Download PDF | Tsvetelin Stepanov (editor), Osman Karatay (editor) - Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100-Palgrave Macmillan (2024).
361 Pages
Preface
This book is a fruit of the serial of communications (in the early COVID days) between Tsvetelin Stepanov, who is a historian of medieval Eastern Europe focusing upon religious and identity themes, and Osman Karatay, who is likewise a historian of Eastern Europe and Central Eurasia, working mostly on ethno-linguistic issues. Karatay focused on the chronology of the monotheisation process in the Middle Ages during the tenth and eleventh centuries, and Stepanov explained its internal and external dynamics.
The Turkic acceptance of Islam, which included various peoples over a vast region and which is studied separately for each case, coincides with the spread of Christianity in the northern and eastern parts of Europe, encompassing the baptism of the three Scandinavian countries, Poland, Bohemia and Moravia (Czech and Slovak lands), Hungary, Russia and Bulgaria, the last being the frst in the process. The Turkic Islamisation started with the Volga Bulgars, antecedents of the modern Tatars, and continued in the eastern and western parts of Central Asia. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the modern world got its current ethnic and religious epiphany in the course of that compressed process of mass conversions throughout Eurasia. Except for compulsory conversions under mighty imperial powers, various Turkic peoples converted to such religions as Manichaeism and Buddhism, but the conversion of the Khazars, another Turkic people in Western Eurasia, to Judaism seems to have heralded the voluntary conversions of the succeeding ages, however, to Christianity and Islam, as monotheistic religions.
The Khazar case relates to the eighth and ninth centuries, and thus we excluded it from the content of this book. It would have been desirable to have papers on the conversions of Western Balkan peoples (i.e. Serbs and Croats), but they also precede our chronology and do not seem to have related to the ‘global fashion of monotheisation’ launched by the—two—Bulgars during the second half of the ninth century. So, Stepanov and Karatay agreed to invite experts in the various cases dealing with our subject to join a common effort to understand the background and course of the wave of conversions mostly in the tenth and eleventh centuries. We may suggest even to restrict the time span to the years between c.860 and 1050 both in the east and in the west. Although there are very valuable studies, individual or collective, on those conversion issues, mainly the great book edited by Nora Berend, who is one of our authors, this book is the frst, as far as we know, to group them in a transitive way and to study them under a theoretical framework. We are grateful to the authors joining our project with chapters in their feld of expertise.
They are all masters of the themes of interest to us. Sue Morecroft checked the texts of various authors with great care and patience. Sam Stocker of Palgrave Macmillan was very interested in the project from the very beginning. Rubina Infanta Rani and Ruby Panigrahi managed the publication process with great patience. We owe thanks to them, as well as to those who worked for the publication of this book, but whose names we do not know. Sofa, Bulgaria Tsvetelin Stepanov Izmir, Turkey Osman Karatay
Notes on Contributors
Nora Berend has been Professor of European History at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, UK, since 2018. She graduated from ELTE, Budapest, in 1989, and holds a doctorate degree (1996) from Columbia University, New York. After a three-year Junior Research Fellowship at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, she taught at Goldsmiths College London for a year and then took up a university post at Cambridge. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Stockholm in 2018. She is interested in medieval religious and cultural interaction, the formation of identity, and how the medieval is used in the present. She is the author and editor of six books and numerous articles. Her publications include At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary (c. 1000–c. 1300) (2001); ed., Christianisation and the Rise of Christian monarchy: Central Europe, Scandinavia and Rus’ c. 950–c. 1200 (2007); and co-authored with Przemysław Urbańczyk and Przemysław Wiszewski, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages, c. 900–c.1300 (2013).
Władysław Duczko holds a PhD (1986) and worked as an associate professor (1990) at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. For many years he was a member of Birkakommité, a committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Literature, History and Antiquities, which collects and publishes artefacts from Birka (Sweden). As a specialist in Byzantine history, he was also chairman of the Swedish Byzantine Society. During the 1990s he ran the excavations of the most important early medieval site of Central Sweden— Gamla Uppsala. In 2005 Duczko returned to Poland to teach archaeology at the Alexander Giejsztor Humanitarian Academy in Pułtusk, where he was appointed head of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Faculty of History. Duczko has published on Scandinavian VikingAge history, archaeology, art and religion as well as on the connections between the Northern and East Central Europe. Among his books are Birka V–Filigree & Granulation Work of the Viking Period: An Analysis of Materials from Bjorko (1985); Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe (2004); and Moce wikingow (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Erica, 2016).
Erkan Göksu graduated from the Department of History at the Erciyes University (Kayseri, Turkey) in 1998. He holds a master’s degree (2004) from the Kırıkkale University. After that he completed his PhD at Gazi University (Ankara) with his thesis ‘Army in the Anatolian Saljukids’ (2008). He received the title of full professor in 2019. He is a faculty member at Dokuz Eylül University and also a member of the Turkish Historical Society. He has received several awards for his scientifc activities. He is the author of several monographs and essays and also translator of some Persian books into Turkish. Among his books are Türk Kültüründe Silah (Weaponry in the Turkish Culture, 2008) and Selçuklu’nun Mirası: Gulâm ve Ikta (Gholam and Fief as the Heritage of the Saljukids, 2011). He translated from Persian the Saljukid parts of Jâmi’al-Tavârih of Rashîd’al-din Fadlullâh (Zikr Târîh Âl’ Saljûk, 2010) and of Ravzat alSafâ of Mirkwand (Tabaka Saljûkiyyah, 2015) and also the Ghaznavid parts of the latter book under the name Gazneliler (Ghaznavids, 2017).
Vladimir Gradev graduated from the Faculty of Classic and Modern Languages, St Kliment Ohridski University, Sofa, in 1987. He completed his doctoral study in the Department of History and Theory of Culture of the same university in 1996 and was elected to the position of associate professor in 2000. In 2005, he received the title ‘doctor scientiarum’ of the same university and later, in 2007, that of full professor. Gradev is the author of eleven books and several translations from French, Italian and English. From 2001 to 2006 Gradev was Ambassador of Bulgaria to the Holy See and the Order of Malta.
Henrik Janson graduated from Gothenburg University in 1987 and completed his doctoral studies in the Historical Department of the same university in 1998. He became docent (reader) in History at the Faculty of Humanities, Gothenburg University, in 2007, and received tenure at the Department of Historical Studies in 2014. He was elected head of the same department in 2019. He was chairman of the Medieval Committee at Gothenburg University, 2001–2002 and 2014–2020, in which context he edited the volume Från Bysans till Norden (‘From Constantinople to the North’; 2005). Janson’s doctoral thesis Templum nobilissimum: Adam av Bremen, Uppsalatemplet och konfiktlinjerna i Norden kring år 1075 (Templum nobilissimum: Adam of Bremen, the Temple of Uppsala and the Lines of Confict in Europe Around 1075), from 1998, provided a new approach to the concepts ‘paganism’ and ‘Christianity’. In several subsequent studies he has elaborated on the implications of political theology in the North. Janson’s research also concerned the early history of the Archbishopric Hamburg-Bremen; the Medieval Icelandic literature, not least the Eddas; and the modern reconstruction of the pre-Christian religion in Northern Europe. He was one of the initiators of the Project Reykholt och den Europeiska skriftkulturen (‘Reykholt and the European Literacy’) (2002–2006); he was a contributor to the Nordic Centre of Excellence Programme, The Nordic Countries and the Medieval Expansion of Europe: New Interpretations of a Common Past (2005–2013), and to the Pre-Christian Religions of the North (PCRN) project (2008–).
Osman Karatay graduated from the Department of History at the Boğazici University (Istanbul) in 1995. He completed his master’s degree at the Gazi University (Ankara) in 2001 and then his doctoral study at the same university in 2006. In 2016, he received the title of full professor. He is a lecturer at the Ege University in Izmir. He was a co-editor of the sixvolume English book The Turks (2002), Balkanlar El Kitabı (A Handbook of the Balkans, 2006), Dogu Avrupa Türk Tarihi ̆ (A History of the Turks in Eastern Europe, 2014), and the six-volume Ortak Türk Tarihi (A Common History of the Turks, 2019). He launched in 2004 the academic quarterly Karadeniz Arasţırmaları (Black Sea Studies), which is currently an esteemed journal. Apart from his 14 monographs and several translations, he is co-editor of the English volume Central Eurasia in the Middle Ages. Studies in Honor of Peter B. Golden (2016) and author of the newly published title The Genesis of the Turks: An Ethno-Linguistic Inquiry into the Prehistory of Central Eurasia (2022).
Alexandar Nikolov graduated from the Faculty of History at the University of Sofa (1989). Since 1994, he has been teaching Medieval History at the University of Sofa. He defended a second MA in Medieval Studies at the CEU-Budapest (1996) and a PhD in History at the University of Sofa (2004) and received the degree MPhil in Medieval Studies at the CEU (2008). He has been a full professor since 2018. He also specialised in Rome (Istituto Pontifcio Orientale), the Vatican City (Archivio Segreto) and Vienna (Institut für Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik). He has participated in many international and national scientifc forums and conferences. He is the president of the Association of the Byzantinists and Medievalists in Bulgaria (since 2020). Alexandar Nikolov is author of three monographs and many studies and articles in the feld of Medieval History, and co-author of several textbooks in history as well. He also translated several texts from Medieval Latin into Bulgarian, among them Casus Sancti Galli and several treatises of the crusaders’ propaganda (treatises of William Adam, Pseudo-Brocardus, William of Tripoli, Leodrisio Crivelli, Pierre Dubois), texts of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Filippo Buonaccorsi-Callimachus, etc.
M. Hanef Palabıyık graduated from the Faculty of Divinity at the Atatürk University (Erzurum) in 1987. He completed his master’s degree at the Atatürk University in 1991 and then his doctoral study at the same university in 1996. In 2009, he received the title of full professor. He is a lecturer at the Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir and works on early Islamic history. Among his 11 monographs, he published Valilikten Imparatorlug ̇ a ̆ Gazneliler (The Ghaznavids from a Governorship to an Empire, 2002); Hz. Peygamber ve Mekke Yılları: Rivayetlere Elestirel Bir Yaklas ̧ ı̧m (The Prophet and His Mecca Years: A Critical Approach to the Traditions, 2009); Gazneli Mahmud (Mahmood the Ghaznavid, 2022); Cahiye Araplarında Sosyal Hayat (Social Life in the Pre-Islamic Arabs, 2022); and Cahiliye Araplarında Kültür Hayatı (Cultural Life in the Pre-Islamic Arabs, 2022).
Vladimir Petrukhin graduated from the Faculty of History at the Moscow State University in 1972. In 1975 he defended his candidate thesis (The Funeral Cult of Pagan Scandinavia) and in 1994 his doctoral thesis (The Problems of Ethnic and Cultural History of Slavs and Rus in the 9th to 11th Centuries). He is a leading researcher of the Institute of Slavic Studies (Russian Academy of Sciences) and professor at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow). Being a specialist in the early medieval history, archaeology and culture of Eastern Europe, Khazaria and Rus’, Petrukhin is the author of more than 500 scientifc works, including several monographs on the early Rus’ history.
Tsvetelin Stepanov graduated from the Faculty of History, St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofa, in 1990. He completed his doctoral study in the Department of History and Theory of Culture of the same university in 1996 and was elected to the position of associate professor in 2006. In 2015, he received the title ‘doctor scientiarum’ of the same university and later, in 2018, that of full professor. Stepanov is editor or co-editor of 14 volumes (since 2003), among them ‘Bulgars and Khazars in the Early Middle Ages’ (2003), ‘Civitas divino-humana. In honorem annorum LX Georgii Bakalov’ (2004), ‘Mediaevalia Christiana’ (2005, 2007, 2010), ‘Byzantium as Seen by the Byzantines and the Others’ (2007), ‘Memory and Oblivion in Byzantium’ (2011), ‘Erdélyi István. A Nagyszentmiklόsikincs’ (2016) and more. He is also author of 12 books, three of them published in English (The Bulgars and the Steppe Empire in the Early Middle Ages: The Problem of the ‘Others’, 2010; Invading in/from the ‘Holy Land’: Apocalyptic Metatext(s) and/or Imagined Geography, 950–1200, 2013; Waiting for the End of the World: European Dimensions, 950–1200, 2020) and two in Hungarian (Lovas nomad birodalmak és városlakók. A mások problémája. Budapest: Napkút Kiadó, 2008; Vallások a pogány Bulgáriában. Historiográfai megközelítések 1980 és 2015 között. Budapest: Napkút Kiadó, 2019). He has published extensively in Byzantinoslavica, Early Medieval Europe, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, Khazar Almanakh, Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana, Byzantina Lodziensia, Medieval Worlds, etc.
Przemysław Urbańczyk is director of the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (Polish Academy of Sciences) and a professor at the Institute of Archaeology (Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University) and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology (PAS). He is a member of various panels of international experts including ESF, Europa Nostra, ERC, ALLEA and ESFRI. His felds of research interests include the archaeology and history of the Middle Ages (early states, Christianisation, urbanisation, geopolitics, civic and ecclesiastic architecture) in Poland, Central Europe and the North Atlantic region; theory of archaeological research; and the methodology of archaeological excavations. He has directed several large grants. His bibliography comprises over 450 publications, which include 16 monographs. He has edited 15 multi-author volumes and several multivolume series—e.g., ‘Origines Polonorum’.
Ian Wood graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1972, where he also completed his D.Phil. in 1980. He taught at the University of Leeds from 1976, as lecturer until 1989, as senior lecturer until 1995 and then as professor. He retired in 2015, when he was elected Professor Emeritus. He has written six monographs: The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (1994), Gregory of Tours (1994), The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe 400–1050 (2001), The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages (2013), The Transformation of the Roman West (2018) and The Christian Economy of the Early Medieval West: Towards a Temple Society (2022). He has been the co-author of four books and the editor or co-editor of eleven. He has published over 200 articles. He was elected fellow of the British Academy in 2019.
István Zimonyi graduated in Turkology and English Language at the University of Szeged in 1981. In 1990 he defended his dissertation (Candidate of Science corresponding to PhD) at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2003 he carried out habilitation in the feld of history at the University of Szeged. In 2014 he became a full professor in the Department of Altaistics and the Department of Medieval Studies at the University of Szeged. His main feld of research is the medieval history of the Eurasian steppe and the nomads of Eastern Europe. He is the founder and organiser of the International Conference on the Medieval History of the Eurasian Steppe (eight meetings since 2004). He is the editor of the series Magyar Ő störténeti Könyvtár (Studies in Early Hungarian History) of which 34 volumes were hitherto published. He has published several books, including: The Origins of the Volga Bulghars, 1990; Orientalische Berichte über die Völker Osteuropas und Zentralasiens im Mittelalter. Die Ğ ayhanı̄ -Tradition ̄ , Wiesbaden, 2001 (with H. Göckenjan); Medieval Nomads in Eastern Europe. Collected Studies. Ed. Victor Spinei, 2014; A magyarság korai történetének sarokpontjai. Elméletek az újabb irodalom tükrében (Key Issues of the Early Hungarian History. Theories in the Light of Recent Literature), Budapest, 2014; and Muslim Sources on the Magyars in the Second Half of the 9th Century, 2015.
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