CE
Provides new critical context for historians’ work to reconcile the political violence of the late Middle Ages with the cosmopolitanism of that era’s Islamic and Christian empires
Argues that medieval thinkers’ most pressing cultural challenge was to make the court appear as robust as possible in the face of major demographic change and regional war
Shows how the ritual of artistic contest allowed elites to come to terms with religious and ethnic groups’ rival claims to legitimacy, and to subsume those claims into an overarching courtly ideal

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgements and Note on Arabic Transliterations Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
List of Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Courtly Gifts, Imperial Rewards Open Access Download PDF	1
1 ‘Baghdad is to Cities What the Master is to Mankind’: The Rise of Vizier Culture Open Access Download PDF	24
2 The Sovereign and the Foreign: Creating Saladin in Arabic Literature of the Counter-Crusade Open Access Download PDF	67
3 Alfonso X: Poetry of Miracles and Domination Open Access Download PDF	105
4 Saladino Rinato: Spanish and Italian Courtly Fictions of Crusade Open Access Download PDF	141
Conclusion: The Ministry of Culture Open Access Download PDF	177
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	188
Index Open Access Download PDF	225

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 240
Keywords: Islamic Studies

eBook

Published: October 20, 2017
ISBN: 9781474425247