Walker Bethany J., Al Ghouz Abdelkader (eds.) Living with Nature and Things: Contributions to a New Social History of the Middle Islamic Periods

Bonn University Press, 2020. — 758 p.This edited volume represents the research results of two international conferences organized and sponsored by the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg: "Environmental Approaches in Pre-Modern Middle Eastern Studies" and "Material Culture Methods in the Middle Islamic Periods". The following work consists of three parts, which correspond to the themes of the aforementioned conferences (Contributions to Environmental History and Material Culture Studies) and a third which bridges the gap between the two approaches (Practice and Knowledge Transfer). The present contributions cover a wide range of such topics as urban pollution, local perceptions of weather, rural estate economy, Sufi understandings of nature and the body and mind, houses and socialization, text and gardens, local know-how and interdependence in medieval Syrian agriculture, crop selection and the medieval agricultural economy.Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker is Research Professor of Mamluk Studies at the University of Bonn and Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology. As a historically-trained archaeologist, she directs several field projects in Jordan and Israel.Dr. Abdelkader Al Ghouz is an intellectual and social historian of the Islamicate world. Currently, he is the publication manager for the Cluster of Excellence “Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies” at the University of Bonn.