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“The Vision of Daniel” from the St. Petersburg Genizah
Menahem Ben-Sasson
Journal:

Harvard Theological Review / Volume 115 / Issue 3 / July 2022

Published online by Cambridge University Press:

23 August 2022, pp. 331-362

Print publication:

July 2022
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This article includes translation of a “new” Vision of Daniel as it survived, albeit incomplete. It reflects a “meeting point” between three monotheistic religions in the ninth and tenth centuries CE. A comparative study of the work enables the reconstruction of its missing parts. The Vision may have been composed in the area where al-Muʿtaṣim battled Theophilos in the 830s CE, namely, northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia. An “updated” appendix was added around 1000 CE. Towards the end of the Vision, exact times are replaced with “flexible times,” a moderate expression of the cosmic changes found in similar eschatological works. The two anti-messiahs described, constructed as integrations of Jewish-Christian-Muslim traditions of the apocalyptical devils, reflect the shifting identities of messianic figures, who will reveal themselves once again (Parousia), albeit as demonic antichrists. One of the two is an inversion of the Christian image of Moses/Jesus, whereas the second is Armilus.

26 - Imperial cities
from Part VI - Early imperial cities
- By Gerardo Gutiérrez, Nicola Terrenato, Adelheid Otto
Edited by Norman Yoffee, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Book:

The Cambridge World History

Published online:

05 March 2015

Print publication:

12 March 2015, pp 532-545
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Baghdad was the city that medieval Arabic geographers put in the center of the world. The history of Baghdad is divided into three phases, first, the prestigious capital of the Abbasid Caliphs from the time of its foundation in 762 by al-Mansûr up to its conquest by Mongol armies in 1258; then, for centuries, a simple provincial metropolis, and finally, since 1921, the capital of Iraq, whose dramatic present assails us with images of devastation. The Abbasid Caliphs took power in the aftermath of an important insurrection that overthrew the former Umayyad dynasty over the years 746-50. The palatial city founded by al-Mansûr has often been called the Round City because of its circular form. Ya‘qûbî affirms that it was the only round city known in the whole world. The city founded by al-Mansûr was transformed quickly as the result of the displacement and multiplication of the Caliph's places of residence.

(c) - The Nasrid kingdom of Granada
from 19 - Islam and the Mediterranean
- By David Abulafia
David Abulafia, University of Cambridge
Book:

The New Cambridge Medieval History

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

21 October 1999, pp 636-643
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No account of Islam in the west, nor indeed of the history of thirteenth-century Europe, would be complete that did not take into account the origins of the one Islamic state in Spain to survive throughout the fourteenth and nearly all the fifteenth century, the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. The origins of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada lay in the struggles within southern Spain from 1228 onwards, between factions flying the black banner of the Abbasid caliphs, and the Almohad caliph al-Mamun, who was based in Seville and Granada. Rachel Arie has pointed out that a whole area of the city was laid out to receive the swarm of Muslim refugees moving into Granada. One factor in the survival of Nasrid Granada was the survival of Muhammad I himself. The Majorcan kings had treaties with Granada by the early fourteenth century, and there were Catalan and Italian commercial stations at Almeria and Malaga.

12 - WARFARE
from PART VIII - ISLAMIC SOCIETY AND CIVILIZATION
- By V. J. Parry, University of London
Edited by P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, Bernard Lewis
Book:

The Cambridge History of Islam

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

21 April 1977, pp 824-850
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Summary

The Arabs, within the two decades which followed the death of the Prophet Muhammad, won for themselves a large empire embracing Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Persia and much of Arabia itself. The role, in the armies of Islam, of soldiers Muslim through conversion and non-Arab in ethnic origin grew in importance during the years of Umayyad rule. The pattern of warfare which had brought the Arabs success in the time of the great conquests was soon overlaid, as it were, with procedures drawn from the traditions of Byzantium and Persia. The Arabs who conquered a great empire for Islam had little acquaintance with the techniques of siege warfare. The period of the Abbasid decline saw a large increase in the use of mamluks recruited as slaves, trained in the practice of war and freed to serve as professional troops. The iqta system was reaching its full development in the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries.

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