Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:43:24.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Four - The Classical Near East

from I - Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2024

By
Kevin T. van Bladel
Edited by
Elizabeth S. Bolman ,
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson  and
Jack Tannous
Elizabeth S. Bolman
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
Jack Tannous
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

Terms like “Classical Arabic,” “Classical Armenian,” “Classical Syriac,” and “Classical Persian,” though not entirely unproblematic, arouse minimal controversy and are widely used. These Near Eastern languages have their classical traditions of learning, all arising in the same region, all interacting with one another. Let us therefore envision a “Classical Near East” to foster modern scholarly exchange between specialists in pre-modern Near Eastern history and philology. This essay explores the prospects of a broader arena of ancient and medieval research for specialists in the premodern Near East that transcends the specializing delimitation of modern identities and religions

Keywords

Classical Near EastClassicsLate AntiquityByzantiumancient IranIslamic studies
Type
Chapter
Information
Worlds of Byzantium
Religion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East
 , pp. 78 - 97
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adelson, Roger. “British and U.S. Use and Misuse of the Term ‘Middle East.’” In Bonine, Amanat, and Gasper, Is There a Middle East?, pp. 36–55.Google Scholar
Adler, Eric. Classics, the Culture Wars, and Beyond. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aschenbrenner, Nathanael, and Ransohoff, Jake, eds. The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe. Extravagantes (Dumbarton Oaks). Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2022.Google Scholar
Bladel, Kevin T. van. “The Arabic Reception of Late Antique Literature.” In A Companion to Late Antique Literature, edited by McGill, Scott and Watts, Edward, pp. 569–82. New York: Wiley, 2018.Google Scholar
Bladel, Kevin T. v “Arabicization, Islamization, and the Colonies of the Conquerors.” In Late Antique Responses to the Arab Conquests, edited by Josephine van den Bent, Floris van den Eijnde, and Johan Weststeijn, pp. 89–119. Leiden: Brill, 2022.Google Scholar
Bladel, Kevin T. v “A Brief History of Islamic Civilization from Its Genesis in the Late Nineteenth Century to Its Institutional Entrenchment.” Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists 28 (2020): 150–73.Google Scholar
Bladel, Kevin T. v “Graeco-Arabic Studies in Classical Near Eastern Studies: An Emerging Field of Training in Its Broader Institutional Context.” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 3 (2015): 316–25.Google Scholar
Bladel, Kevin T. v “Languages of Arabia.” In A Companion to Late Antique Literature, edited by McGill, Scott and Watts, Edward, pp. 123–40. New York: Wiley, 2018.Google Scholar
Bonine, Michael E., Amanat, Abbas, and Gasper, Michael Ezekiel, eds. Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Culham, Phyllis, Edmunds, Lowell, and Smith, Alden, eds. Classics: A Discipline and Profession in Crisis? Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989.Google Scholar
Daryaee, Touraj. “The Limits of Sasanian History: Between Iranian, Islamic, and Late Antique Studies.” Iranian Studies 49, no. 2 (2016): 193–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Cosmo, Nicola and Maas, Michael, eds. Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe 250–850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowden, Garth. Before and after Muḥammad: The First Millennium Refocused. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Fowden, Garth Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoyland, Robert. “Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion.” In The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, edited by Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald, pp. 1053–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Kaldellis, Anthony. “Late Antiquity Dissolves,” Marginalia, September 18, 2015, https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/late-antiquity-dissolves-by-anthony-kaldellis/.Google Scholar
Kaldellis, Anthony Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Marcone, Arnaldo. “A Long Late Antiquity? Considerations on a Controversial Periodization.” Journal of Late Antiquity 1, no. 1 (2008): 4–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porter, James I. 2005. “What Is ‘Classical’ about Classical Antiquity? Eight Propositions.” Arion 13, no. 1 (2005): 27–61.Google Scholar
Potts, Daniel T., ed. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Rapp, Stephen H., Jr. The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes: Caucasia and the Iranian Commonwealth in Late Antique Georgian Literature. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.Google Scholar
Rebenich, Stefan. “Late Antiquity in Modern Eyes.” In A Companion to Late Antiquity, edited by Rousseau, Philip, pp. 77–92. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinner, Marilyn. “Expecting the Barbarians: Feminism, Nostalgia, and the ‘Epistemic Shift’ in Classical Studies.” In Classics: A Discipline and Profession in Crisis?, edited by Culham, Phyllis, Edmunds, Lowell, and Smith, Alden, pp. 199–210. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989.Google Scholar
Strootman, Rolf. “The Seleukid Empire between Orientalism and Hellenocentrism: Writing the History of Iran in the Third and Second Centuries bce.” Nāme-ye Irān-e Bāstān 11, no. 1–2 (2011–12): 17–35.Google Scholar
Tannous, Jack. The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, Society, and Simple Believers. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Testa, Rita Lizzi. Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.Google Scholar
Walker, Joel Thomas. “Ascetic Literacy: Books and Readers in East-Syrian Monastic Tradition.” In Commutatio et Contentio: Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East in Memory of Zeev Rubin, edited by Börm, Henning and Wiesehöfer, Josef, pp. 307–45. Düsseldorf: Wellem Verlag, 2010.Google Scholar
Walker, Joel Thomas “The Limits of Late Antiquity: Philosophy Between Rome and Iran.” Ancient World 33, no. 1 (2002): 45–69.Google Scholar
Winterer, Caroline. The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yilmaz, Huseyin. “The Eastern Question and the Ottoman Empire: The Genesis of the Near and Middle East in the Nineteenth Century.” In Bonine, Amanat, and Gasper, Is There a Middle East?, pp. 11–35.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×