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The Midi, Buwayhid Iraq, and Japan: Some Aspects of Comparative Feudalisms, A.D. 946–1055

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Archibald R. Lewis
Affiliation:
University of Texas

Extract

In the year 946, in three separate areas of the civilized world, certain changes took place which mark the beginning of a new era. In Iraq in this year a Daylamite Persian adventurer of Shiah persuasion, named Ahmad, seized control of Baghdad and the surrounding Iraqi plains and in so doing established a dynasty which was to last more than a hundred years. About a decade earlier in the French Midi two princes of the house of Toulouse and their Gascon ally and kinsman journeyed north to Auvergne to do homage for their vast holdings in Southern France to the weak Carolingian monarch, Louis IV, the last such homage scions of this house were to render to their Northern French overlords for more than two centuries. Finally, during the same year of 946, in distant Japan, an official of the central government of Kyoto, named Ono, after suppressing the dangerous pirate forces of a certain Sumitomo, issued an appeal against the use of private armies which was resulting in disorder and the inability of the central government to maintain peace and security.

Type
Comparative Study of ‘Feudal’ Societies
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1969

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References

page 47 note 1 Cahen, Claude, ‘The Buwayids or Buyids’, in The Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Lewis, B., Pellat, Ch. and Schacht, J., I (1958), 1350.Google Scholar

page 47 note 2 Flodoard Annates, anno 932. Perhaps there was another act of homage in 941. If so this was the last one. On this see Lewis, Archibald R., The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718-1050 (Austin, Texas, 1965), pp. 187–9.Google Scholar

page 47 note 3 Ono's actual statement runs as follows: ‘Many make lawless use of power and authority, form confederacies, engage daily in military exercises: collect and maintain men and horses under pretext of hunting game: menace district garrisons, plunder the common people. ‥ My appeal is that with the exception of provincial governors' envoys who enter a province at the head of parties carrying bows and arrows—all such be recognized as bandits and thrown into prison on apprehension’. Trans, by Brinkley, F. in A History of the Japanese People (London, 1915), p. 255.Google Scholar

page 47 note 4 Wittek, Paul, ‘La Féodalité Mussulmane’, in Société Jean Bodin, Recueils, I, Les Liens de Vassaliti et les Immunitis, 2nd ed. (Bruxelles, 1958), 150, and especiallyGoogle ScholarCahen, Claude, ‘L'évolution de l'iqta du IX au XIII siècle, Annales, VIII (1953), 2546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 48 note 1 Cahen, Claude, ‘The Turkish Invasion: the Selchükids’, in A History of the Crusades, I, ed. Baldwin, Marshall W. (Philadelphia, 1958), p. 158s.Google Scholar

page 48 note 2 Lewis, op. cit., pp. 180–9. On this later feudalism and its unusual features in Southern France see Richardot, Henri, ‘Le fief routurier à Toulouse’, Revue historique de droit francais et étranger, XIII (1935) and ‘Francs fiefs: essai sur l'exemption totale ou partielle des services de fief’,Google Scholaribid., XXVII (1949).

page 48 note 3 Reischauer, Edwin O., ‘Japanese Feudalism’, in Feudalism in History, ed. Coulborn, Rushton (Princeton, 1956), p. 30.Google Scholar

page 48 note 4 Cahen op cit., p. 1353.

page 48 note 5 On this general development see Ganshof, Francois L., Feudalism (New York, 1961), pp. 653.Google Scholar

page 48 note 6 Hall, John W., Government and Local Power in Japan, 500–1700 (Princeton, 1966), p. 134.Google Scholar

page 49 note 1 Lewis, op. cit., pp. 220–2.

page 49 note 2 On the attacks of the Qaramanthes in the Baghdad area see Bowen, Howard, The Life and Times of Ali lbn Isa (Cambridge, 1928), pp. 162–97.Google Scholar

page 49 note 3 Gonthier, André, ‘Le Régime Féodale au Japon’, in Société Jean Bodin, Recueils, I, Les Liens de Vassalité et les Immunités, 2nd ed. (Bruxelles, 1958), 132.Google Scholar

page 49 note 4 On the collapse of the Carolingian Empire and its effects on the Midi see Lewis, op. cit., pp. 91–113. On the decay of the Abbassid State see Bowen, op. cit. On Japan see Reischauer, op. cit., p. 28.

page 49 note 5 Cahen, op. cit., p. 1353. See also Kabir, Mafizullah, The Buwayhid Dynasty of Baghdad 3341946–44711055 (Calcutta, 1964), pp. 139, 146–7.Google Scholar

page 49 note 6 Sansom, George R., Japan, A Short Cultural History, rev. ed. (London, 1946), pp. 264–5;Google ScholarMurdock, James, A History of Japan, rev. ed. I (New York, 1964), 265–7 and Reischauer, op. cit., pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

page 49 note 7 Lewis, op. cit., pp. 226–38, 299–301.

page 50 note 1 The shô in Japan was not a manor but property, often scattered in a general area given immunity from taxation by special government enactment. Reischauer, op. cit., p. 29, and Andre Gontier, Japonais, Le Shô’, in Société Jean Bodin, Recueils, III, La Tenure (Bruxelles, 1938), 306–7 and ‘L'organisation générate du ≪Shô≫ japonais’, in Société Jean Bodin, Recueils, IV, Le Domaine (Weteren, 1949). Some fiefs in the Midi were also not manors but grants of land or fiscal rights to dependent fighting men and others as well. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 267–71.Google Scholar

page 50 note 2 Cahen, op. cit., p. 1353 and Wittek, op. cit. p. 150.

page 50 note 3 Kabir, op. cit., p. 149.

page 50 note 4 Ibid., p. 139.

page 50 note 5 Ibid., pp. 146–7.

page 50 note 6 Cahen, op. cit., p. 1355, and Kabir, op. cit., pp. 134–5.

page 50 note 7 Kabir, op. cit., pp. 135–6.

page 50 note 8 On the leading noble families in the Midi see Lewis, op. cit., pp. 104–13. On those of Japan see Hall, op. cit., pp. 132–6, and Reischauer, op. cit., pp. 29–30.

page 51 note 1 On the bushi see Hall, op. cit., p. 132, and Gontier, Le Régime Féodale au Japon, pp. 132–3. For an example of the humble origin of milites see a Charter of 971 which mentions their rising from the class of serfs. Cartulaire de Vabbaye de Beaulieu, ed. Deloche, M. (Paris, 1859), No. 50.Google Scholar

page 51 note 2 Lewis, op. cit., pp. 226–38, 299–301.

page 51 note 3 Sansom, op. cit., pp. 264–5.

page 51 note 4 Reischauer, Edwin O., Japan Past and Present (New York, 1963), pp. 46–7.Google Scholar

page 51 note 5 Ibid., pp. 225–8 and 292–7.

page 51 note 6 Hall, John W., ‘The Castle Town and Japan's Modern Urbanization’, Far Eastern Quarterly, XV (1955), 3756.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 51 note 7 Cahen, op. cit., p. 1355.

page 51 note 8 On Seljuk tactics see Kaegi, Walter E. Jr , ‘The Contribution of Archery to the Turkish Conquest of Anatolia’, Speculum, XXXIX (1964), 96108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 52 note 1 On the Midi's oaths of loyalty, records of which are found as early as 954, see Lewis, op. cit., pp. 307–10. Some of these, however, seem to be convenientia which were ‘La convenientia’ in Etudes d'histoire du droit privé offertes à Pierre Petot (Paris, 1959), pp. 413–20.Google Scholar

page 52 note 2 Concerning the truer feudalism found among Turkish border Gazis see Wittek, Paul, The Rise of the Ottoman Turks (London, 1965), pp. 140.Google Scholar

page 52 note 3 Cahen, op. cit., p. 1353. Wittek, La Féodalité Mussulmane, p. 150.

page 52 note 4 See Lewis, Archibald R., ‘Count Gerald of Aurillac and Feudalism in South Central France in the early Tenth Century’, Traditio, XX (1964), 52–6.Google Scholar

page 52 note 5 Lewis, , Southern French and Catalan Society, pp. 276–8, 395–400. See also a similar situation in nearby Catalonia inGoogle ScholarBonnassie, Pierre, ‘Une famille de la campagne barcelonaise et ses activites economiques aux alentours de l'an mil’, in Annates du Midi, LXXVI (1964).Google Scholar

page 52 note 6 However there was a right to the income of a shô called a shiki which could be divided as fiefs were in the Midi during this period. On these shikis see Reischauer, op. cit., p. 30, and Gontier, Le Régime Feodale au Japon, pp. 134–5.

page 52 note 7 Murdock, op. cit., pp. 265–7.