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IMC 2021: Sessions

Session 213: Venturing into Foreign Climates: Latin-Christian, Arabo-Islamic, and Song-Chinese Descriptions of Climate during the Second Half of the 'Global Middle Ages'

Monday 5 July 2021, 14.15-15.45

Organiser:Richard Knorr, Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies / Historisches Seminar, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Moderator/Chair:Richard Knorr, Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies / Historisches Seminar, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Paper 213-aUnder Other Skies: The Question of Climate in the Accounts of Italian Explorers of the 15th Century in Sub-Saharan Africa
(Language: English)
Simone Lombardo, Dipartimento di Storia Archeologia e Storia dell'arte Università Cattolica di Milano
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Maritime and Naval Studies, Mentalities, Social History
Paper 213-bAcclimatisation and the Other: Latin and Chinese Accounts of Withstanding and Adapting to Weather in the Mongol Empire
(Language: English)
Pattrick Piel, Historisches Seminar, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Index terms: Anthropology, Daily Life, Historiography - Medieval, Religious Life
Paper 213-cOf Heat, Cold, and Tempests: Perceptions of Weather and Climate in 13th- and 14th-Century Travel Accounts by Latin-Christians and Arab-Muslims
(Language: English)
Richard Knorr, Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies / Historisches Seminar, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Index terms: Daily Life, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Language and Literature - Latin, Mentalities
Abstract

We seek to investigate the perception and interpretation of climate in distant, previously unknown, lands during the second half of the 'Global Middle Ages'. The session is based on a broad, interdisciplinary assemblage of different travel reports, combining Latin-Christian, Arabo-Islamic, and Song-Chinese descriptions of climate with a transcultural lens. By applying the notion of foreign climate together with the investigation of accounts of distant peoples and their lands, as well as sources from different cultural traditions from the 13th to the 15th century, we aim to compose a multifaceted display of the various manifestations of climate in medieval travelogues.