Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700–c.1500: A Framework for Comparing Three Spheres

Catherine Holmes · Jonathan Shepard · Jo van Steenbergen · Björn Weiler

Aug 2021 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

This comparative study explores three key cultural and political spheres – the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from Central Asia to the Atlantic – roughly from the emergence of Islam to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers' interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean.

About the author

Catherine Holmes is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford. She is the author of books including Basil II and the Governance of Empire 976–1025 (2005) and co-editor of Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond (2002) with J. Waring, Between Byzantines and Turks (2012) with J. Harris and The Global Middle Ages (2018) with N. Standen.

Jonathan Shepard was Lecturer in History at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of books including The Emergence of Rus (1996) with S. Franklin, editor of The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire (2008) and co-editor of Byzantine Diplomacy (1992) with S. Franklin, Byzantium and the Viking World (2016) with F. Androshchuk and M. White, Imperial Spheres and the Adriatic (2018) with M. Ančić and T. Vedris, and Viking-Age Trade: Silver, Slaves and Gotland (2020) with J. Gruszczyński and M. Jankowiak.

Jo Van Steenbergen is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Ghent University. He is the author of Order out of Chaos (2006), Caliphate and Kingship in a Fifteenth-Century Literary History of Muslim Leadership and Pilgrimage (2017), A History of the Islamic World, 600-1800: Empires, Dynastic Formations, and Heterogeneities in Islamic West-Asia (2020), and editor of Trajectories of State Formation across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia: Eurasian Parallels, Connections and Divergences (2020).

Björn Weiler is Professor of Medieval History at Aberystwyth University. He is the author of books including Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, 950-1200 (2021), Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture: England and Germany, c. 1215 – c. 1250 (2007; 2011) and co-editor of How the Past was Used: Historical Cultures, c. 750–2000 (2017) with P. Lambert, Authority and Resistance in the Age of Magna Carta [Thirteenth Century England XV] (2015) with J. Burton and P. Schofield, and Representations of Power in Medieval Germany (2006) with S. MacLean.