1st Edition

Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia

By A.C.S. Peacock, Bruno De Nicola Copyright 2015
    456 Pages
    by Routledge

    456 Pages
    by Routledge

    Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia offers a comparative approach to understanding the spread of Islam and Muslim culture in medieval Anatolia. It aims to reassess work in the field since the 1971 classic by Speros Vryonis, The Decline of Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization which treats the process of transformation from a Byzantinist perspective. Since then, research has offered insights into individual aspects of Christian-Muslim relations, but no overview has appeared. Moreover, very few scholars of Islamic studies have examined the problem, meaning evidence in Arabic, Persian and Turkish has been somewhat neglected at the expense of Christian sources, and too little attention has been given to material culture. The essays in this volume examine the interaction between Christianity and Islam in medieval Anatolia through three distinct angles, opening with a substantial introduction by the editors to explain both the research background and the historical problem, making the work accessible to scholars from other fields. The first group of essays examines the Christian experience of living under Muslim rule, comparing their experiences in several of the major Islamic states of Anatolia between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, especially the Seljuks and the Ottomans. The second set of essays examines encounters between Christianity and Islam in art and intellectual life. They highlight the ways in which some traditions were shared across confessional divides, suggesting the existence of a common artistic and hence cultural vocabulary. The final section focusses on the process of Islamisation, above all as seen from the Arabic, Persian and Turkish textual evidence with special attention to the role of Sufism.

    Part 1 Christian Experiences of Muslim Rule:  Christians in the Middle East, 600-1000: conquest, competition and conversion.  Christian views of Islam in early Seljuq Anatolia: perceptions and reactions.  Patterns of Armeno-Muslim interchange on the Armenian plateau in the interstice between Byzantine and Ottoman hegemony.  The rape of Anatolia, Scott Redford Liquid frontiers: a relational analysis of maritime Asia Minor as a religious contact zone in the 13th-15th centuries.  The Greek Orthodox communities of Nicaea and Ephesus under Turkish rule in the 14th century: a new reading of old sources.  Part 2 Artistic and Intellectual Encounters between Islam and Christianity:  Byzantine appropriation of the Orient: notes on its principles and patterns.  Other encounters: popular belief and cultural convergence in Anatolia and the Caucasus.  13th-century 'Byzantine' art in Cappadocia and the question of Greek painters at the Seljuq court.  An interfaith polemic of medieval Anatolia: Qadii Burha Burhan al-Anawi" on the Armenians and their heresies.  'What does the clapper say?' An interfaith discourse on the Christian call to prayer by Adisho bar Brikha.  Part 3 The Formation of Islamic Society in Anatolia:  Sunni Orthodox vs Shiite heterodox?: a reappraisal of Islamic piety in medieval Anatolia.  Mevlevi-Bektashi rivalries and the Islamisation of the public space in late Seljuq Anatolia.  Battling Kufr (unbelief) in the land of infidels: Gulsehri's Turkish adaptation of Attar’s Manatiq al-tayr.  Islamisation through the lens of the Saltuk-name.



     

    Biography

    Andrew Peacock is Reader in Middle Eastern Studies in the School of History, University of St Andrews, UK and is Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded research project ’The Islamisation of Anatolia, c. 1000-1500’.



    Bruno De Nicola is Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies in the School of History, University of St Andrews, UK.

    "This volume provides clear challenges to the paradigm of the decline and destruction of Byzantine Christianity in Asia Minor at the hands of marauding Turkish raiders that was firmly established by Speros Vryonis in his The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley, CA, 1971). This volume is therefore a substantial contribution to our understanding of Muslim–Christian interaction on the Anatolian peninsula during the medieval period. The process of the Islamisation of Anatolia remains enigmatic, but the scholarly strength of the types of micro-histories contained in a multi-disciplinary volume such as this can overturn grand theoretical edifices such as that created by Vryonis. The editors are to be applauded for demonstrating the potential of multidimensional approaches to studying the complex historical transformation that is the Islamisation of Anatolia."

    - Jason T. Roche, Manchester Metropolitan University, in Al-Masaq, Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean

    "This volume makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the period by providing well-documented snapshots of events that both influenced and were shaped by one of history’s most complex periods of transition."

    - Thomas Michel, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA in Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 2016