Religion 114 USC

• *clash of civilizations*
• Islam in Mediterraneansplit up the unity
• Fractured civilization
• Rise of islam
• (1862-1935)

• French historian
• The Pirenne thesis “before 7th century and rise of Islam, Mediterranean was a unified whole because Romans have succeeded in making it one cultural religious empire.
• Muslims invasion was end of unity and beginning of clash of civilizations
• Med. was fundamentally divided into 2 different civilizations

• (1902-1985)
• *Geography*
• Founder of Mediterranean studies
• Published the Mediterranean & the Med. world in the age of Philip the second in 1949
• Braudel argued Med. was a single, cultural space because of its geography
• Shared geography of the Med as a single unit and cultural space
• Geography really matters
• Braudel’s three layers in history:
• Longue duree - geographical time (slow) *most important. is that of the environment, with its slow, almost imperceptible change, its repetition and cycles. Such change may be slow, but it is irresistible; what shapes our brain,
• evolutionSocial/cultural time (medium) - economic systems, states, societies, war. Change at this level is much more rapid than that of the environment;
• socialization
• Individual/Eventual time (fast) - history of events, surface level of history; choices we make“Mountain people are less civilized and orthodox and likely to be poor, not educated and resist political and religious central focuses”.

• *Ecology and Connectivity*
• Unity from trade
• Connectivity: short distances, lines of sight, island chains
•     Able to connect due to the sea
• Fragmentation: regions, micro-regions, diverse geography
• Wrote “The Corrupting Sea”
• Mediterranean is geographically fragmented (micro regions)
• Uncertainty: storage & trade
•    Due to climate & microclimates → difficult to depend on consistent weather
• Famine & feast in diff. Regions → drives trade
• Knit together by networks Geography fosters communities

• *human diversity*
• Variety of stabilized cultures existing togetherPeriod of 5 Mediterraneans
• Each period has its own set of networks
• Med. is a diverse space that is not unified culturally
• Focuses on human experience within movementWhat goes on as people criss cross at sea
• Unity emerges then falls apart through human domination
• He is trying to offer a bigger history over a longer period of time

• The approach to the study of history with a priority to long-term historical structures over events
• The most important type of history
• The slow way of landforms and water routes changing over time
• Long duration, cultural time
• Cultures in big time blocks shift at a faster rate of time than landmarks, but still slow
• Captures extreme detail-Versus the thin layer of detail in evental time
• No direct beginning to time for the Mediterranean
• It concentrates on all-but-permanent or slowly evolving structures
• From the review:When talking about policy, we refer to longue duree

• (9600 BCE)
• A time period that involves many important things happening
• Climate shifts-Evenly dispersed rain in the year, more dependable and regular supply of water
• Farming-With steady water you get a real serious start to farming
• Assemblages: series of partsMade up of people, landscape, techniques that form assemblages that enable new capacities to emerge
• Leapfrogging
• Farming
•    Fertile Crescent: human experiences with farming
•          Techniques spread quickly
•           Farming practice on inland move toward the coast too
• Sea Travel
•      Regular supply of water
•      Human;7yy investment in farming
•      Sea-level went back to what we know now

• Vectors are moving speedily
• People move out of farming area and from new community in the next coastal plain, while original group finds something new
• When people leave original group, they “leap” over the first group that left
• How old communities begin to develop new things because they don’t have to build up the land-They leapfrog the old technology and continually build off of what they or other groups did in the past
• The main idea is that small and incremental innovations lead the top society to stay ahead
• Idea of skipping inferior, less efficient, and more expensive technologies and moving directly to more advanced ones
• An example is Third-world companies can skip the landline phase of phones and jump straight to mobile devices
• It was facilitated by the fact that the islands were all visible from each other. They didn’t have to move very far and they could keep contact with their previous people
• From review session:
• People from one place (point A) move to another (point B) & take with them the technology, culture, etc. and develop independently from point A
• Then people from point A develop more as well and move to point B and see that it is already occupied, so they move on to point C, taking with them the culture and development from point A (leapfrogging)
• In this way, you see similarities between point A & C moreso than between A & B
• Leads to similarities & differences all across the Mediterranean

• Huge upwelling of migrant peoples
• Don’t know where they came from or what they wanted
• Creates instability (for Mycenaeans)
• Not clear if it was one group of people using the sea to get around - may be multiple groups, but identified as one group
•       Would be close to this example: “There are a lot of immigrants ruining this country”

Source: Ramses III and the Sea Peoples

• “Story/Report/Voyage of Wenamun” - Egyptian priest ? or… Trading route ?
• Hopping from port to port along the coast
• Vibrant moving of people and goods. This geography shapes how people in the area lived.
• Trade in this region was scarce, but controlling coastal trade was important
•       Bottleneck region; not rich in resources but the route of traveling north to south and vice versa

• Emphasize the non-tangible movements through the mediterranean
•        People are choosing how the world came to being through the sharing of stories of the gods
• Cosmology/Cosmogony: how the world came to be--how is the world structured? What is our place in the universe?
• Etiology: explanations of origins of things we do, or how things were created (Why do snakes crawl on their bellies? Why do we follow the Sabbath?)
• Ethnology: where did our group come from?
• Enuma Elish(1100 BCE)
•    Written in Babylon city
• Genesis
•     Hebrew bibles first book
•     Series of major edits by 4 people
•     1st creation=Adam & Eve

• After Joseph dies, Moses leads an exodus to the promised land
• Moses dies right before they reach the promised land and Joshua takes his place
•      This describes the founding of Israel
• It expresses how the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt after Joseph died
•       Tons of Jews w`ent to Egypt because of a FamineThe number of Hebrews living in Egypt grew very large
• The Pharaoh of Egypt became afraid that the Jewish would rise in power and upset his rule
• So the Pharaoh made the Hebrews (A.K.A the Israelites) into slaves
• Slave treatment was very cruel-Which is what led Moses to kill and Egyptian and run away from Egypt
• After 400 years of Slavery Moses was born
• Moses was an Israelite but was raised in the Pharaoh's household (Ramses II)
• Moses was called upon by god through the burning bush to ask the Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt
• The Pharaoh refused
• God then gave Moses magical powers to cause the outbreaks of disease and destruction called plagues
• After each Plague the Pharaoh kept changing his mind about letting the Israelites leave Egypt
• Finally after a terrible plague the Pharaoh's son died so the Pharaoh let the Israelites leave Egypt
• From the review:
• The story of how Jews got out of Egypt through supernatural process
•       God sends plagues which convince ruler to let them leave

• Re thinking their place in the exile the darkerside of movement feeling of being displaced . 70 years later post exile
•      Psalm 137 is important source: Jewish perspective → lament of what happened to themCarried to Babylon, taken to temple and away from their lands1st 5 books of Genesis (?) written during Babylonian exile → is this correct I kinda missed this part

 King Cyrus of Persia: allows some portion of Babylon to return and rebuild their temple.

• Lived on the coast of the Levant
• Mollusks excrete a purple dye that becomes known in the area as a sign of wealth
• They learned how to build bigger ships
• First people to connect the Mediterranean from east to west
• Created stabilized trade
• Then trading routes built on each other

• Suggests that: one of the first groups we know of to traverse the Mediterranean - the first to develop long distance sea travel, develop the methods for which this was possible
• Developed specific route to make this happen and traded along this route
• Carthage as main base for the trade network that they created
• Make sure to check these suggestions to ensure they are correct
• Relevant reading: Report of Wenumum Phoenicians specialized in lumber

• Was a king of Macedon
• He succeeded his father to the Throne at age 20
• Most of his ruling years were spent on a military campaign around the world that went from Greece to Egypt and through India/Pakistan
• He conquered the Persian Empire
• He went undefeated in Battle and is one of history’s most successful military commanders
• His troops forced him to turn back after Invading India
• He founded around 20 cities that bore his name
• The city of Alexandria was setup up in a Grid Plan that we call the Hypdoamian Grid Plan
• He helped spread the language of Greek as it become the 2nd language that everyone speaks

• Polis means city in Greek
• The Greek Polis involved the development of the governance of state rather than of city
• A polis is a greek city state
• City state-Meaning that it included the city and its countrysideOften they were laid out according to the Hippodamian plan
• The Grid System of the City state helped facilitate smooth movement into and out of the streets, wheel ruts to help traffic, you can out sewage in draining systems, easier to defend-Beneficial for everyone
• Democratic version: citizens were free, adult men who collectively governed the state
• Gymnasium-Is on the edges of Greek town, place where you work out, also if you’re a young man you’d go to school at a higher level (Highschool/college)
• Place of learning how to become a citizen
• From the review:
• Is this term related to Aristotle & how he says a city should be laid out?
• City-State that includes the city and its countryside
• Specific grid - marketplace is right in the middle
• Every polis had a gymnasium and amphitheatre - way to strengthen Greek culture
• Contributed to spread of Greek culture
• *February 9th Notes

• Forced culture
• Probably written in Alexandria in the 2nd C BCE
• Narrative is set in the reign of Ptolemy II Philopater
• The story involves the miraculous Septuagint (translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek)
• Reflects a Jewish Diaspora perspective on the Ptolemies
• From the review:
• Has to do with translation of Hebrew Scriptures into Greek through Egypt

• Scholarly priests brought from Israel to Egypt (Alexandria) → given resources to make this translation
• The current Hebrew Scriptures (very culturally valuable) were not available to Hellenistic people bc they couldn’t understand Hebrew
• So they wanted to translate & keep in their records
• Prime example of Jews in a Hellenistic world, very peaceful encounter between two cultures

• 1 & 2 Maccabees recount the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus Epiphanies
• 1 Maccabees: 168-134 BCE; 2 Maccabees: 175-160 BCE
• 1 Maccabees written at the end of the reign of John Hyrcanus as Maccabean propaganda; 2 Maccabees written as a novelistic history
• “Maccabees” refers to Judas Maccabees (the hammer), son of Mattatwias; As a dynasty they’re called the Hasmoneans
• The family becomes the agents of God and are eventually installed as the high priests
• From the Review:
• Jewish Revolutionary group trying to stop Greek influence - were worried that greek influence would get rid of Jewish culture
• Fought against Hellenized (= made greek/influenced) Jews & Solucids
• Maccabean Revolt- They took back their own temple from the Greeks, and burned it and rebuilt it to purify it
• February 11th Complaints from Ma- men were not getting circumcised; catalyst of the revolt was a sacrilegious sacrifice of a greek god near a temple.

• Began as a small farming community with village huts on hills
• Aristotle approved of Rome’s location
• Lowland is the area near the  Tigris river and was a swampy area before it was innovated and introduced sewer system to drain
•        Became a market place region
•        Port was built on river

• Reading from Feb 18th
• From the review:
• Satirical piece written about him by Lucian
• Only record we have
• Went around making big claims about himself
• Claimed he was going to hop into a fire & people held him to that → didn’t want to look like a fool so he did it & died … lol

• the christians are part of the world but yet not part of the world
• Notes from February 23rd
• From the review:
• Described Christians as “resident aliens”
• Author (who is a Christian) is trying to describe who/what Christians are
• Almost like a new ethnic group but notHe’s struggling
• Earliest known Christian apologetic work
•       Apology = “defense” → someone is trying to explain/defend Christians & what Christianity is
• In praise of Christians → puts them on a pedestal
• Describes Christians as soul of the world
•      Soul → animates the body

• Crisis: When the Roman Empire started to follow
• The height of Christian Persecution
• When Christians were being treated the worst
• Caused inflation that reduced the value of all the money
• Soldiers found that they can pressure rulers and caused inflation
• After the Pax Romana
• Enemies outside: Gaul and Sassarian (I think)
• Diocletian (Roman emperor) ended the Third Century Crisis
• Ended the debasement of Currency (Price Controls).
• Helped reform the army and increase its size

• united east and the west established christianity
• Ended Christian persecution in the Roman Empire through the Edict of Milan (after end of Third Century Crisis)
• Battle Milvian Bridge- miraculous win and he thanked the Christian god (kind of)
• Made Christianity the state religionCreates on the Council of Nicene → creates a lot of Christian doctrine (e.g. Nicene Creed)
• Some people question whether he was even a Christian (was baptized on his deathbed)
•        People question whether establishing Christianity was just a wise political move

• Collection of laws and legal interpretations developed under Byzantine emperor Justinian
• Seems to explicitly state what Jews can and can’t do
•      The rights they have; also shows their rights in accordance with Christians’ rights

• Agreement document between Islamic Caliphate & Christians in the Caliphate → extended to Jews as well
• Disadvantages to Jews & Christians

Christians & Jews could practice their religions as long as they adhere to particular social, political restrictions as well as pay taxes Dhimmi  protected christian jew living in muslamic and had to pay tax and exempt from any military activities  land was protected  second class status

• The Jewish language was not very well understood and studied. They had yet to fully understand even their own rules of grammar.
• A poet (name?) started to borrow the language patterns of Arabic and used Arabic to understand the Hebrew and advance their literature
• Before, poetry was only about God for the Jews and was not very creative. They began to mimic the Arabic poetry and expand their writings from God to love, romance, etc.
• Also jews began to use meter and rhyme scheme like the muslims
• Poetry important for socializing and gatherings
• At wine poetry parties, christians jews and muslims would attend, Muslims on top of hierarchy
• The two languages are very similar. Trilateral root system

collection of jewish papers religious writings also stated dates of important events  how their trading networks work this was found about a hundred years ago religon and business connected

Resulted from Jewish people not being allowed to destroy documents which had God written in the holy language. Somehow, these also did not throw away documents that had anything written in the Hebrew (holy) language. This included trade receipts and mundane daily stuff written down.

• Really bloody. Started by Pope Urban II. They succeeded in recapturing Jerusalem in 1099.
• Two armies collide in constantinople, many soldiers didnt even make it there
• Took three years to get from constantinople to jerusalem, 6/7 didnt make it
• Established crusader hubs along the way
• Muslims defending Jerusalem couldn’t stop the crusaders, they used wood from their ships to build towers to get over city walls
• Massacred almost everyone, 30,000 dead. Looting and rape They were surprised that they successfully did this

Eventually exiled all eastern european christians

• Meant to take back Jerusalem from muslims again but ended up attacking other Christians
• Took back Constantinople
• Fully split Western & Greek Orthodox Christians
• Pope Innocent III
• - A call in Europe to go again to try recapture Jerusalem.
• -The plan was to assemble in Venice and transport 35k soldiers by sea.
• - Venetian Crusadeers did not have the money to pay them so they had an idea to go and control the city Zadaar, which was populated with Christians (eastern)
• - Pope was furious: excommunicated Cursaders & Venecians, later just Venecians.
• -Alexios proposed to the Crusade leaders to go into Constatinople to help him rule, although there was no money for him to pay them all.
• o   The Crusaders followed Alexios, waged war against other Christians.  
• First succeeded in replacing rule with Alexios
•        But could not pay them, and was hated by everyone in Constantinople and was later executed.
• -A new ruler, told them to go away because they could not pay and this angered the Crusaders and they attacked Constantinople and proceeded to massacre and loot Christians.
• -Crusaders who were supposed to liberate Christians attacked other Christians
• This infuriated the Pope, but didn’t do much.

• Spanish monarchs ferdinand and isabella issue a royal decree ordering all jews in their kingdoms either to convert to christianity within the space of three months or go into exile
• Other european rulers has previously ordered jews into exile but the spanish order of expulsion marked the beginning of what is referred to the Sephardic diaspora
• November 1492 the spanish monarchs granted a right to return to those jews who had left their kingdoms providing they converted to Catholicism

• wrote the Ottoman tourist telling about his travels god told him to write about his travels  Jessica was supposed
• Evilya Celebi (1611-82)
• traveler of the eastern Mediterranean.
• He journeyed through the Ottoman Empire and the neighboring lands for 40 years
• Began taking notes on buildings, markets, customs, and the cultures of Istanbul.
• He started his journey outside the city in 1640.
• His journey and writing formed a ten-volume work called the Seyahatname (Book of Travels) Describes Istanbul, Antolia, Persia, Ottoman Europe, N. Africa, Austria, and Cairo

• 2 orders of monks: primary purpose was to ransom Catholic captives in the Mediterranean
• Were they themselves doing the ransoming or were they just housing the captives?
• Where did they do their business?
• Royal power in Spain eventually took over & institutionalized these orders/their ransoming work
• Was no longer a purely religious thing → state got involved
• Getting ransom through these orders was a slower process, but cheaper than giving money directly to captors
•  Christian ransom
• We did an entire paper on this. To summarize, the Muslims controlled North Africa and Christiandom took over the north of the Mediterranean Sea.
• Pirates would capture merchants and soldiers from battle would be captured and ransomed. This would be profitable beyond just using them as slaves.
• Religious groups in Spain and eventually the Monarchy stepped in to facilitate the exchange of ransom for the Christians.
• Had issues because sometimes they would only release the Protestants or only the old. The Spanish would agree out of duty to fellow Christians, but preferred able bodied Catholics to strengthen their population. Captives would write to family and complain about labor beatings forced conversions etc, anything to get family to get the money for them and ransom them Often, christian muslims from spain were taken captive from ottoman muslim ships and taken to north africa and Morocco

• Directly related reading: Salonica, City of Ghosts
• The Expelled Jews from Spain all went to North Africa, they hated it
• Many found safety and a place to thrive in the Ottoman Empire specifically in the City of Salonica
• The Jews were such a big part of the Salonica that it was hard to imagine that they had not always been there
• Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 banished thousands of Jews from their homeland in Spain
• Salonica benefitted most from the arriving Jews
• The made up the labor force
• The Jews of Salonica were entrusted in manufacturing uniforms for janissary infantry corps
• Over the next century this turned the eastern Mediterranean into the main producers and exporters of cloth
• The Jews in Salonica had a great value of providing things such as salt, wheat and woolens for the Ottomans
• Jewish bankers collected taxes from vinyeards, dairy farmers and slave dealers
• Rich Salonican jews wore gold necklaces, and gold laced costumes
• Rabbis were the Greek Jews
• From review:
• A lot of persecution of Jews all along Mediterranean → Jews find a home in Salonica for 400-500 years
• Given a lot of responsibilities, e.g. over the economy in that city → allowed them to prosper there
• Can find more examples of how they were treated well there in the reading

• A Turkish Women who was a feminist, she wrote about the liberties Turkish women enjoyed
• What she wrote was called the Turkish Embassy Letters while traveling with Edward Montagu her husband
• She expressed the most beautiful towns in the Turkish Empire including its famous baths for diversion and health
•       This place is super nice but it hides the people in them
•       Your not focused on the people but everything around them
•       Upon entering, all the women were nice and such even though she was different dressed, but in Europe something like that would never happen-Would be laughed at un-politely
•       She goes on to describe the scenery and feels like an alive coffee shop
• She also expresses how men are not allowed in this area
• She feels she doesn’t hold power and that power rests in the Turkish Women who seem so covered and veiled

• Possibly went there because he knew Egypt was an important trade center/port for their enemy England
• Justified it by saying it was the white man’s duty to bring the savages to the modern century.
• Brought scientists, botanists, etc. to really study all of Egypt (from the white man’s perspective) |

• Concept that emerged from Edward Said (post colonialism theory)
• Dichotomy between the west and east
• East was backwards and the west was more advanced
• Viewed the east is overly sexual and lazy
• Mostly Western Europe (France and Britain) were colonizing parts of the Mediterranean
• BritishFrenchAmerican
• Term for how people viewed eastern cultures (Asian, Middle East, African), and how they were thought to be backwards and not as advanced as the West
• From the review:
• Form of prejudice, seeing someone in a certain dress & automatically perceiving something about themIn this case, Eastern people from Mediterranean & how they are viewed by Western
• Relevant reading: The Orientalism (introduction)
• Orient is backwards, timeless (does not progress like the West that is constantly progressing)
• Oriental peoples are not as hardworking, more leisurely way of life → he said to check this point bc he doesn’t remember it

• young man who travels to Europe as a refugee from africa and endures hardships such as discrimination.
•  African migrants
• Based on real events and real people
• Main character Ayiva is Koudos Seihon who is from Burkina Faso, Africa
•       Very poor country colonized by the french
• Exposed struggle of crossing the sahara via foot or truck
• Exposed anti-migrant discrimination in film between Africans and Italians