Studies of Zaydi Yemen tend to underline the divisions, rather than connections, between sayyids, descendants of the Prophet, and tribal groups in the political sphere. This paper answers the... Show moreStudies of Zaydi Yemen tend to underline the divisions, rather than connections, between sayyids, descendants of the Prophet, and tribal groups in the political sphere. This paper answers the question what value family connections to tribes had for ambitious sayyids in early modern Yemen who wanted to become Zaydi imams. To this end, the article examines a section of Imam Yaḥyā Sharaf al-Dīn’s (d. 965/1558) unpublished biography, containing the genealogy of his second wife, Tāj al-Bahāʾ bint al-shaykh Sharaf al-Dīn. The paper argues that the imam and his circle valued the connections that the marriage to a daughter of a shaykh brought to the imamate, and that it is due to its symbolic value for the legitimacy of the imamate that her genealogy was included in the biography. Show less
This dissertation develops an innovative approach to cultural transformation in the kingdom of Commagene (modern south-east Turkey) during the 1st c. BCE, focusing on a palatial context in the... Show moreThis dissertation develops an innovative approach to cultural transformation in the kingdom of Commagene (modern south-east Turkey) during the 1st c. BCE, focusing on a palatial context in the capital Samosata. It unlocks two corpora of archaeological legacy data, which pertain to salvage excavations undertaken by a team of the Middle East Technical University (Ankara) in the period 1978-1989, in the wake of the site’s flooding by the Euphrates river. The dissertation integrates the excavation documentation with archaeological material nowadays stored at the Archaeological Museum of Adiyaman. In addition to a conventional analysis of the chronology, lay-out and architectural character of the palace, a critique is formulated on the problematic character of acculturative and anthropocentric approaches still characterizing scholarship dealing with ‘Hellenism in the East’. As an alternative, it is proposed to reconceptualize the palace of Samosata as a heterogenous and vibrant assemblage, with objects as historical protagonists rather than passive, representational entities. As such, the palace assemblage becomes a laboratory to study the impact of pre-modern globalization processes, with increased connectivity causing the emergence of new relations. Through an investigation of the genealogical and more-than representational capacities of the palace assemblage, the dissertation arrives at a new understanding of change and innovation in Commagene during the 1st c. BCE. Show less
This thesis study 260 Arabic inscriptions from the Arabian Peninsula, corresponding to modern-day Saudi Arabia, dating to the first four centuries AH/ 7th to 10th centuries CE. In total, 260... Show moreThis thesis study 260 Arabic inscriptions from the Arabian Peninsula, corresponding to modern-day Saudi Arabia, dating to the first four centuries AH/ 7th to 10th centuries CE. In total, 260 inscriptions are studied, 145 of which are published here for the first time. The corpus pertains to four families whose ancestors are considered, from the literary sources, to be the Prophet Muḥammad's companions. Three of the families belonged to the tribe of the Prophet, the Quraysh, namely the descendants of al-Mughīra al-Makhzūmī, ʿUmar son of al-Khaṭṭāb, and al-Zubayr son of al-ʿAwwām. The fourth family is that of the descendants of Abū ʿAbs, from al-Anṣār. The corpus includes 106 personal names and was collected from different regions of Saudi Arabia, with most of the inscriptions found in the Medina region. Furthermore, the inscriptions extend our knowledge of these families beyond the genealogical sources since they provide us with knowledge of previously unknown individuals, which helps us reconstruct various family trees. The thesis also discusses why individuals whose names are found in the inscriptions are absent from the genealogical sources. There is also discussion of the epigraphic habit of the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula which was popular in the early Islamic period. It also shows that different members of one family left inscriptions at one site for around two centuries. The thesis concludes that inscriptions constitute an essential source for genealogical studies. Show less
This thesis considers Purepecha from the perspectives of genealogy and contact, as well as offering insight into word formation processes. The genealogy study re-visits the most prominent... Show moreThis thesis considers Purepecha from the perspectives of genealogy and contact, as well as offering insight into word formation processes. The genealogy study re-visits the most prominent classification proposals for Purepecha, concluding on the basis of a quantitative lexical comparison and a typological comparison of affix ordering that there is no signal of relatedness between Purepecha and any other sampled language. The two language contact studies address possible interaction between Purepecha and other languages at long-distance, regional and local levels. The lexicon of metallurgy, the most convincing archaeological evidence for long-distance interaction, does not support this contact scenario although the lack of observable loanwords in this domain may reflect the largely non-verbal nature of technology transmission. At the regional and local levels Purepecha also displays very few borrowings from the prehispanic period. This paucity of borrowings is reversed in the modern period, with Spanish exerting a heavy influence in all domains. The shift in borrowing pattern is explained by huge socio-political change since the imposition of Spanish. The word formation studies focus on the varying semantic transparency of roots and suffixes, with a specific emphasis on olfactory language. They also introduce the notion that roots may be precategorial in nature. Show less
