Skip to main content

IMC 2016: Sessions

Session 1335: The Medieval Nile and Red Sea as a Passage of Transmission, IV: The Later Shifting Frontiers

Wednesday 6 July 2016, 16.30-18.00

Organiser:Adam Simmons, Department of History, Lancaster University
Moderator/Chair:Adam Simmons, Department of History, Lancaster University
Paper 1335-aBetween Holy War and Symbiosis in the Horn of Africa: Ethiopia's Position between the Red Sea Sultanates and Mamluk Egypt, 1270-1543
(Language: English)
Andrew Kurt, Department of History, Clayton State University, Georgia
Index terms: Crusades, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Military History
Paper 1335-bThe (Vanishing) Frontier of Islam and Christianity
(Language: English)
Petra Weschenfelder, Independent Scholar, Berlin
Index terms: Demography, Geography and Settlement Studies, Islamic and Arabic Studies
Paper 1335-cThe Nubian Frontier as a Refuge Area Warrior Society between c. 1200 and c. 1800
(Language: English)
Henriette Hafsaas-Tsakos, Høgskulen i Volda, Norge
Index terms: Archaeology - General, Demography, Geography and Settlement Studies, Military History
Abstract

Following the initial Muslim expansion, the borders of Islam with the Christian kingdoms remained relatively stable. It was only after the thirteenth century that the Muslim forces pushed the frontier with Christianity further and further south. The cultural transmission of previous centuries was being threatened. How did the Christian kingdoms of Nubia and Ethiopia react and what was their role in the changing frontiers? This session seeks to address these issues of the shifting frontier between Islam and Christianity in the later middle ages. How close were the borders to being frontiers and can we even call them frontiers at all?