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First published as a special issue of the journal Medieval Encounters (vol. 23, 2017), this volume, edited by Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, Charles Burnett, Silke Ackermann, and Ryan Szpiech, brings together fifteen studies on various aspects of the astrolabe in medieval cultures. The astrolabe, developed in antiquity and elaborated throughout the Middle Ages, was used for calculation, teaching, and observation, and also served astrological and medical purposes. It was the most popular and prestigious of the mathematical instruments, and was found equally among practitioners of various sciences and arts as among princes in royal courts. By considering sources and instruments from Muslim, Christian, and Jewish contexts, this volume provides state-of-the-art research on the history and use of the astrolabe throughout the Middle Ages. Contributors are Silke Ackermann, Emilia Calvo, John Davis, Laura Fernández Fernández, Miquel Forcada, Azucena Hernández, David A. King, Taro Mimura, Günther Oestmann, Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma, Petra G. Schmidl, Giorgio Strano, Flora Vafea, and Johannes Thomann.
Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures brings together fifteen studies on the astrolabe in the Middle Ages. By considering sources and instruments from Muslim, Christian, and Jewish contexts, this volume provides state-of-the-art research on the history and use of the astrolabe.
Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Telegraph, The Times, and BBC History Magazine An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk. "Falk’s bubbling curiosity and strong sense of storytelling always swept me along. By the end, The Light Ages didn’t just broaden my conception of science; even as I scrolled away on my Kindle, it felt like I was sitting alongside Westwyk at St. Albans abbey, leafing through dusty manuscripts by candlelight." —Alex Orlando, Discover Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: these are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture. In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England’s grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world’s most advanced observatory. The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today.
This is the first comprehensive study of an ingenious number-notation from the Middle Ages that was devised by monks and mainly used in monasteries. A simple notation for representing any number up to 99 by a single cipher, somehow related to an ancient Greek shorthand, first appeared in early-13th-century England, brought from Athens by an English monk. A second, more useful version, due to Cistercian monks, is first attested in the late 13th century in what is today the border country between Belgium and France: with this any number up to 9999 can be represented by a single cipher. The ciphers were used in scriptoria - for the foliation of manuscripts, for writing year-numbers, preparing indexes and concordances, numbering sermons and the like, and outside the scriptoria - for marking the scales on an astronomical instrument, writing year-numbers in astronomical tables, and for incising volumes on wine-barrels. Related notations were used in medieval and Renaissance shorthands and coded scripts. This richly-illustrated book surveys the medieval manuscripts and Renaissance books in which the ciphers occur, and takes a close look at an intriguing astrolabe from 14th-century Picardy marked with ciphers. With Indices. "Mit Kings luzider Beschreibung und Bewertung der einzelnen Funde und ihrer Beziehungen wird zugleich die Forschungsgeschichte - die bis dato durch Widerspruechlichkeit und Diskontinuit�t gepr�gt ist - umfassend aufgearbeitet." Zeitschrift fuer Germanistik.
This book analyses the artistic and cultural legacy of Western Islamic societies and their interactions with Islamic, Christian and Jewish societies in the framework of the late medieval Mediterranean, from a range of multi-disciplinary perspectives. The book, organised in four parts, addresses the Andalusi legacy from its presence in the East and the West; analyses the relations and transfers between Al-Andalus and the artistic productions of the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula; explores other manifestations of the Andalusi legacy in the fields of knowledge, construction, identity and religious studies; and reconsiders ornamental transfers and exchanges in artistic manifestations between East and West across the Mediterranean basin. Chapter 2 is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
This sixth volume in the AVISTA series considers medieval travel from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, placing the physical practice of transportation in the larger context of medieval thought about the world and its meaning. The papers included cover vehicle design and logistical management, the practicalities of how travellers oriented themselves, and the symbolism of the landscapes and maps created in the Middle Ages.
In On Both Sides of the Strait of Gibraltar Julio Samsó shows that astronomical sources, written in al-Andalus, the Maghrib and the Iberian Peninsula, belong to the same tradition and emphasizes the role of al-Andalus and the Iberian Peninsula in the transmission of Islamic astronomy to medieval Europe.
Northwestern University Press is pleased to announce this volume in its journal addressing late medieval culture (ca. 1300-1550). Constructions of Time in the Late Middle Ages provides an exhaustive treatment of its subject by scholars representing various nations, approaches, and disciplines. Supported by a multinational editorial board, the editors have selected scholarly articles, essays, and an extensive bibliography.
Medieval Jerusalem was a vibrant international center, home to multiple cultures, faiths, and languages. Harmonious and dissonant voices from many lands, including Persians, Turks, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, Copts, Ethiopians, Indians, and Europeans, passed in the narrow streets of a city not much larger than midtown Manhattan. Patrons, artists, pilgrims, poets, and scholars from Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions focused their attention on the Holy City, endowing and enriching its sacred buildings, creating luxury goods for its residents, and praising its merits. This artistic fertility was particularly in evidence between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, notwithstanding often devastating circumstances—from the earthquake of 1033 to the fierce battles of the Crusades. So strong a magnet was Jerusalem that it drew out the creative imagination of even those separated from it by great distance, from as far north as Scandinavia to as far east as present-day China. This publication is the first to define these four centuries as a singularly creative moment in a singularly complex city. Through absorbing essays and incisive discussions of nearly 200 works of art, Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven explores not only the meaning of the city to its many faiths and its importance as a destination for tourists and pilgrims but also the aesthetic strands that enhanced and enlivened the medieval city that served as the crossroads of the known world.
A “well-organized and interesting” overview of science in the Muslim world in the seventh through seventeenth centuries, with over 100 illustrations (The Middle East Journal). During the Golden Age of Islam, in the seventh through seventeenth centuries A. D., Muslim philosophers and poets, artists and scientists, princes and laborers created a unique culture that has influenced societies on every continent. This book offers a fully illustrated, highly accessible introduction to an important aspect of that culture: the scientific achievements of medieval Islam. Howard Turner, who curated the subject for a major traveling exhibition, opens with a historical overview of the spread of Islamic civilization from the Arabian peninsula eastward to India and westward across northern Africa into Spain. He describes how a passion for knowledge led the Muslims during their centuries of empire-building to assimilate and expand the scientific knowledge of older cultures, including those of Greece, India, and China. He explores medieval Islamic accomplishments in cosmology, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, geography, medicine, natural sciences, alchemy, and optics. He also indicates the ways in which Muslim scientific achievement influenced the advance of science in the Western world from the Renaissance to the modern era. This survey of historic Muslim scientific achievements offers students and other readers a window into one of the world’s great cultures, one which is experiencing a remarkable resurgence as a religious, political, and social force in our own time.