Abstract This article is devoted to the inscriptions carved on a rock near Lake Sul’fatskoe in the Minusinsk Basin, Siberia, among which there is one text in Mongolian and two in Old Uyghur. Based on their content, it is evident that at least two of these inscriptions were composed in 1274 by the same individual – an envoy of Khan Nikpei from the Chagatai Ulus named Köke Singqur, who was of Uyghur or other Turkic origin. The purpose of his visit may have been to coordinate actions with the Qïrqïz leaders opposing the Great Yuan, from whose subordination the Qïrqïz had withdrawn a year earlier. The texts are visitor inscriptions left by the envoy to record the completion of his mission; their location indicates that in the second half of the 13th century a political center of the Qïrqïz was situated in the northern part of the Minusinsk Basin.
Abstract Indian religious ascetics and Hellenistic philosophers sought to withdraw from society to abide in natural or cultivated spaces. Their withdrawal challenged prevailing social norms and enabled states of spiritual well-being inaccessible in ordinary life. Buddhists, Jains, Ājīvikas, and renunciant Brahmans abided in forests, caves, and groves with the soteriological goal of escaping rebirth. Pyrrhonists and Cynics wandered cities, while Epicureans lived in garden communities, seeking freedom or tranquility. Both traditions were motivated by similar impulses – the need to withdraw, literally and symbolically, from society to achieve detachment – and established institutions to support communal practice. Yet they chose spaces according to their different doctrines. Indian ascetics sought to renounce the world entirely, whereas Hellenistic philosophers sought to live on society’s margins without fully separating from it. Attending to the embodied, spatial dimension of ancient philosophy and religion, this paper contributes a new axis of comparison to scholarship on ancient India and Greece.
Abstract The office of the bishop assumed significant importance in the late antique city. His influence was evident not only in political affairs but also in promoting a Christian vision of society through assistance to the poor, charitable initiatives such as almsgiving, and the institutional mediation of the Church. This paper explores the new approach to economic ethics advanced by Ambrose, the bishop of Milan (4th century), in two of his treatises: De Nabuthae and De Tobia. Both works confront two pressing social plagues of late antique Italy – the greed of landowners and the spread of usury. Ambrose does not merely propose abstract ideas. Addressing the specific conditions of his society, he seeks to apply these principles concretely to envision a renewed social order – one founded on the reversal of prevailing categories: economic (poverty and wealth), social (poor and rich), and ethical (right and wrong).
Amid the political turmoil and external threats that marked the final years of Ērānšahr, also known as the Sāsānian Empire, two sisters, Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt, ascended the throne. While previous scholars have briefly touched upon these women, this paper examines the entire zeitgeist of their reigns, shedding light on their personalities, decisions, and the challenges they faced in a politically crumbling empire. By analyzing their responses to the broader political landscape of an Ērānšahr beset by civil war, a recent defeat by the Romans in the war of the seventh century CE , and the Islamic invasion, this paper reveals the complexities of Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt’s leadership and their unwavering determination to navigate the tumultuous currents of their time. Through an exploration of primary sources, this paper offers a richer, more personal understanding of Bōrān and Āzarmīgduxt and their resilience in the fall of an empire established by their forefathers.
From the third century CE onwards, Afro-Eurasian rulers enacted policies promoting systems of beliefs centered on a supreme entity to provide their subjects with a communal identity and to consolidate their dominions. This paper examines the relationship between Late Antiquity’s changing religious landscape and the construction of womanhood in three martyrdom narratives unsettling Eurocentric teleologies while foregrounding the politicization of gendered violence against female bodies across the Mediterranean, Armenia, and Arabia. To this end, I frame the circulation of mythicized accounts of the execution of Agatha of Catania, Hṙip‘simē of Armenia, and the women of Najrān against the broader geopolitical shifts that occurred in the period, shedding light on the antinomic articulation of gender identity in three distinct religious milieux arising at the margins of empires, between myth and historical reality.
