EMISCS13

This volume deals with the geographical evolution of the coastal areas adjacent to the North Sea, with a focus upon the last two thousand years. Although many articles are reworked in a fundamental way, most of them are the result of a conference which took place in 2010 at Ghent University (Belgium) and which was actually the third in a series of symposiums on the same broad theme. The first took place in 1958, and the second in 1978. Recognized specialists were invited to present their research in a variety of fields relating to the subject. The various disciplines in which the coastal plains are studied too often remain within their own borders, and so we have set out to thoroughly interweave them in the hope that this will spur greater interdisciplinary cooperation. This collection of texts is intended to appeal not just to experts in historical geography, but to historians and scientists working in any field who wish to gain insights into the present ‘state of play’.

Detailed geological research about many areas provided new data and researchers gradually gained a better understanding of the close relationship between the processes of deposition, sea-level change, and land formation taking place across multiple regions. In the same time, historical and archaeological research also evolved. Most significantly, ideas regarding the chronology of human occupation have changed a lot. This scope of the research collected in this volume is important because it has increasingly become evident that land loss and gain were the results of regional factors, including and especially human activities. Moreover, it is now clear that humans devised survival strategies, and thus organized their activities in relation to the environment, on a regional basis, which means that the causes of local changes must have been both natural and socio-historical. It has now become clearer than ever that there is no single chronological scheme capable of explaining the coastal evolution across the entirety of the North Sea area.

Erik Thoen is professor in rural history and environmental history at Ghent University (B) and co-ordinator of the CORN network.

Guus J. Borger is emeritus professor in historical geography at the University of Amsterdam and the VU University Amsterdam (NL).

Adriaan M.J. de Kraker is senior researcher in historical geography at the VU University Amsterdam (NL).

Tim Soens is professor in rural history and environmental history at the University of Antwerp (B).

Dries Tys is professor at the Brussels Free University (VUB) (B).

Lies Vervaet is assistant specialised in rural history at Ghent University (B).

Henk J.T. Weerts is senior researcher paleogeography at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.

Depuis une soixantaine d’années, le structuralisme a mis l’alliance au cœur de l’étude de la parenté. S’inspirant de l’anthropologie, les historiens tentent ainsi de dégager les règles qui président à l’échange de femmes entre les familles médiévales. Ils sont cependant conscients de la spécificité du Moyen Âge, où le mariage est fortement influencé par le christianisme, par le droit romain, et plus généralement par des normes écrites et abstraites dépassant le pragmatisme quotidien des chefs lignagers. Il est vrai qu’au sein de l’aristocratie, les pratiques matrimoniales ont longtemps obéi à des logiques patrimoniales. Le douaire, apporté par le mari, ou la dot, cédée par les parents de la mariée, « font » traditionnellement le mariage. Du reste, l’alliance est trop souvent conclue pour entériner une trêve entre deux troupes ennemies, pour faciliter l’ascension d’un guerrier fidèle que son seigneur récompense par la main de sa fille ou pour obtenir un parti prestigieux. Elle participe donc de l’effort d’une parentèle pour prendre et pour conserver le pouvoir. Elle réduit la future épouse, et peut-être aussi son jeune fiancé, au rôle de l’actrice passive des décisions prises par les aînés de la maison. Aussi solide et enraciné qu’il puisse paraître, ce modèle cède, du moins en partie, aux valeurs évangéliques véhiculées par le clergé savant : unicité, indissolubilité, consensualisme, exogamie extrême… Une telle acculturation (ou plutôt « inculturation », adaptation du christianisme à une société donnée) ne se fait pas sans heurts. Il en va de même avec le remplacement des coutumes germaniques par le droit romain renaissant, qui impose la dot au détriment du douaire. Ces mutations n’interviennent pas seulement dans les pratiques des nobles, mais aussi dans leur imaginaire et dans leurs mentalités. Elles sont particulièrement à l’œuvre entre les IX e et XIII e siècles où l’alliance prend à jamais un nouveau visage.

The studies brought together in this volume provide an important contribution to the history of ḏimmī-s in the medieval dār al-islām, and more generally to the legal history of religious minorities in medieval societies. The central question addressed is the legal status accorded to ḏimmī-s (Jews and Christians) in the Muslim law in the medieval Muslim west (the Maghreb and Muslim Spain). The scholars whose work is brought together in these pages have dealt with a rich and complex variety of legal sources. Many of the texts are from the Mālikī legal tradition; they include fiqh, fatwā-s, ḥisba manuals. These texts function as the building blocks of the legal framework in which jurists and rulers of Maghrebi and Peninsular societies worked. The very richness and complexity of these texts, as well as the variety of responses that they solicited, refute the textbook idea of a monolithic ḏimmī system, supposedly based on the Pact of ‘Umar, applied throughout the Muslim world. In fact when one looks closely at the early legal texts or chronicles from both the Mashreq and the Maghreb, there is little evidence for a standard, uniform ḏimmī system, but rather a wide variety of local adaptations. The articles in this volume provide numerous examples of the richness and complexity of interreligious relations in Medieval Islam and the reactions of jurists to those relations.