Medievalist, historian, premodern Japan, DH, project juggler. @shinpaideshou. She/her. Like my content? 
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Next up is Allen Fromherz (History, Georgia State University), with “To Each his Own Plate and Table: The Gulf during the Global Middle Age.” What do and don't we know about the Gulf region, 1000-1500CE? 
#DGMA19 #GlobalMiddleAges #medieval
Fromherz explores the distinct, cosmopolitan ethos & practices that emerged from “Middle Period” Gulf ports, which were not so closely tied to the circumstances of agricultural or political centers. Being flexible, adaptive, tolerant was necessary for survival.
These port locations were considered "dangerous" in that they didn't fit the typical paradigms. They had remarkable independence politically with a heavy emphasis on cosmopolitan trade.
Fromherz points out that only recently have we thought of the locations around the Gulf as singular and distinctive in their identities. It was very much fluid, however, and free of imperial control.pic.twitter.com/OIHEfXCXnF
As a matter of convenience & necessity, we see intellectual ideas emerge in poetry or travel writing about “universal human experience” outside of religious or political worldviews, even as the Gulf is a critical place for the development of medieval Islamic culture.
So much is left unsaid about the Gulf region in narratives of this time that are the most popular (Ibn Buttuta, Marco Polo), who we tend to rely on for our world history classes.
Theirs were impressions biased against the Gulf, narratives in which they thought there was widespread decline. They have problematic, contradictory lenses through which to see the Gulf that dominate our views.
BUT we actually see lively maritime sites with independent rulers, trading communities, cosmopolitan locations outside of central powers. Fromherz shows us a mosque that may have once been a Hindu temple as an example of the significant overlap.
Fromherz posits that these were places where a form of “medieval humanism” could be cultivated. From the perspective of the Gulf, the “Middle Period” isn’t one of decline or depression, but of prosperousness and collaboration.
One question that emerges here is how we define the geographic (or intellectual) limits of what we consider “global.” Setting spatial boundaries is certainly as tenuous as our arbitrary temporal markers for “medieval.”
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