British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The Eastern Mediterranean in the Thirteenth century:
identities and allegiances
Abstract
The Islamic World
Dr Jo van Steenbergen
In the Islamic Eastern Mediterranean, the first half of the 13th century witnessed both the pre-mature consolidation and the final irruption of Central-Asian historical dynamics. The new elites that emerged from these processes offer a host of potentials for prosopographical research in lie with PBW, not in the least because of the relative wealth of surviving source material. Against this general background, this paper will survey this source material and, in particular, the information it contains on the contemporary Byzantine world. In doing so, results will be presented which are both disappointing and promising, engendering an awareness of a revealing cultural distinction between a Turco-Persian North and a Turco-Arabic South.