I found the answer I needed in a footnote to Thackston's translation of Rashid al-Din. (I'm so grateful for "search inside this book"!) The "white coins" worth one sixth of a dinar are indeed silver dirhams, as I suspected.

Does anyone here know exchange rates for local currencies in the Mongol Ilkhanate? Or what "the white coins" would be?

#numismatics #medieval #MongolEmpire #MiddleEast

In case anyone needs to know, the #Armenian word for "jinns" is գեանք (geank').

This also suggests that at the time the Armenians borrowed this #Arabic word, the letter ج was still pronounced as a hard 'g'.
#medieval #MiddleEast

Any tourists interested in #Rome today can read the account of Rabban Sawma's church tourism in the city (in 1287, that is 737 years ago) and identify the seven churches which he described, using #Wikipedia.

#medieval #tourism

@amgine
Premodern history is always the inference to the most likely explanation. We have no airtight proofs.

@amgine
I've seen the IANAL abbreviation, but are you inaugurating IANAH? ;-)

The text is a hagiography of a church leader who was part of a rival faction to the Muslim vizier who allegedly wished to revive the caliphate, so defaming the (now long-dead) rival is still useful for establishing the hero's bona fides on the "right side of history." The rival leader was dead, but the other faction very much continued (and did, ultimately triumph).

The Mongol conqueror #Genghis Khan's grandson Hulegu captured #Baghdad and ended the Abbasid #caliphate in the city in 1258.

I just read a text that asserts that around 25 years later, the Muslim vizier Shams al-Din Juvayni was involved in a plot to restore the caliphate, but he was put to death when Hulegu's grandson Arghun overthrew his uncle Teguder Ahmad. This is probably just slander, but it is surprising slander in a #Syriac text written in the late 1310s!

I'm (re)reading the History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sawma.

#IslamicHistory #MongolEmpire

I'm wondering if anyone can help me identify some places named in an #Armenian text, the history of Ghevond.

The text describes a raid by the Arab governor of Armenia (based at Duin) toward Pontus, passing Karin/Theodosioupolis/Erzerum and Kolonia (identified) as well as Govat'a, Kastiłon/Kastighon, and the district of Marit‘enēs (unidentified), listed in that order (perhaps a clue as to location?). I've tried playing with Pleiades but I'm not finding likely candidates.

Source: p.331 of https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/Publications/LAMINE/lamine4.pdf

#medieval #IslamicStudies #ByzantineStudies #Byzantium #Anatolia #HistoricalGeography

I'm wondering if anyone can help me identify some places named in an #Armenian text, the history of Ghevond.

The text describes a raid by the Arab governor of Armenia (based at Duin) toward Pontus, passing Karin/Theodosioupolis/Erzerum and Kolonia (identified) as well as Govat'a, Kastiłon/Kastighon, and the district of Marit‘enēs (unidentified), listed in that order (perhaps a clue as to location?). I've tried playing with Pleiades but I'm not finding likely candidates.

Source: p.331 of https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/Publications/LAMINE/lamine4.pdf

#medieval #IslamicStudies #ByzantineStudies #Byzantium #Anatolia #HistoricalGeography

@JoanneKlein
I'm afraid I don't know enough to suggest a clever comeback, unless you know your interlocutor's last name and suggest that one theory is that Jack's really name was Jack <insert their last name>. But then they might want to know more about that theory, so that might backfire...

What's the most absurd thing anyone has said to you about your profession?

I have a new winner, from the physical therapist I had to see today (because broken clavicle is healing): he was interested to hear that I teach Middle Eastern History, and said, "Of course I learn a lot about what's going on in the #MiddleEast today from studying the #Bible"!

Now I'm more sympathetic than most scholars to the idea that you can learn some true things about *ancient* Middle Eastern history from the Bible (that the Assyrians and Babylonians conquered a bunch, for example), but learning about the Middle East *today* from the Bible? That's just reading current events through selective interpretations of ancient prophecies, interpretations that are contentious even among Christians and Jews...

Maybe I should have responded, "Great, I've learned a lot about the human body from reading Galen!"

I'm debating whether to go back for a second appointment or not.

@nahint
In his history he gives short bios of the famous people who died in each year, and probably this qadi's name was on the list of people sufficiently famous to include, but then he had to figure out what to say about him! It is rather underwhelming.

I deeply suspect Ibn Taghribirdi of snark. One person is listed as "respected, among the Malikis." Does that imply among no one else? The Malikis were not a very large group in Egypt (though bigger than the Hanbalis).

Skimming the history of Ibn Taghribirdi (d. 1470 CE) today, he notes the death almost a hundred years before of a qadi who wrote a verse to cheer up tooth picks (sic, not to cheer up people who use tooth picks).

But in Ibn Taghribirdi's view, this qadi's tooth pick poetry was decidedly mediocre, for he listed two other tooth pick poems that he considered superior.

If your only claim to fame is as a mediocre tooth pick poet...

#Medieval #MiddleEast

A #Syriac technical glitch turned riddle:

What happened here?

https://gazafunds.com/ compiles aid links for Palestinians in #Gaza and each time you refresh the page a new campaign comes up - consider boosting and donating what you can

#palestine #Rafah #genocide

@benjamingeer
I've spent more time in history departments than in Middle Eastern studies departments (hence the focus of my thread), but I've seen some theoretical innovation at the MESA conference. YMMV.

(P.S. Because non-Western fields of history also attract more non-white scholars, this structural asymmetry also impedes the demographic diversity of professional historians themselves. There is surely something off-kilter about a structural system which rewards Euro-Americans most if they study their own ancestors, but rewards non-white people the most if they study other people's ancestors.)

This asymmetry of cross-field familiarity also means that hiring committees in history departments (not addressing area studies and religion departments) rely on an understanding of the field mostly obtained in pop culture or their outdated undergraduate classes. This actually rewards scholarship which is less innovative or even up-to-date, slowing scholarly progress. This is another structural factor contributing to hobbling non-Western history.

I don't think any of these systemic impediments are intentional, but they do cumulatively have a large effect, and that effect not only hobbles non-Western history, it impoverishes Western history and deprives Americanists and Europeanists of resources they could use to better combat public misunderstandings in their own fields, e.g. American exceptionalism, European supremacy. This asymmetry unwittingly perpetuates Eurocentrism in the discipline and drives non-Western historians into non-historical academic networks.

3/3

Specialization is necessary, of course; I am not advocating for generalists. And graduate training needs to prepare people for their particular fields.

But one result of this citation asymmetry is that theoretical insights are prevented from flowing freely; they only flow from Western history to non-Western history. The most sophisticated theoretical work in my field will reach less of an audience than any rather banal paper on a minor Confederate general. This is not because there are fewer scholars in my field (there are), but because scholars in my field read more US history than US historians read in my field.

This both impoverishes Western history and puts a cap on what can be accomplished in non-Western fields. It makes it harder for non-Western history to win cross-field awards, needing to work harder to make work legible not just to outsiders, but to Americanists and Europeanists specifically. This contributes to the mistaken idea that non-Western history is "backward."
2/3