Pre-Modern Russia and its World: Essays in Honor of Thomas S. Noonan / Edited by Kathryn L. Reyerson, Theofanis G. Stavrou, and James D. Tracy
Kathryn Reyerson is Professor of History and founding director of the Center for Medieval Studies, University of Minnesota. Recent works include The Art of the Deal; Intermediaries of Trade in Medieval Montpellier (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), and Jacques Coeur: Entrepreneur and King’s Bursar (New York: Longman, 2004).
Theofanis Stavrou is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and founding editor of Modern Greek Studies Yearbook. His publications include Russian Interests in Palestine: A Study in Religious and Educational Enterprise, 1882 – 1914 (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1963), and, with Peter Weisensel, Russian Travelers to the Chrstian East (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1986).
James Tracy is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and editor of The Journal of Early Modern History. His publications include Europe’s Reformations, 1450 – 1650 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman Littlefield, 2nd edition, 2006), and Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Theofanis G. Stavrou Thomas Schaub Noonan (1938–2000): Colleague and Friend
Chapter 1: J. Shepard Closer encounters with the Byzantine World: The Rus at the Straits of Kerch, S. 15-77.
This paper follows up certain insights of Thomas Noonan concerning contact-zones between communities that have different social structures, material cultures and beliefs. Noonan pointed out that intensive commercial exchanges do not necessarily make for significant exchanges of, or modifications in, lifestyles, value systems, religious rites or faiths. The situation at the Straits of Kerch in late antiquity and the earlier middle ages is a case in point. Scandinavian Rus frequented the region for trading purposes from the mid-ninth century, and Rus princes subsequently showed an interest in seizing or sacking towns on the Straits. But only for the period when Rus princes installed themselves at the most important town, Tmutarakan, in the eleventh century, does clear evidence emerge of significant cultural assimilation by the Rus of local religious and political culture. It is argued that this cultural vitality was triggered by the sheer insecurity of Rus princely regimes there: Tmutarakan served as both bolt-hole for petty princes and potential springboard for the more ambitious, hoping to instal themselves back in the Rus core-lands. Both sorts of princes needed the acceptance, if not active support, of the imperial Byzantine government and also of the local populations, a mixture of Greek-speakers, Khazars, Zichians and semi-nomads. Princes showed off their piety, patronized churchmen and resorted to written forms of communication, using seals with Greek legends. Their conduct was a response to the peculiar mix of cultures on the Straits and to specific circumstances of the eleventh century, but it has some relevance to the history of the core-lands of Rus. The case of the Rus princes at Tmutarakan tends to bear out Noonan's thesis: once Rus princes ceased to base themselves on the Straits and to try and legitimize their presence there, the intensity of cultural experiment and adaptation on the part of the Rus slackened. This is so, even though Rus probably still resided by the Straits in the twelfth century and trade between the Rus core-lands and the Byzantine world through the Straits continued to be substantial.
Dr. Jonathan Shepard was a fellow of Peterhouse and University Lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge until 1999. Together with Professor Simon Franklin, he was co-editor of Byzantine diplomacy (Aldershot, 1992) and co-author of The emergence of Rus, 750-1200 (London, 1996). He is the editor of The Cambridge history of the Byzantine empire. 500-1492 (Cambridge, 2007 forthcoming), and the author of Europe in ferment, 950-1100 (Oxford, forthcoming).
Chapter 2: P.B. Golden The Khazar Sacral Kingship, S. 79-102.
Among the most striking institutions of the Khazar Qağanate was a form of dual kingship with a reigning but not ruling, tabuized sacral ruler. He rarely appears before the people and can be approached only by those who have undergone purification rites. When he does appear all must prostrate themselves before him. His tomb, an elaborate mausoleum, is holy ground perpetually cleansed by water and requiring passers by to fall prostrate before it. The actual rule is carried out by the Qağan-Beg/Išad/Yilig who must have the Qağan in his residence in order to legitimate his rule. The Qağan is a heavenly mandated intermediary between the divine and his realm and hence is a talisman for the good fortune of the state. His term of office has temporal limits (forty years – or some catastrophe), after which his spiritual power is considered diminished. The Qağanate did not take this form until the early ninth century. Its development had nothing to do with the Judaization of the Khazar ruling strata (and eventually elements of the Khazar core tribes). Its closest parallels are found in the Iranian model of kingship. The development of Khazar sacral kingship may have been influenced by the Ors personal retinue of Khwârazmian origin that surrounded the Khazar Qağan.
Peter B. Golden is Professor of History at Rutgers University – Newark. Most of his work focuses on the Turkic nomads of medieval Eurasia. He is co-editor of the Cambridge History of Inner Asia, vol. 2 (now in preparation) and, among others, the author of the following books and monographs:
Khazar Studies. An Historico-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars (Bibliotheca Orientalis Hungarica, XXV,1-2, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1980), 2 vols.
The Byzantine Greek Elements in the Rasûlid Hexaglot, in: Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 5 (1985), pp. 41-166.
An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1992 (Turcologica Bd.9), Turkish translation: Türk Halkları Tarihine Giriş, çev. Osman Karatay (Ankara: KaraM Yayınevi, 2002.
The King’s Dictionary. The Rasûlid Hexaglot : Fourteenth-Century Vocabularies in Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Greek, Armenian and Mongolian, edited with an Introduction and commentary by P.B. Golden, trans. T. Halasi-Kun, P.B. Golden, L. Ligeti, Ö. Schütz, with essays by P.B. Golden and T.Th. Allsen. Leiden : Brill Publishers, 2000.
Nomads and their Neighbours in the Russian Steppe. Turks, Khazars and Qipchaqs. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003 (Variorum Collected Studies series)
Co-authored with C. Zuckerman, A. Zajączkowski, Hazarlar ve Musevîik, Hazırlayan O. Karatay (Çorum: KaraM Yayınevi, 2005).
Chapter 3: Anne Stalsberg and Bernhard le Beau Identification of the Square Section of Viking Age Boat Nails: The Experience from Middle Norway, S. 103-113.
Fourteen Viking Age Scandinavian burnt boat graves have been found in Old Rus. It hasbeen claimed that the nail rods have square sections, as opposed toScandinavian round shanks, thus indicating that the Scandinavians sailed inlocally built boats. Later it has been found that the Swedish nails also aresquare-shanked, thus indicating that the Swedes sailed on their own boats. Ithas been claimed that round shanks were used in Norway and Denmark. To check this, rivets from 40graves (out of c. 210 boat graves) from Middle Norway were examined in thelaboratory of the Museum of Natural History and Archaeology in Trondheim.
During theexamination of the nails it became clear that the usual optical examination ofa relatively small sample of nails without further information regarding theirstate of preservation can lead to questionable results. The same proved truefor traditional x-ray photography. The inherent non-symmetrical crystal growthof iron corrosion, in combination with practical considerations such as theexistence of eventual repairs, and/or the inhomogeneous nature and shape ofhand-forged nails did not allow for a clear determination of the cross sectionsof the examined nails.
Anne Stalsberg, born 1943, Norway. Magister artium of archaeologyfrom the University of Oslo in 1974. Worked at the Museum of the RoyalNorwegian Society of Letters and Science, later at the Museum of Natural Historyand Archaeology of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Now associate professor/seniorcurator of the archaeological collections. Studied at Moscow Lomonosov University in theacadmenic year 1967-68. Two periods as visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Main field of study: ScandinavianViking Age finds found in Old Rus' (magister thesis). Now working on a study ofViking Age sword blades with the signature VLFBERHT; and also on thepublication of the Russian-Norwegian sword project (where dr. A. N.Kirpichnikov of the Russian Academy of Sciences found several newblades with signatures and other signs and geometrical figures).
Bernhard le Beau, BSc archaeological conservation. Presently working as a freelance conservator for metal objects and archaeological finds. Areas of research and/or interest: the possibilites, problems and advances in archaeometallurgy and/or conservation.
Chapter 4: N. Makarov Traders in the Forest: The Northern Periphery of Rus’ in the Medieval Trade Network, S. 115-133.
Chapter 5: Thomas T. Allsen Falconry and the Exchange Networks of Medieval Eurasia, S. 135-154.
Across several millennia, the royal hunt held a prominent place in the political culture of many sedentary and nomadic peoples. Starting in late antiquity, falconry became a vital, even defining characteristic of elite hunting, acquiring in time devoted followers from Korea to France. The growing preference for one particular species, the gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus), a native of the subarctic, casts considerable light on the direction, intensity and organization of long-distance exchange networks in medieval and early modern times. The principality of Moscow, the first state to exercise direct political authority over these raptors’ breeding grounds, became in consequence a pivotal player in these trans-continental ornithological transactions.
Thomas T. Allsen, Ph. D., University of Minnesota, is Professor Emeritus, Department of History, The College of New Jersey. His research has focused on the Mongolian Empire and East-West cultural exchange. His most recent publication, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History, (University of Pennsylvania Press) came out in 2006.
Chapter 6: Richard Hellie Reflections on Muscovite Society in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century, S. 155-160.
Unbeknownst to most scholars, the second half of the fifteenth century was one of the periods of greatest social change in Russian history, comparable perhaps only to 1906-1936. Social change affected almost every layer of society, from the top to the bottom. Thus the social composition of the elite changed significantly in this period while the legal status of the peasantry was dramatically altered. The legal conditions of other groups, such as the townsmen and slaves, were also changed. These changes culminated in a highly stratified, near-caste society in the Law Code “Ulozhenie” of 1649. The causes of these changes were many, ranging from the independence of Muscovy, the consolidation of the Russian lands by Moscow, the initiation of the third service class revolution, to foreign influences.
Richard Hellie entered the University of Chicago in 1954, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1965. He worked on his doctoral dissertation at the Harvard Russian Research Center (1962-63) and then at the University of Moscow in September 1963 - September 1964. After teaching a year at Rutgers, he returned to teach at Chicago in 1966, where he has remained ever since. He was promoted to Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of Russian History and the College in 2001. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Science Foundation grant, and other awards. Professor Hellie has concentrated his work on the history of early modern Russia (Muscovy, 1450-1725). One area of his work has been on law, and he has translated into English a bi-lingual edition of the Law Code of 1649. Most of his work has been on social history, especially the peasants/serfs, slaves, and townsmen. He has also prepared a volume on the economy and material culture of Russia 1600-1725 based on 108,000 computer records of prices. Currently he is attempting to complete a general work on the structure of modern Russian history which uses path dependency theory to explain Russian/Soviet international relations, governmental activities, the economy, social change, the role of religion, and literature between 1480 and 1991.
Chapter 7: Janet Martin Coins, Commerce, and the Conceptualization of Kievan Rus’, S. 161-172.
One of the chief contributions of Thomas S. Noonan’s scholarly investigations was the exchange of goods between Eastern Europe and the Islamic world. A review of his analyses of the movement of silver coins produced in Islamic mints to Eastern Europe from the 8th century to the 11th century highlights as well his contributions to the understanding of the formation of Kievan Rus’. By placing the emergence of Kievan Rus’ in a broad, intercontinental context, Noonan demonstrated how factors ranging from Viking exploration to Arab-Khazar wars influenced the process. His studies, furthermore, offer insights into how Kievan Rus’ continued to thrive even as the Islamic trade, which had stimulated the growth of its early towns and its political organization, waned.
Janet Martin is Professor of History at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL. She is the author of numerous publications on Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy, including “Medieval Russia 980-1584” and “Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The fur trade and its significance for medieval Russia.”