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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists

@alusuralwusta.bsky.social
854 followers 2 following 74 posts

Journal of Middle East Medievalists (@mideastmedieval.bsky.social), a peer-reviewed, open-access journal on the medieval Middle East. Edited by Zayde Antrim (zaydeantrim.bsky.social) & Alison Vacca (@medievalqabq.bsky.social)

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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
New article alert! Let’s start w/ a personal manuscript from 9/15th cent., including a letter from Cairo’s chief judge & a list of books for sale from Mamluk Baalbek. This article challenges the divide btw documentary & manuscript studies through a fresh look at texts, material & social practice
Arabic manuscript.  Letter from Taqī al-Dīn al-Akhnāʾī to ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Akhnāʾī in Damascus. Damascus, National Library of Syria, MS 2969, fol. 163r.
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
New article alert! How did theorists in the medieval Middle East standardize techniques for connecting texts composed in different languages? Join us in examining the long history of comparative literary theory through the premodern lens of ‘approximation’.
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
New article alert! Were we to leap back centuries & ask a madrasa student in Mostar or a storyteller in Dhaka, we would find that their idea of the Persian poet ʿAṭṭār differs starkly from the ʿAṭṭār on English-language bookshelves. This article explains why by tracing the fates of his Pandnama:
journals.library.columbia.edu
Cheap Perfume? | Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
New article alert! Humans use numbers to think about other humans in many contexts: demography, taxes, votes, and historically, slavery. Our latest article shows how early Islamic narratives about the Saharan frontier use the number 360 to represent the relationship between race, space, and time.
journals.library.columbia.edu
A Slave per Day in Perpetuity | Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
New article alert! If you were to list important Arabic poets, who would you include? Abū Nuwās, Abū Tammām, al-Buḥturī, al-Mutanabbī…? In the 14th cent, Ibn Nubāta included all of them & more. He also included himself. Check out this new article about how self-citation worked in Mamluk texts.
journals.library.columbia.edu
Thus Spoke the Author | Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Have you ever wondered what a Sasanian city sounded like? We can imagine the sounds of the past if we pay close attention to material, historical, & archaeological sources. Check out this new article on the soundscapes of Eranshahr-- & be sure to download the sound file for an immersive experience
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Thanks to all authors, reviewers, & readers as we close out issue 33! We published 550 pages in 2025: 7 articles; a thematic dossier w/ 4 more articles; a roundtable; an Arabic edition; a pedagogy file; 7 book reviews; & some short communications. Here’s a thread to gather some highlights! 🧵
journals.library.columbia.edu
Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta
Middle East Medievalists (MEM) is an international professional non-profit association of scholars interested in the study of the Islamic lands of the Middle East during the medieval period (defined r...
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Imperial Islam is Moon-worshiping—but Sun-worshiping too, straining algorithmically for the stars. Symbolized by 'Ali and Jesus, early modern Persianate Selenocentrism and Heliocentrism are Hermetically useful global-comparative categories for decolonizing the historiography of science and empire.
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
New article alert! Join us in exploring a phrase from Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī’s 13th-c. geography. He refers to the Damādim of northeast Africa as “Tatars of the Sūdān.” Hannah Barker interrogates the racializing discourses at play in such comparative claims. [image: British Library Or 1524]
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
New article alert! The exploits of the ʿudhrī lovers Jamīl and Buthayna are well known, full of potential for romance and scandal and violence. This article asks how such celebrated stories read differently when read with an eye to Buthayna’s experiences instead of Jamīl’s performances
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
New article alert! How can we rethink word stress in Classical Arabic? This article looks to an unexpected source: the traditional recitation of metra in Persian metrics. This evidence clarifies controversial patterning in Classical Arabic, with implications for Proto-Arabic word stress, as well
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
The Editors of @alusuralwusta.bsky.social endorse @mesa1966.bsky.social's March 13 Statement on the repression of academic freedom and March 28 Joint Statement regarding Columbia.
mesana.org
Letters from The Board
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
New article alert! Explore the history of 15th-century Diyarbakır with us today! This new article relies on literary & epigraphic sources to tell a story of Aqquyunlu rulers & their relationship to the famous Armenian bishop, painter, & poet Mkrtičʻ Nałaš [shown here: remains at nearby Ergani]
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
New article alert! We invite you to explore a text composed in the northern reaches of the Caliphate in 744: the Armenian martyrology of Vahan of Gołtʻn. This article includes a translation and intro that analyzes the text’s construction of the Umayyad world and Armenian experiences within it
map of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Armenia including Gołtʻn along the Araxes
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
New article alert! Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddima offers the most extended reading of a series of maps known from medieval literature. In this article, Alfred Hiatt parses Ibn Khaldūn’s text alongside manuscripts of al-Idrīsī’s 12th-cent. geography, prompting questions about Ibn Khaldūn’s art of history
manuscript showing a sectional map from al-Idrisi. It is worn in the middle with some water damage near the top. The map has a gold border with notes in Arabic in red and black ink around the margins. Within the border are two bodies of water in blue with light blue waves. Rivers cross the land in lines of blue. Land is not colored except mountains, in green, burnt orange, pink, & red. Arabic text in red identifies seas and regions; cities are noted in black. The map shows the south and east of France from Toulouse (top right) to Burgundy (bottom right), separated by the Alps from northern and central Italy, located between the Mediterranean (top) and Adriatic (bottom) Seas.
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
We close out the 2024 issue with a thousand and one thanks to our authors, reviewers, & readers! 618 pages of research articles, thought pieces, pedagogy file, conference reports & book reviews. here is a master thread that describes them all! 🧵⬇️ Share & follow because 2025 is going to bring more!
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Check out Stephen Rapp’s pedagogy file on medieval Georgian coins to use in undergraduate classes! This example combines familiar format: “there is no god but God alone, who has no associate; Muhammad is the messenger of God” in Arabic, w/ Georgian margin “Christ, exalt Bagrat, king of the Apʻxaz”
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
UW announces the publication of its first-ever roundtable! it showcases a variety of perspectives on the Global Middle Ages—its possibilities, perils, & problems—from fields associated w/ Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies.
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
Since we are new(ish) to Bluesky, we want to make sure you did not miss all of the wonderful articles we published this year! We publish as soon as articles are through peer review and copyediting, so these have rolled out over the past 12 months: 🧵⬇️
journals.library.columbia.edu
Vol. 32 (2024) | Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
New article alert! 10th-c. traveler Ibn Faḍlān describes non-Muslim Rūs: “When the chieftain dies, the members of his household ask his jawārī and ghilmān, ‘Who will die with him?’ One answers, ‘I will.’” Arabic texts suggest most funerary sacrifices among the Rūs were women
map of the area around the Caspian Sea showing Ibn Fadlan's likely route (921-2) from Baghdad to Bukhara, then on to Bolgar
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists @alusuralwusta.bsky.social · 30/11/2023
al-Usur al-Wusta articles reached readers in 108 countries this year alone! Could we all agree to send an article to our friends in Turkmenistan in 2024??
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