Browsing by Subject "Jerusalem"

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    Between Trepidation and Hope: A Study of Palestinian Christians after the Arab Conquests, ca. 630-797
    (2024-05) Hansen, Benjamin
    This study examines the lives of Palestinian Christians in the seventh and eighth centuries CE. Though current scholarship sheds much light on political, theological, and other intellectual responses to the rise of Islam, it has little to say on local society, especially the impact of religious and political change on so-called “simple believers.” Responding to the neglect of this important topic, my study highlights the social-historical experiences of Christians in Umayyad and early Abbasid Palestine. Recent scholarship on the early medieval Middle East has come to eschew the notion of a common cultural and historical experience under the first Islamic caliphates. Regional and micro-regional studies have shown that distinct communities throughout the Levant were faced with unique experiences and challenges. My study offers the first treatment of the experiences and challenges of these Palestinian communities, from their center in Jerusalem to the peripheries of Galilee and the Negev. Evidence for this Palestinian “micro-Christendom” exists in a variety of texts and objects. These include hagiographies, correspondence, homilies, inscriptions, travelogues, papyri, and the remains of material culture, both urban and rural. In considering this evidence as a whole, this study assesses the changes which Palestinian Christian communities underwent in this period (alongside remarkable continuities). What emerges from this analysis are the contours of a community struggling to shape a deliberate future while claiming a sacred and immutable past. Such a paradoxical struggle overflowed into everyday life, touching on questions of food, dress, labor, family, and language. Though focused on the particulars of this Palestinian community, my study also contributes to a broader scholarly discussion of the interconnected worlds and religious and ethical values of medieval Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
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    Three Faiths, One Holy Land: An Interfaith Study on Holy Land Pilgrimages in the Early Modern Period
    (2020-06) Kolden, Crystal
    The Holy Land, which includes the city of Jerusalem and surrounding holy sites, has long been a pilgrimage destination in the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions. The Ottoman era of Jerusalem, beginning in 1517, saw a major influx of pilgrims from all three faiths, and this led to a convergence of varying perceptions of the same geographical space. At the same time, a shift was occurring from the predominantly religious purposes for individual travel in the medieval period to the more secular or touristic motives of travel beginning in the early modern period. This shift, combined with the geographical origins, professions, and attitudes of individual pilgrims, further added to the varying viewpoints of the Holy Land, even within the same faith. This study seeks to explore these intersecting viewpoints by examining the accounts of four pilgrims in the Holy Land during the early modern period: David Reubeni, a Jewish political activist and adventurer (1523), Henry Timberlake, a Protestant merchant (1601), Evliya Çelebi, an Ottoman Muslim travel writer (1648-1650; 1672), and Henry Maundrell, an Anglican chaplain (1697).