HISTORY 14B: The Crusades: A Global History (JEWISHST 14B)
(
HISTORY 14B is 3 units;
HISTORY 114B is 5 units.) Questioning traditional western narratives of the crusades, this course studies Latin and Turkic invaders as rival barbarian formations, and explores the societies of western Afro-Eurasia and the Mediterranean in the centuries before western European global expansion. We approach the crusades as a "Christianized Viking raid," and investigate an array of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish sources. In so doing, we emphasize the diversity of perspectives within the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities: in the Muslim case, the tangle of Turkic, Arab, and Berber ethnicities; in the Jewish case, Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkic speakers ranging from the Iberian peninsula to India; in the Christian case, the fragmented Greek, Latin, and Arabic traditions. We explore how these barbarian invasions transformed the societies of western Afro-Eurasia, how ancient Greek knowledge in Islamic translation came to medieval Europe, and how a fragmenting Byzantine Empire gave way to the rise of the Ottoman Empire. However foreign, the interactions and encounters between these societies continue to reverberate today.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Rohan, P. (PI)
;
Constantin, A. (TA)
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