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Category: The Mediterranean

Articles on on cases from the Mediterranean basin and beyond.

Billets / Europe / Talks & Papers / The Mediterranean

Tod im Bad – eine antike Kulturgeschichte

Badeunfall, Badeunglück, Badetod – allsommerlich liest man Meldungen über tragische Ereignisse an Baggerseen und Badestellen, was teilweise auf fehlende Bademeister und Rettungsschwimmer zurückgeführt wird. Doch auch so mancher Badegast beweget sich in gefährliche Gewässer, besucht verbotene Badestellen oder verhält sich schlicht unvorsichtig. Auch gibt es gibt einen erstaunlich hohen Anteil an Nichtschwimmern. Doch das hält die Betroffenen nicht davon ab, ins Wasser zu gehen. Zu verlockend ist das kühle Nass bei den warmen Temperaturen im Sommer.

Case Studies / Concepts & Theory / Europe / Personal Reflections / The Mediterranean

How to write the history of religion in the making?

Traditional religious historiography attempts to grasp ‘religions’ in their becoming, possibly their founding, their slow or radical changes – similar to how urban historiography undertook. This brought transformations into view that, in the extreme case, could take on their own form in the splitting and splitting off of religious groups…

Case Studies / Concepts & Theory / Europe / Personal Reflections / The Mediterranean

Comparing World Religions?

Today, the academic study of religion in the discipline widely called Religious Studies or Religionswissenschaft has developed into a large array of thematical fields and foci, of general approaches and source-specific methods. As such it is ranging from historical and anthropological disciplines through social sciences and economics to philosophies and theologies, either conceived as a proper discipline overlapping with these other disciplines or seen as a subdiscipline to the one or other of them. What I am advocating today is the use of a term defining the traditional object of Religious Studies, namely “religion” and its use for comparison on a global scale…

Case Studies / Concepts & Theory / Personal Reflections / South Asia / The Mediterranean

The Seasons of Maritime Life

Port towns host unique forms of urban life, and they are often seen as particularly vibrant and dynamic cities. Maritime metropolises on all continents, such as Shanghai, New York, Bombay, Hamburg or Marseille, have gained a reputation of being exceptionally busy, diverse and connected places. This is also true of maritime cities of the past, and archaeology and history tell us that historical port towns were already busy, diverse and connected places…

Announcements / Case Studies / Concepts & Theory / Europe / South Asia / Talks & Papers / The Mediterranean

Workshop: Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead (15-16 May 2025)

Critical studies of death (thanatology) have illuminated how human societies organize spaces of burial according to gender, race, class, sexual preference, and religion. Informed by these works “Necrogeographies of the Marginal Dead” introduces how studies of death, especially of persons within groups excluded from systems of power in the living world, illuminate how the structures of power exceed life extending into the afterlives of the dead…

Billets / Case Studies / Europe / Personal Reflections / The Mediterranean

Latrines make urbanity ?!

Sara Keller, postdoc with the Religion and Urbanity group, on the link between waste infrastructures and urban lifestyles. Not just prestigious fountains in large public squares, luxurious bath houses and monumental stepwells are outstanding expressions of urbanity: latrines also can contribute to the production of an urban, cultured and sophisticated way of life.

Billets / Case Studies / Concepts & Theory / Personal Reflections / The Mediterranean

Archäologie aus der Ferne: Religion und Urbanität im spätantiken Nordsyrien

von Verena Fugger. Wenn es um das Thema „Archäologie in Syrien“ geht, werden den meisten LeserInnen dieses Blog-Beitrags vermutlich noch die durch zahlreiche Medienkanäle verbreiteten Bilder der Sprengung des Beltempels in Palmyra durch Gruppen der Terrormiliz Islamischer Staat am 31. August 2015 lebendig in Erinnerung sein. Abgesehen von der unfassbaren humanitären Katastrophe, die dieser Krieg über die Bevölkerung brachte, gehörten die Zerstörung und Plünderung archäologischer Fundstätten, historischer Altstädte wie jener von Aleppo und musealer Exponate zu den größten Gräueltaten des Terrorregimes. Unwiederbringlich verloren sind zahllose Kulturgüter, die – wenn sie nicht durch direkte Kriegshandlungen oder Vandalismus zerstört worden sind – ihren Weg aus den örtlichen Museen in den illegalen Kunsthandel und von dort mittlerweile auch nach Deutschland gefunden haben.

Billets / Case Studies / Concepts & Theory / The Mediterranean

The Waqf: Where Religion Meets Urbanity

Our former fellow Elyse Semerdjian on the waqf in Aleppo as spaces where religion and urbanity intersect. Recognizing pious endowments – waqf/awaqf – varied across the Islamic World. The waqf, in its most basic definition, is a registered piece of income-generating property donated to a religious foundation, a charitable cause, or to one’s heirs in perpetuity.

Billets / Concepts & Theory / Personal Reflections / The Mediterranean

Emotional Urban Apes – A Different Take on Religion and Urbanity

At the core of the research group Religion and Urbanity at the Max Weber Centre in Erfurt lies a keen interest in the ascription of value to different life forms relating to city and civic life, that is urbanity. Yet such valorisations do not necessarily presuppose one’s physical presence in a city. One may live a perfectly happy life in a villa rustica at a safe distance from interactions with the ‘masses’, but nevertheless – and presumably for that very reason – attributing urbanity to one’s own lifestyle by assuring oneself that true civil life is not found within the city, but either outside it or in the outskirts of it at the Sans souci.

Billets / Case Studies / Personal Reflections / The Mediterranean

Going West: Migrating Personae and Construction of the Self in Rabbinic Culture

A discussion of an example chosen from the series of readings concerned with the reception of Babylonian immigrants in the domain of the Palestinian rabbis. The example is taken from the chapter in which I discuss the Palestinian rabbis’ use of the figure of the Babylonian Other in shaping their collective Self. Those examples deal with the mockery of the Babylonian newcomers. This story is a final anecdote in the tragicomic trilogy of encounters between Babylonian immigrants and the Galilee’s inhabitants.

Billets / Book Reviews & Exhibitions / Case Studies / Europe / Personal Reflections / The Mediterranean

Urban Monasticism Then and Now

Harry O. Maier discusses Mateusz Fafinski and Jakob Riemenscheider’s book, Monasticism and the City in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The book provides readers with a comprehensive exploration of ancient monastic and urban sites and their inhabitants, akin to a Lonely Planet travel guide. The authors examine monasticism from five aspects: as a genre, within and as cities, with respect to monks and nuns in urban settings, in terms of monastic learning, and as a phenomenon in Afroeurasia.

Billets / Case Studies / Concepts & Theory / Personal Reflections / The Mediterranean

The Community as a ‘Sacred Body’ – An Interpretation of the Garden of Epicurus

Our former fellow Enrico Piergiacomi analyses a small fragment of Epicurus’ correspondence. Its an intriguing moment where religion and urbanity intersect. The philosopher’s reasoning was based on a theology that allowed to imagine the Epicurean school as a divine settlement, or ‘sacred body’, as well as on a conception of the civic and economic relationship that tries to recreate in the human city the same blessedness experienced by the. Economy and spirituality seem to coalesce a single, peaceful whole.

Case Studies / Concepts & Theory / Europe / The Mediterranean

Open-Air Preaching and a Muslim Festival: Religious Rituals, Violence, and Urban Space in mid-19th Century Belfast and early-20th Century Jerusalem

Conflicts between different religious groups were a frequent occurrence in cities of the British Empire, particularly from the Victorian era to the interwar period. The imperial agents had a paternalist and orientalist perspective on these episodes of communal violence and assessed them as uncivilized manifestations of religious fanaticism…