History

Scholars have long wrestled with the question of why the Laws of Hammurabi provide two different sanctions for the theft of temple (and palace) property: the death penalty (§6) and thirtyfold restitution (§8). While reviewing Neo- and Late Babylonian evidence on sacrilegious theft, this paper argues that Babylonian law neatly distinguished between the theft of sacred objects and the theft of nonsacred temple property, which incurred different penalties, corresponding to those that §6 and §8 of the Laws of Hammurabi impose. (...) It further seeks to identify the criteria that determined the classification of certain objects as res sacrae and the legal and cultic consequences of sacrilegious theft. (shrink)

The article introduces a previously unknown Arabic source detailing the preparations for a battle between local Muslim rulers, likely vassals of the Samanids (204–395/819–1005), against the ruler of Ghaznī and his allies, the Hindushahs, near Ghaznī in the mid-fourth/tenth century. By closely reading, translating, and analyzing this manuscript fragment, I aim to shed light on the political realities of the Indian frontier of the Islamic world before the establishment of the Ghaznavid state (366–583/977–1186). The fragment provides evidence of the clashes (...) among different actors, both Muslim and non-Muslim, in the region that makes up present-day eastern Afghanistan during the pre-Ghaznavid period, especially the fourth/tenth century. Moreover, it highlights the significance of the river valleys of Bāmiyān and Ghūrwand, along with the upper Hilmand’s course, as a frontier region where the Samanids and their vassals sought to expand the influence of Islam and Samanid suzerainty by pushing southward. (shrink)

This article examines intra-regional Buddhist patronage networks, particularly those connected with Kŭmgangsan 金剛山. Through a multidisciplinary approach combining historical records, archaeological findings, and art-historical evidence, this study offers a comprehensive understanding of the formative period of Kŭmgangsan’s patronage history. From late Unified Silla onward, Buddhist monks and nuns actively constructed an image of the mountain to establish its reputation as a site with soteriological potency, thereby securing funding for temple construction and expansion. After the Mongol invasions, Kŭmgangsan residents succeeded in (...) attracting prominent patrons from Kaesŏng and Dadu to fund reconstruction endeavors, which ultimately resulted in the mountain’s transformation into a transregionally recognized Buddhist pilgrimage site. By examining how Buddhist monks strategically cultivated politically powerful patrons such as eunuchs and empresses, utilized Buddhist-inspired narratives to enhance the standing of their temples, and actively contributed to the prosperity of their temples, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of Buddhist patronage networks in the broader cultural and historical landscape of medieval Korea. (shrink)

The written responses to Mammaṭa’s Light on Literature (Kāvyaprakāśa) constitute the largest corpus of works on Sanskrit poetics, with no other corpus even coming close. Yet, with a few exceptions, it is virtually unstudied. This essay focuses on the wave of responses to the Light composed during the first hundred years after its appearance, during which it attracted an unprecedented number of written responses of various types: sketchy notes, complete running commentaries, and independent treatises that were meant to replicate or (...) compete with it. Based on a detailed study of chapter eight of Mammaṭa’s work, dedicated to poetic qualities (guṇas)—a complex topic that has been largely misunderstood— the essay identifies the main players in this period, roughly corresponding to the twelfth century. It also determines the authors’ relative chronology and their textual strategies vis-à-vis the Light, its sources, and each other. As the article shows, the early responses were layered, in the sense that each layer subsumed all previous ones, and broad, in that the discussion expanded to include participants who were not Brahmins from Kashmir. Furthermore, the essay explores some of the commentarial practices of the three early Saṅkētas on the Light, which formed the basis of all later engagements. (shrink)

Die Ostraka der frühen 18. Dynastie aus Deir el-Bahri und dem Asasif. By Malte Römer. 3 vols. Bibliothèque générale, vol. 73. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2023). Pp. xxx + 541, 621, 493. $175, €100.

The Iberian Qur’an: From the Middle Ages to Modern Times. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers. The European Qur’an, vol. 3. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022. Pp. ix + 549. $118.99.

his article focuses on an understudied trope of Yuan sanqu: the representation of female entertainers’ stage names. In this article, from a cultural and artistic perspective, I study a corpus of texts to demonstrate how Yuan sanqu writers refined the art of punning by manipulating the names’ literal, literary, and erotic meanings to incorporate various referential fields. During this process, the writers complicated the relationship between ya 雅 (refined) and su 俗 (colloquial) by developing diverse writing strategies that allowed them (...) to blur the boundary between the two. This phenomenon showcases Yuan sanqu’s potential for mixing a variety of aesthetic proclivities and linguistic registers. (shrink)

This article marshals the known evidence for the political relations between the Seljuk sultan of Anatolia or Rūm, Kay Kāʾūs I (r. 608–616/1211–1220), and the Assassins or Ismailis in Iran and Syria. This evidence indicates that the sultan corresponded with the grand master of the Assassins in Iran, was aware of their activities in western Iran and of their coreligionists in Syria, paid protection money to them, and included them in his political calculations.

Schrift und Sprache in Nubien: Studien zum Napatanischen, Meroitischen und Altnubischen. By Francis Breyer. Meroitica, vol. 29. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2022. Pp. vi + 333. €78.

Harmonizing Differences: A History of Distinctions Literature in Islamic Law. By Elias G. Saba. Islam—Thought, Culture, and Society, vol. 1. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019. Pp. ix + 248. $119.99 (cloth, PDF); $27.99 (paper).

Reconstructing the Variant Generation Process of Hadith: Based on the Quantitative and the Isnād- cum-Matn Analysis. By Hiroyuki Yanagihashi. Sheffield, UK: eqUinox PUBlishinG, 2023. Pp. xiii + 287. $100, £75.

The Snake and the Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion. By Nathan McGovern. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 313. $105.

Historic Mosques in Sub-Saharan Africa: From Timbuktu to Zanzibar. By Stéphane Pradines. Handbook of Oriental Studies, 1, vol. 163. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xviii + 350, illus. $179.

The first part of Chapter 2.21 of the Arthaśāstra deals with the activities of the Customs Superintendent, containing recommendations regarding the collection of customs duty. Scholars have encountered several difficulties in understanding the meaning and purposes of the activities described. An auction-like procedure described in the text has been analyzed by some as the normal operation of a market, with the payments to the treasury mentioned there taken as a hitherto-unknown market tax—the price of trading in the market. Other paragraphs (...) in the text describe seemingly self-contradictory trader actions. Interpretations of these actions have involved the imbuing of traders with complex psychological beliefs regarding the actions of other traders. This article proposes an economic model of the underlying market structure, which leads to a different and integrated reading of the text. In this reading, the author of the text, recognizing the incentive for importers to undervalue their goods, suggests the auction procedure and accom- panying penalty payments to elicit truthful revelation of importers’ valuations and to maximize customs levy collections. By comparing the procedure in the Arthaśāstra to modern-day regulations intended to combat tax evasion, the article provides early evidence of the use of sophisticated mechanisms to elicit truthful value revelation. (shrink)

Die Sprache der königlichen Stelen der 18. Dynastie bis einschließlich Amenophis III. By Marc Brose. Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica, vol. 28. Hamburg: Widmaier Verlag, 2023. Pp. xviii + 702. €69.

Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies: Practices from the 2nd/8th to the 13th/19th Centuries. Edited by Sonja Brentjes. New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. xxxvii + 837. $200, £152 (cloth); $45.56, £34.39 (e-book).

A History of Herat: From Chingiz Khan to Tamerlane. By Shivan Mahendrarajah. Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. Pp. xiv + 379. £90, $120.

The Chinese Love Story from the Tenth to the Fourteenth Century. By Alister D. Inglis. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2023. Pp. xiv + 271. $99 (cloth); $36.95 (paper).

Asie centrale 300–850: Des routes et des royaumes. By Étienne de la Vaissière. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2024. Pp. 638. €33 (paper); €22.99 (ebook).

The Hittites. By Damien Stone. Lost Civilizations. London: Reaktion Books, 2023. Pp. 188, illus. $25, £18. [Distributed by University of Chicago Press.].

Contemporary fascism is an understudied phenomenon in Latin America. As a contribution to this understudied area, this article analyzes the evolution of fascist thought in Peru from its interwar history to the twenty-first century. Following Roger Griffin’s influential ‘new consensus’ approach to fascism studies based on a fascist minimum, this study explores Peruvian fascism and will argue that fascism developed new expressions in the years after 1945. It will develop the terms ‘neo-fascism’ and ‘post-fascism’, based on Griffin’s fascist minimum, to (...) clarify the nature of the fascist movements to be analyzed. It will conclude that historically Peruvian fascism was exemplified by the Partido Unión Revolucionaria [Revolutionary Union Party], while in the postwar period, it took two parallel directions: the uniquely Peruvian neo-fascism of Acción Legionaria [Legionary Action] and the ethnocacerist or Andean post-fascism of Antauro Humala. (shrink)

This article revisits the question of Alfred Russel Wallace’s relationship to eugenics and explores the basis of Wallace’s consistent rejection of attempts to label him a eugenicist. Whereas some scholars have identified an ‘ambiguity’ or ‘tension’ between Wallace’s hereditarianism and his libertarianism and maintained – despite Wallace’s statements to the contrary – that he was, in some senses, a eugenicist, this article argues that Wallace’s oft-repeated claims he was not a eugenicist are fully justified. By exploring Wallace’s relationship with Francis (...) Galton using a hitherto neglected correspondence between the two concerning the establishment of a proposed laboratory, and Wallace’s criticism of non-Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms in the writings of William Bateson and others, this article situates Wallace’s opposition to eugenics in his broader ultra-Darwinian agenda. The article concludes by arguing that it is misleading to characterise Wallace as a eugenicist, and that doing so tends to obscure and confuse our understanding of his thought. (shrink)

Quien lea sobre el gueto y luego lea algo pseudointeligente o incluso genuinamente inteligente sobre nuestra moderna “civilización de masas”, debe soltar una risa amarga. Masas, “hombre masa”: no es el telespectador en su casa unifamiliar, incluso si está expuesto a la presión de los medios de comunicación de masas. El habitante del gueto se había convertido físicamente en uno con la masa, al mismo tiempo que luchaba sin sentido y desesperadamente contra las otras células de esta masa de carne. (...) El gueto era un tumor maligno de la humanidad. Cada uno de los que estaban hacinados en él lo entendía como tal y se sentía como la célula enferma de un organismo, lo que, objetivamente, realmente era. Por lo tanto, podía amarse a sí mismo tan poco como a la persona de al lado. (shrink)

Psychology today pathologizes all aspects of the human condition without ever examining its own ills, which have caused it to become fragmented. People from non-Western backgrounds are often adversely affected by the limitations of the discipline, and often avoid treatment altogether. By contrast, a true “science of the soul” has existed for millennia in all the world’s diverse spiritual cultures. Although a plethora of modern therapies are now available, they are hindered in their efficacy by having become entirely divorced from (...) sacred reality. This work argues that it is necessary to restore this “science of the soul” by drawing on the perspective of non-Western wisdom traditions as understood since time immemorial. Examples are given of the fundamental differences that are found between modern psychology and the traditional psychologies of various religions, which also existed in the West prior to the Enlightenment era. Furthermore, this book will show how non-Western philosophy can help rehabilitate an authentically healing psychology in support of promoting sound mental health in our afflicted modern culture. Sacred psychologies, therefore, afford us the best opportunity to tackle the innumerable challenges that confront human beings today, such as trauma, mental illness, addiction, death, and the meaning of our lives. (shrink)

This article examines the causes of the internal war in Peru during the 1980s, focusing on the interplay between state neglect, economic inequalities, and social apathy. Through a mixed-methods approach, including interviews and statistical analysis, the study identifies key factors that contributed to the rise of the Shining Path insurgency. The findings reveal that the Peruvian state's inability to govern rural areas, combined with deep-seated economic inequalities and widespread political disengagement, created the conditions for the conflict. The study concludes with (...) recommendations for strengthening state presence, addressing economic disparities, and fostering political engagement to prevent future conflicts in similar contexts. These insights contribute to the broader understanding of internal conflicts and the challenges of achieving lasting peace in fragile states. (shrink)

Recent work on Statius’s Silvae has emphasized the poet’s efforts to create “intimacy” with his private patrons through espousing a value system based on friendship, connoisseurship, and shared literary interests, a system opposed to the public values of political ambition and the blunt glorification of military power in imperial expansion. This essay, however, argues that we have yet to comprehend the extent to which the dynamics of empire itself inform the creation of such intimacy in the Silvae. Specifically, what Sara (...) Ahmed has described as empire’s “queering” effect on the subject’s relation to objects of desire has a formative role in Statian intimacy. I focus on one of the Silvae that has been central to the formation of the current view of Statius outlined above: Silvae 4.6, on a Hercules statuette owned by Novius Vindex but previously the possession of three empire-builders, Alexander, Hannibal, and Sulla. (shrink)

The present paper discusses the (im)permanence of objects and memory in Sappho and Alcaeus in the context of archaic Greek poetry and of their reception in antiquity. After a methodological introduction, the paper analyzes several texts by Alcaeus and Sappho, with special attention to the dynamics of proper names, family memories, and female kleos. The main texts analyzed are: Alcaeus fr. 140 Voigt; the unnoticed allusion to this fragment in Virgil, Aeneid 7.170–86; and Sappho fr. 98 Voigt.

The known contents of Isaac Newton’s private library include a book seldom noticed by biographers or historians of science: a 1662 edition of the Eloquentia bipartita of the Jesuit scholar Famiano Strada. Contents include two lectures, originally given in Rome early in the century, that offer a fictitious account of a contest a century before, in which the leading humanists of the day had squared off against one another, each dressed up like his favorite ancient poet. These curious lectures reveal (...) a forgotten link between the workings of poetic influence in the classical tradition and Newton’s paradigm-shattering theories of mechanics. (shrink)

Regarding Cicero’s “sincerity” in the Pro Marcello (46 BCE), interpretative ore resides in Ad familiares 4.4, an artfully composed letter to Servius Sulpicius from fall 46, preserved in a posthumously edited letter-book (Ad familiares Book 4) about civil war and its aftermath. In these minor-key renditions of the dramatic senate scene, Caesar’s pardon of Marcellus, and Cicero’s subsequent speech of thanks, darker themes evoke dissonant, despondent voicings, and Cicero’s response to Caesar’s act rings less sincere than ironic. Read in this (...) vein, Fam. 4.4 reveals the different roles Cicero performs in speech and letter—wise counselor, despairing dissident—and the issue becomes Cicero’s performance of sincerity in context, as well as the editor’s framing of Cicero’s report of his performance. Indeed, these three texts—speech, letter, letter in letter-book—constitute diverse configurations of a single historical event, and the variance among them yields a richer find in the sediments of Roman history. (shrink)

An Archaeology of Disability is a research station designed for the Venice Biennale, Architettura 2021 by David Gissen, Jennifer Stager, and Mantha Zarmakoupi and exhibited later at La Gipsoteca di Arte Antica of Pisa in 2022, at the Canellopoulos Museum of Athens in 2023, and at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki in 2024. The research station works with languages and forms used by contemporary disabled people to reproduce elements—a ramp, a seat, an art gallery—from the ancient Acropolis in Athens that (...) vanished long ago and that have little or no extant material forms. Among the many people who contributed to the research station are two performers, Christopher Tester and Pia Hargrove, who performed, respectively, the ekphrastic film and audio description Sēmata (Signs) (2021). The following dialogic essay draws on conversations with the curators and performers led by Brooke Holmes and Pasquale Toscano. This dialogic form surfaces some of the collaborative aspects of the research station to highlight the ways in which such collaboration brings different lenses to antiquity. (shrink)

This article explores the early biogeographical debates that shaped the beginning of limnology, focusing on the differences of opinion concerning the origins of pelagic fauna between two pioneering scientists: Pietro Pavesi and François-Alphonse Forel. The study examines how Pavesi’s hypothesis of a marine origin for pelagic fauna contrasts with Forel’s theory of passive distribution, situating their arguments within a broader Darwinian framework. The first part of the paper provides a historical overview of Italian limnology, highlighting Pavesi’s contributions and interpreting Forel’s (...) writings to underscore the significance of discovering pelagic fauna in conceptualizing lakes as microcosms. The second part compares Pavesi’s and Forel’s hypotheses, emphasizing their impact on the scientific understanding of freshwater ecosystems. The importance of this discovery, in both historical and scientific contexts, lies in recognizing the presence of plankton in lakes as a crucial element for the mature formulation of ecological concepts, such as the ecosystem. (shrink)

O presente trabalho versa sobre a medicina das universidades européias no século XIII. Reconstrói, por meio de um estudo de caso, a experiência de uma revolução intelectual: uma revolução na qual a medicina se renovou sob a influência da filosofia natural aristotélica, que marcava muito fortemente o currículo das nascentes instituições universitárias. O caso analisado é o do médico/físico Pedro Hispano, autor de tratados médicos, comentários e receituários, que muito provavelmente pode ser identificado como o português Pedro Julião (+-1215 - (...) 1277), que viria a ser o Papa João XXI. O texto está dividido em dois capítulos. No primeiro deles apresenta-se Pedro Hispano, sua obra e alguns problemas relativos à autoria dos textos que lhe são atribuídos. Busca-se enquadrar os seus textos médicos no interior de uma tradição intelectual que naquela época se afirmava, aquela que resulta da aproximação entre a medicina e a filosofia natural. Ao final, extrai-se da análise das possibilidades de filiação de Pedro a essa tradição pontos para uma reflexão acerca dos novos padrões de interação entre as formas de exercício da medicina e a sociedade do século XIII. O segundo capítulo tem por fio condutor um texto de Pedro Hispano intitulado 'Liber de Conservanda Sanitate' (Livro sobre a Conservação da Saúde). A partir dele, procurar-se-á dar melhores e mais concretos contornos à nova medicina produzida pelas universidades através de dois caminhos. Um deles conduz a um aprofundamento do tema da filosofia natural e de sua conexão com o pensamento médico. O outro revela a mudança no plano das relações entre medicina e sociedade, aproveitando o campo de questões construído no primeiro capítulo. [Trata-se da minha monografia de final de curso, defendida em 2002, na Universidade Federal de Goiás]. (shrink)

While scholarly attention has focused on reconstructing the tradition history of Jesus's temple prophecy in Mark 14:58, comparable analyses of its traditional Aramaic structure are harder to locate. This article uses form, redaction, literary, and structural criticism to uncover the tradition history of the prophecy and reconstruct its original Aramaic formulation. Our analysis supports the historicity of the prophecy and identifies a four-two beat kīnā metre (poetic meter) typical of laments, warnings, and threats.

There’s something strange about Freud’s _Civilization and its Discontents_ (1930). Biologically, Freud was a Neo-Lamarckian, who believed in both the modification of organisms through need and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. However, in _Civilization_, Freud argued that because human nature is immutable, society has dim odds of improving substantially. Lamarckians, of course, rejected that any species-nature is immutable, as species can always be transformed via the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In fact, many of Freud’s Viennese contemporaries—such as Wilhelm Reich, Julius (...) Tandler, and Paul Kammerer—took their Lamarckism to license precisely the sorts of radical social projects Freud deemed impossible. Thus the Freud of _Civilization_ helped himself to a rigid view of human nature which, given his associated biological views, he seemingly ought to have rejected. In this paper, I explain this apparent inconsistency, and suggest Freud resolved it in the following way: Freud was not merely a Lamarckian, but also a strong and peculiar kind of recapitulationist, who believed stages of psychological development both recapitulate phylogeny, and “remain with us” throughout both individual lives and future species-history. I suggest Freud’s recapitulationism supposed a certain inertia: what occurred in phylogenetic history cannot un-occur, and therefore there are aspects of our nature which we cannot un-acquire. In this way, Freud reached a rigid conception of human nature despite his Lamarckism. (shrink)

A bstract This study investigates nineteenth century natural history practices through the lens of the Actor-Network Theory, which posits that scientific practice is shaped by an intricate network of interactions between human and non-human actors. At the core of this research is the analysis of correspondence between Charles Darwin and his collaborators during the _Cirripedia Project,_ which unveils a complex landscape of negotiations with illustrators, funders, specimen owners, and translators, among other stakeholders and interested parties. The study goes beyond the (...) final outcomes of scientific research, delving into behind-the-scenes interactions, and hidden constructions, shedding light on the complex dynamics and actors that conventional scientific narratives often overlook. In general, this approach provides a detailed and insightful view of the underlying processes of nineteenth-century scientific practice, underscoring the importance of epistolary correspondence as a central element in producing scientific knowledge at the time, and in particular it reveals to us how much Darwin was himself involved in the production of his famous work on barnacles. By emphasizing the intricacies of research, this study enriches our understanding of Darwin’s work as well as natural history practices in the 19th century, highlighting the complexity and diversity of actors and agents involved in shaping scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This paper offers an historical introduction to Pere Alberch's evolutionary thought and his contributions to Evo-Devo, based on his unique approach to experimental teratology. We will take as our point of reference the teratogenic experiments developed by Alberch and Emily A. Gale during the 1980s, aimed at producing monstrous variants of frogs and salamanders. We will analyze his interpretation of the results of these experiments within the framework of the emergence of evolutionary developmental biology (or “Evo-Devo”). The aim is understand (...) how Alberch interpreted teratological anomalies as highly revealing objects of study for understanding the development of organic form, not only in an ontogenetic sense—throughout embryonic development—but also phylogenetically—throughout the evolution of species. Alberch's interpretation of monsters reflects the influence of a long tradition of non-Darwinian evolutionary thought, which began in the nineteenth century and was continued in the twentieth century by people such as Richard Goldschmidt, Conrad H. Waddington, and Stephen Jay Gould. They all proposed various non-gradualist models of evolution, in which embryonic development played a central role. Following this tradition, Alberch argued that, in order to attain a correct understanding of the role of embryological development in evolution, it was necessary to renounce the gradualist paradigm associated with the Darwinian interpretation of evolution, which understood nature as a continuum. According to Alberch, the study of monstrous abnormalities was of great value in understanding how certain epigenetic restrictions in development could give rise to discontinuities and directionality in morphological transformations throughout evolution. (shrink)