 He has received his PhD in 2014 at the University of Stuttgart from the Mobility of Imperial Peacock Wells. His research focuses on cultural and social exchange, especially the cultural impact of the eco-Roman society in Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the influence of ancient geography and topography on ancient society and daily life. He has also had 10 publications on very different topics. One of his research recent collaborations focuses on acoustic reconstructions of ancient popular speeches. Since 2017, he is a member of the Arab German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities and also serves as a member of the Stetsastrian Committee. Thank you very much. As you have already seen, I am a very big fan of big introductory lines, so I just shortened it up and just put the first line into it and the rest you can follow right after. To show you what one of my current ideas is, let's put it in a picture. I am a big fan of asterisks, so let's go to Athens, and let's have a look at this. The gods are looking at the Parthenon of Athens and there are remarks like, it reminds me of Buligana, or there is a little square in Massilia, or what? No dolmens, and this is what I want to analyze. So, if you are visiting another place, you always compare it to things you know. You say this is like or this is different. By this means, you include or you distinguish oneself from the other. So, you say, ah, we do this as well or no we don't. And then you can analyze these patterns in ancient texts as well and look for how the gradients were received. So, in ancient texts, in which cases is there, ah, it's just like the Arabians do it or the Arabians do it just like others or the third option is no they don't do it. They are absolutely different from any other country or anything like this. To the Greek sources and the last slide to the Greek word. Let's have a look at what sources I have taken into account. There are many, many more which I could take into account, but these were only the first drafts of a project I would like to research way deeper in the near future. Or way more. The first one is Herodotus, which is my main source for today. Herodotus lived about 485 to 424 BC. So, this is the most ancient, I think we've cut so far. So, yeah, I always like when there are no Syrians because they are always older than me. So, and this is a lot ancient. It came from Hanikannasus, a modern boardroom in the southwest of Asia Minor and writes the history of the Persian walls. Geographies and his teacher has been an archipelago of the Middle Ages of great importance to him. So, he writes down geographic effects and wants to link them with each other. About his own experience, he has visited some places although it's not quite sure and in many cases highly visited which places he really did meet and which not. But there are many sources or many archaeological finds which fit into him at Egypt. And it is highly likely that he has visited Egypt and went up the Levantine coast and then back to Asia Minor. On this way he hasn't visited Arabia at all. So, he's highly dependent on the hearsay. So, this is his own contribution to it. The second thing you have to know is that he highly depends on his teacher profiles on the division of the continents. So, the modern division of continents is this age. To say this is Libya or Africa and this is Asia is highly based on Herodotus. And what is highly visited in this time is his teacher said that denial is a boundary. And he said no, there's no sense in that to divide between the right part of denial and the left part. This all belongs to Libya or modern definition of Africa. But we will have a look at this later on. Then we have Deodoros who is from Sicily. Highly depends on Agataquides of Cuninos. We will have a short look on them. Then Strabo of Amazia, it's in the northeastern part of Turkey. And she's a geographer and historian. Has written a book on Arabia. But highly depends on Aris Tostanet. So, first century BC. But don't worry, I want to explain it when it's necessary. And the last source, which is from... There's only one certain manuscript from the university. It's the reticle of Heideberg. So, I have to stress this is a home field. And from the middle of the first century AD the author is an Egyptian Greek and he's a virgin. And we will have a look at these four different sources and have a look at how the erasers were received in these texts. So, to our first division, let's get to Egypt. And Egypt, as I already told you, there's this division in Europe, Asia and Latin Libya. And one of its main focal points is this division between Libya and Asia. So, most of the texts are about Egypt has nothing to do. Nothing at all with Arabia. The Arabians are completely different than the Egyptians. Please note, there's nothing... I will not analyze if it is true or not. I will merely analyze what they say and how they use it in a political sense. And so, what you can find is mainly focused on the boundaries. The soil of Egypt is not comparable to Syria, Arabia or the rest of Libya. Completely different. Egypt is a land around the Nile, no Libyan or Arabic possessions. This is highly debated in the times because Hecateus has said that the right part of the Nile is Arabic. He says no, it's not. And the next is, he talks about erasers. And here it says, one of the most important is the Arabic or the Egypt horizon to Arabia, which is in Dachne, Pelusium. So, the division point. He says that this is still in use since his time. So, there is only a focus on division. We will not find any comments on they are like. They are very much dislike. This is highly dependent of his thinking as Arabia in Asia. To put Arabia into Asia, he has to mark a division. But in later times, I wanted to show you that there has been some comparison. In later times, in the times of the Strabo, you can see that there is a comment like this. All these Arabian cities are ruled by monarchs and are prosperous being beautifully adorned with both temples and royal palaces. And the homes are like those of the Egyptians with respect to the manor in which the tombs are joined together. So, this is a similarity. And the author of his text is not Strabo, but Eratosthenes. Eratosthenes is living in Egypt. And he says the Arabians here are building houses just like us and he stresses they have temples and royal palaces. This is the thing Eratosthenes can deal with because and here you can see the reason why this is the word looking like in the time of Eratosthenes. Now you have an Egyptian boundary which goes up to southern Syria and a clear point of contact. And here you can say they are not others. They are in many fields just like us. There is trade, there is a cultural connection. So now you can say, okay, they are just like us. But for Eratosthenes, they are completely different. Now let's have a look at Syria. As Syria, I have looked at one here. It's religion. But they, the Persians, call the whole circle of gardens zoos. And to me, they offer sacrifice on the high peaks of the mountains. They sacrifice also to the sun and moon and earth and fire and water. With, they are the only gods to whom they have ever sacrificed from the beginning. They have learned later to sacrifice to the heavenly from the Assyrians and Arabians. She is called by the Assyrians by the Arabians and by the Persians. Here you can say there is a boundary, there is a connection between them in the fields of religion. And this is the only mentioning of, the only comparison Eratosthenes makes on Syrians and Arabians. If you have a look at Persia, this is the same example I just showed you. And there's one second here. When a Babylonian has had intercourse with his wife, they both sit before a burnt offering of incense and at dawn they wash themselves. They will touch no vessel before this is done. This is the custom also in Arabia. So again, there is a boundary. You can see there's a clear division between Asia where there are things that come into each other and Libya where things are different. And this might be explained at least in the words of Vinny but he retires himself against Eratos to trade. So cultural habits and similarities are highly dependent on trade. So he says, but my own view is that they used to convey those commodities, to trade to the Persians even before they took them to Syria and Egypt. This being tested by Herodotus who records that the Arabs used regularly to pay the gillie tribute of a thousand talents of incense to the kings of the Persians. So trade is why they have similar habits and customs. Let's have a look, a closer look Ethiopia is one comparison in the army. The Arabians were men who scaled it up and carried the right side long bows curving backwards. The Ethiopians were wrapped in skins of leopards and lions and carried bows made of palm wood strips full for cubits long and short arrows therewith pointed not with iron but with a sharpened stone, that stone etc. etc. So there's a key division, they have the same arm and they have the same weapon but a completely different aspect on a clothing. The one are wrapped and the other are half naked. So this is the Lydian arrangement distinction here. So you can say in the world of Herodotus this is the denomination of you can say they are like this or they at least are not like them maybe you put it this way, they are not like them and the other way around. But there is more into the perception of Arabia if you have a closer look at India. India it says as I have lately said India lies at the world's most distant eastern limit and in India all living creatures forefooted and flying are by much bigger than those of other lands except the Horses I don't know why but which are smaller than the Lydian Horses caught insane. There is a story as well on getting gold by riding into the holes of the ants with a camel and you have to get the gold and then ride away very fast because there are big ants in India in his perception. So you have to flee from these wild ants this is the world this is the other world and this is the eastern border but there are some similarities that Arabia is the most distant to the south of all inhabited countries and this is the only country which deals frankincense and myrrh and cassia and cinnamon all these but myrrh are difficult for the Arabians to get they tell us of adventures which animals suffice to get cinnamon and so you don't get it for free you always have to pay your price and you have clear similarities regarding the other worlds between India and Arabia because it's an unknown world and in an unknown world you can always say things are going wild they are completely different from us and this most of the time tells us that it's absolutely unknown what is going on in Arabia these times now there's a last closer look at Arabia and the presentation of Arabia in these times so first of the flora and the natural resources I have said enough of the spices of Arabia has wondrous sweet glow from that land so this is a magic event for herodotus where everything you want to get you can get you have very good natural resources like gold and gents and copper you can get everything you want where at the same time you can have room and many other resources but at the same time it always comes that's already told you let me look at the fauna they have got over two marvellous kinds of sheep I think you never thought about dangerous forms of sheep so if you want to get to know which one are the dangerous ones and they are big sheep and frightening etc. so even the sheep are dangerous in Arabia be careful of them then you have a white beast like the ostrich which is presented in here has a brutal camel-like type so if you ever thought about what an ostrich is like for herodotus it's all compact camels and this is the same with the Camelio Pant it's enduro which is really described but it also compares it to camels then you have the phoenix which only comes living in Arabia and only comes once every 500 years to Egypt except for this the phoenix is living in Arabia you have flying snakes and they fight with the edus so this is another distinction line there is a description of flying snakes which gather and then fly over the Red Sea and attack Egypt and therefore you have the edus who fights back so in this description it is highly likely that these flying snakes are rise of us so they are becoming less dangerous or dangerous in another way then the last view on the camels itself because in the description of herodotus camels are highly mainly focused on Asia there is no description on any camels in Egypt because that could be a likely vote so he has to stress the only ones in the army of the Persians riding with camels are the Arabians and they have to ride off because the horses are afraid of them so yeah I took a picture in Cairo of the the horse in the camels side is standing next to each other so please imagine this horse Camel picture and this is the last example or the second the last example I want to show you this is on Pyros and this is from the Pericles and here it says there is a distinction between the Arabians living next to the sea and the Arabians living in the hinterland because the raiders and the pirates are the Arabs in the hinterland and those living at the sea they are comparatively friendly and you always have to watch the Arabian side of the Red Sea because it is dangerous and you can't ride through it there may be a reason to it before Egypt had direct contact with India in the 3rd century BC everything went through Arabia so the ports at Arabia were highly frequented and right at the time when this kind of trade going over Arabia stops and direct trade were the first reports on raids and piracy so this is kind of an redemption but what I want to stress is that actually the Augustan age very little was known of Arabia at all it was a highly closed area so it remained in Cognita in Cognita to make a remark on the next paper and here you can see you can hardly gather any information on Arabia at all so to close my considerations on Egypt and the Arabia on Arabia let's go back to Egypt for one last thank you for your attention and this is the last picture also on Asterix Publix doesn't like the pyramids at all so he says I would always give me many here any day so he doesn't like them so thank you for your attention welcome to this video Christian, a lot of thanks for this presentation I can't do that a lot of what you were saying depends on the term Arabia and errors so the first question naturally I guess how to define Arabia how did Herodotus define Arabia or the Arabians we know there is a language issue in our usage of Arabians i.e. those who speak the Arabic language in your example so is there a definition for that period, for that word of Arabia or the Arabians because he doesn't know them at all so he merely can say they are living around there so one remark which is of interest might be in the thinking of the classical actualistic times they had one king for instance which is highly unlikely that they only had one king but so they can get it you have to make a treaty with the Persians how to deal with it, there has to be a king who deals with everything so you have no real perception of this period at all it only depends on context thanks to merchants and warfare sometimes except for this there is no deeper context but then the question arises from where did he get his terminology so why are they Arab and Arabians and not whatever, tribal name they are living here, therefore they are Arabians this is his description so no further distinction or anything like this, these are the people living here but you are implying now that the Arabian peninsula is a geographical background knowledge competition, this is correct this is not so much correct for erotic times but afterwards you have quite some knowledge thanks to Alexander the Great that there is a Persian gold and then you have the remarks the land between the Persian and the gold and the Red Sea has to be Arabian so no one could really conquer Arabia which is partly dependent on the little knowledge of the landscape itself so they didn't know how to deal with it one example is that these Arabians in the northern parts are often described as bandits and raiders and they can always escape since they go through the desert and they are the only ones who know where to find water so this is the division line shown to us so there is some knowledge but there are many stereotypes at the same time I wouldn't stress that they have the intercourse when the women sit before a fire and wash themselves or something like this but this is the world they imagined so I am highly divided one more question it's a very small comment it is not the religion of the Syrians and Iranians and there is a particular word that we have quoted from Haidats that is Mitra this actually opens to us a vista of the reaction between the religious leader on the religious lines because Mitra happens to be an Indian God that has been described in the Vedas and this is significant in that context that during the the period of Gupta Bala for Maksiria happened to be part of the Indian continent at the time and the religion at that time was Hinduism and that's why some of the scholars have interpreted Zindabad as a modified version of the Atharvaveda in Atharvaveda this quote Mitra has been mentioned it's absolutely clear that there was a strong context between India and Arabia this is why it's so sensible to say that the raids around the Red Sea begin at the point where the Egyptians are not buying from the Arabians directly anymore but have their own way to come to India directly so this is a point where the locals say they are not buying from us their permits that rob everything they got and bring it back to us and then trade again on other terms but it is absolutely clear that there were high contacts and it is not on how it really was but how it was imagined and here they say this is how Herodotus imagined the world to be you are absolutely right in fact we can say by archaeological findings that there were high contacts they managed to be able to do this very early way earlier than the Greeks so at first they didn't know how to deal with the monsoon okay thank you very much we have to leave other questions for the break time please or thank you very much for the questions next speaker is Konstantin Klein he worked for the Sahab Tera Klublista, the land of Arabia and its inhabitants in late Roman imagination Konstantin studied ancient and medieval history or he studied German and Italian and Bamberg, Germany and Luxford, UK where he finished his PhD in the classics in 2016 after a fellowship at Harvard in the USA he worked as a lecturer and the chair of the ancient history in Bamberg, Germany since 2000 thank you very much for the introduction many thanks to the organisers to Noah Christian for having me here and also again many thanks to Christian because he is very nice with the imagination is the ideal way to say my presentation because this is all about late Roman imagination and this morning I tried to shorten my presentation by just cutting off one topic I thought even before but I think it is worth mentioning in terms of this terminology that in the 4th century I'm not going to talk about it but in the 4th century I have two authors who at the same time tried to find a new term to describe the wading desert Arabs so this is Bob Salazzini who comes from but this is like in the 4th century AD and we have no words so they are not Arabs anymore because the word Arab is used for other people here but I'm not talking about that here let's start with literature in Yasuri's novel Karna Naima as if she was sleeping the story's protagonist, Melia is described as a fantastic cook her husband Mansour enjoys her food and his favourite dish is called Riel in its mother's milk Ajul Belavan Umu and I think we're at something very similar today at lunch so I integrated a new slide here so Mansour with Joyce's dish very much at one point remarks that it is strange that the old poets have written about so many sweets not about sabre dishes such as Riel in its mother's milk that's not a real dish that's not a real name, Melia tells her husband they call it that in Beirut but it's a dish from Damascus in Damascus they call it Shakiriyah Mansour is unimpressed however he remarks that the dish's name is a challenge it has been said that thou shalt not see a calf in its mother's milk that's already a good test of it here is confidence that wants to stop cooking the dish because this is I quote barbaric so some of us ate barbaric food this lunchtime Mansour announces that the dish is so delicious that he does not care just like me and that it will go on eating Riel in its mother's milk until all eternity for he is who is narrative this is only one unresolved conflict in the troubled marriage between Melia and Mansour however as a late antique historian I was surprised by this passage but it was otherwise for you the idea that cooking meat in milk is something barbaric is a very old idea and we encounter it very often in late antique texts about the lands of Arabia and the Near East in general when talking about the knowledge that Greek and Roman authors had about the region in late antiquity we face about a complicated problem with the sources I have argued elsewhere that it does not make sense to put together the entirety of all sources on Arabia in late antiquity in order to gain a coherent picture when we so would obtain an even mosaic of little mosaics that could not be pieced together for a simple reason that these instances survive from a multitude of authors which their own source traditions as well as their own agenda and bias as the following remarks hopefully able to demonstrate what therefore seems a more promising area for research and what it does is not to look at what is described in late antique material on Arabs but how it is described this paper does not aim to evaluate the historicity of single episodes but rather to identify common literary motives by contextualizing the accounts and ask why particularly authors made use of particularly imagery I will focus on three motives on food, on customs and on location you will see that Armenia's dish wheel in its malatial could be an important part an important part in it so first Barbarian diets some passages in the so-called naga zionas, a fifth century account attributed to one Nile of Ankara read like the stuff that nightmares are made of the text which is a blood curling and sophisticated alive reports the fate of Niles and his son Piorgos who is abducted during a raid by nomadic Arabs on Mount Sinai the author describes the length the truly barbaric lifestyle of the Saracen abductors the aforesaid nation of Arabs inhabits the desert extending from Arabia to Egypt's wet sea and River Jordan so it's Barbarian desert here they practice no craft trade they live at home but use the dagger alone as their means of subsistence they live by hunting desert animals and devouring their flesh or else get what they need by robbing people on roads that they watch in ambush if neither is possible and their provisions run out they consume pack animals they use scammers called trominaries for food theirs is a best-shouldered blood thirsty way of life killing one candle per clan they soften its flesh with heat from fire only till it heats to their teeth without having to be too forcefully thrown since the beginning of Greek historical writing Arab nutrition habits have always been a good starting point for ethnographical digressions in Herodotus' description the nomadic Skippians are eaters of raw meat and drinkers of milk that is Colonel Mill for yogurt this Skithian diet proved formative for later counts it would soon become indispensable and so typical for any future Greek or Roman description of barbarian food it is the ingredients of the dish that Melia and Ilya's food is not recognized as barbaric as well in antiquity the warm meat of course provided to reader with a link to the barbarian's bootish and animal-like habits Herodotus' tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are approach is a literary motive with a long afterlife strange foods continues to be the universal element for example the description of nomads by authors from sedentary societies in addition it is not only what one eats that defines a person but also how one eats this seems to be true for an Ilya's narrator in the narration as well who concludes that his description Meloviu who concludes his description with a phrase in a word they eat like dogs but he goes once that further the protagonist Nilos learns from a messages report that the Arabs who abducted his son are eager to sacrifice the boy and consume his flesh as the narrationist should be first and foremost seen as fiction and their author as a talented writer who knew how to create suspense and excitement it's really good to eat but you shouldn't eat before you go to bed because they might have nightmares so it would be pointless to investigate whether some free Islamic Arabs did indeed practice occasional cannibalism this may well however be seen as a testimony to the occurrence of human sacrifice a practice recorded in some other native sources the cases we have at our disposal suggest a custom situated somewhere between extreme demonstrations of authority as in the case of the Nachmeetullah and only the third who allegedly butchered 400 Christian nuns in honor of the deity Valhasa who is haven't yet arrived we've just seen before and a cultural stereotype born out of Christian fear and polemic which also lead to ancient descriptions of barbarians once more the link goes back to Herodotus who also mentions as the most great human type the man-eaters the Andhokharwathi they have the most savage customs of all man he writes and compares them to animals not practicing any form of justice or using any laws Herodotus offered a simple but highly interesting explanation the man-eaters do so for they are nomads Herodotus' projection of secure man-ness, habits and traditions on the distant peoples was applied by Roman writers to enemies much closer to Rome at times even to fellow Roman citizens while they likened entire enemy nations to animals accusations of cannibalism as human sacrifice appear equally frequently the absence within animatic societies of big settlements laws of government according at least to the Roman perception further the impression of these people's brutish character even though the actual logic of evidence in the New East does not point to a substantial threat from Herodotus and his antiquity personal perception was quite another matter I think I have some exceptions can be misleading this apologetic word the cure of the pagan melodies the cure of the non-Christian melodies we should well say Theodoretus of Cyprus in the 4th and 5th century argues that his readers should seek out barbarians and learn the languages in order to Christianize those Aryans that were still pagan on the Arab tribes he remarks as to our neighbors the nomads they are endowed with an intelligence likely and penetrating the label of discerning truth and refuting falsehood apparently Theodoretus Arabs had all the necessary prerequisites to be law-abiding but as no one had so far presented them with rules from royalty they had not yet been able to reach that stage like the Germans in Tacitus's famous account Theodoretus Arabs served as an optimistic contrast to the author's own society even with a sort of Christian favor of the nomads the mankind comes with a loss of happiness the concept of the noble savage divides from this context in our case the Arabs are not yet depraved by the corrupting Arab civilization they can serve as an anti-type to the to their own morally degenerated culture of the author this binary of law-lawlessers can already be found in the writings of Herodotus as well who described their apophagoia as lawless and mandating barbarians they also mentioned the barbarian Isidons you might have seen them they were in the far top right corner the Isidons who feed on human flesh mixed with morsels of wild sheep meat interestingly these people are classified as law-abiding while their apophagoia presented as the most degraded human type the Isidons of servants of law seemingly removes the blemish of their cannibalism so you can't be a cannibal by law as fine the other way it shows in a different way how the Arab nomads came into contact with law and civilization among the many charismatic ascetics described in this account Simeon the stylite Simeon the guy who is on the column excels in his function as a law-giver to the Arabs Christian law in antiquity however is not only treated as equal Christianity per se but even by small the former barbarian nomads for rodeo vices and make a significant change in their dietary customs as you can see here they stopped eating wild ars and camels so by becoming Christians they changed their diet as if the contradicts previous arguments and to remind that some of the Arabs previously survived in their character theater it goes on to describe their goals, arguments and fights they were emphasizing Simeon's achievements in converting these such people when the holy man refers to them to theater and for pro lessons and spiritual education the Arabs gather around him so tightly that they nearly suffocate in the shop while this could be interpreted as indicating the enthusiasm for the new faith it may also show contempt for the still barbarian habits based on the number three and the need for separation the fourth century scholar Jerome authored several texts in digital Arabic Arabs play a key role in Sveta Malki with several classical Romans and short as a text be mainly considered as fiction designated for a Roman audience in this text the protagonist is adapted by Sarah Sands Jerome is the first one who uses his work by Arabs who live in a truly degenerate world women hold power naked in the spray vehicles the trade that's already seized out in the world is in the Germans and eating habits are disgusting to the Roman taste as that our graders compel Malki to drink camel's milk and eat half raw meat the values of these people are inverted we find Jerome's models again in classical literature for example in Apollonius' account of the so-called Mosinicians who do everything a civilized man would do in secret in order to be sexual intercourse out in the open there's anything that should be public for example the People's Assembly doing politics next place in private it is interesting to note that in most depictions of such societies ancient authors from Herodotus to Jerome and beyond mention that the demarcation line Herodotus Skidia is divided by a river which separates the world of the nomads and the sedentaries similarly Herodotus' description of Africa, it is a lake that marks Boundaries, thus from Egypt to the Tritonian Lake the Libyans are nomads that eat meat and drink milk on the other side they eat poor things the Eugestian Eugestian geographer Strago called the Desert of Chalkis the region in which the Arab nomads roamed Paraportamia river side again a river is entomologically the boundary between sedentary life and the nomads so I wanted to show that earlier I believe that's quite well all the country to the south of the Archimedes belong for the most part to the Tentwells these Tentwells are similar to the nomads in Mesopotamia and it is already the case that the people are more civilized in proportion but they are more similar to the Syrians and today the Arabians and Tentwells are less so before by having governments that are better organized even in Jerome's late 4th century text there seems to have been a need for such divisions the first instance is not a river but a road that the Protarianism while this is traveling it has this road has the civilized world on one side and the hostile Arab world on the other side then after his abduction Jerome's Protarianism encounters this inverted world on the other bank of the river or the Euphrates of Kapoor that they had cost as if the literary genre would rest that strange things only happen on the other side of the river this description of the Euphrates as a mental border fits well with the research carried out by the German archaeological institute on the eastern frontier in Arabia which clearly establishes demarcation lines of dynamic imperialism of contact rather than merely a static defence system in the military area against the tribes even in the 6th century Procopius noted that the Arabs were naturally incapable of storming a wall or to beat this kind of barricade put together with perhaps nothing but mud the collective fears expressed in various texts suggest little sympathy with the Normans small scale rates certainly were a real existing problem for the later on population living in Syria or Palestine however by stating that these alien nations lived behind natural barriers of orders the writers reassured their readership that their potential was far away and represented an anonymous threat this was intensified by the fact that as a rule the texts do not provide further information on the whereabouts of the server cells although historical sources at the same time increasingly refer to the areas associated with Normatic Arabs and sometimes even give considerations of their former names for which we can sometimes gain information on tribal identities however the German military strategy of presenting anonymous enemies living in a strange, far away world that resembles a fantasy that is an occasionally making attacks upon the unfortunate people who happen to live in or journey through dangerous regions would hardly have proved satisfying if it had not combined the legendary depiction with a second important narrative thanks to God's protection and intervention Jerome's hero, Marius manages to escape this Arabs' captors and arrive safely in the symbolized Roman territory to conclude the inhabitants of Arabia in late antiquity offered quicker Roman authors the possibility to elaborate on a variety of top oil be it their environmental lifestyle which could both reassure the readers and excite their curiosity their construction as noble savages in contrast to the white as own society and the demonstration of God's omnipotence in that Christians could eventually convert these people or when conversion was not possible could still hope for very potent miracles the corpus does not also contain valuable demographic information on certain aspects of the Arabs' daily lives but one has to be very careful to discern which elements have their roots in much older descriptions and therefore can miss if you look at the text surveyed in this paper it seems that the value of the late antique sources on nomadic Arabs is rather low which is also your conclusion while miracles, divine intervention and conversion naturally play important roles in Christian texts on late antiquity historiography appears to be just as little concerned with the production of a Margaret account as the various saints' life we have most of the authors' surveyed left to posterity the impression that the inhabitants of the late antique Roman Empire lived in a constant fear of a barbaric world enveloping the individual, the town, the city or the whole empire the at times imagined threat of sudden Arab raids never disappeared, not even the fortifications along the border with their high and conspicuous towers seem to have been sufficient to cycle these fears. Just as valid epigraphical information from those texts describing late antique Arab nomads must be distinguished from topical descriptions it is also vital to observe the difference between objective circumstances and a subjective perception of the same circumstances described in texts that reflect notions of insecurity and fear both aspects are important to historical research and should not be brought into opposition it appears sensible to keep these aspects in mind when working on the ancient description of Arabia and of Arabic nomads All the accounts discussed here clearly have unique aspects that might help to shed light on our knowledge of pre-Islamic Arabs yet they all drew their motives from the same pool of classical sources Thank you very much Yes, questions? Thank you very much for this very nice presentation One question which raised in my topic as well was the drinking habits Do we have anything on drinking habits? Because in the literature I think there is mentioning of the special way of milking and drinking the milk this might fit to you as well There is no example coming to my mind in the Amianos Masalinas it says that they don't drink alcohol but it is interesting and the milk they always use in the sources I mean it is not milk as we would buy in the supermarket today but it is like a lot of milk in a lot of areas but I don't know anything about it Milk becomes a little bit in the sources But it shows because when you look at descriptions of Germans it is not just the raw meat it is also the drinking habits they are drunker they don't mix the wine they only drink wine and don't put water in it however very this is you may ask yourself how very this is this is why but it shows quite well and you have put quite well such that Greeks and Romans couldn't deal with just eating meat or just eating anything that comes out of animals without brain what is life so this is the basic idea and that's what mixing was when they convert Christianity we have this accounts like 5 to 10 of them the change of diet always is from milk to bread and wine so you have first of all your brain but then naturally bread and wine is also quite a Christian diet yes please yes well thank you and as a public patient I'm not asking you questions coming from the graduate school but if you look at it by the point of fact you have to take into account that fiction and fictional literature might have meant something entirely different in your time of content how do the readers realize that there is a world of fiction something in kind of factual today are there markets do you have the label of normal or whatever and I mean fictionality might have meant something entirely different that's perfectly true and I mean there is a part of a willing group which is called Hagiography as Literature because Hagiography is a term for saints lives and of course saints life are real if you believe in it and it's real for most parts of the audiences in the case of Jerome it's very interesting because in one of his saints lives there was a cantor and there is a little form which is like a goat half human who is I think also an equivalent so animals that readers would I would now say certainly know that they don't exist so I think this marks it as a picture of elements from me to bread in Arabic which means bread and I think there is some connection and basically in the stable the question is really about language now you mentioned the fact that there was a conversion process and the signing of Syriac the Syriac we have a text in Syria and anonymous, mindful of Syriac and then we have communication and we have all the Arabs that come to visit me now if there are any sense of what language they use to communicate with each other and of course when one converts one is converting based on an understanding of what one is converting to and then of course you have all the surgical costume or what sort of surgical language where they can be at this point so really the question is understanding these texts and the text also has an effect of the language that the Arabs use and what is their understanding about them? Any answers in my field in terms of when those people call Arabs by the Romans and say I am talked I would now say 95% would be Syriac we have one example which is Jerome and he quotes that they say which is not our big well I put that in Syria but then again it is Jerome who in the same text has this control so yeah I think in the case of Syriac it would be Syriac but it's more a guess because that's the region and we kind of know about the pool of the converts and is attracting and the Syriac life that you mentioned it gives a couple of converts by name one is Luqman who is a Asanid ruler so we have to deal with the question what language did the Japanese or Asanid picture which I think is a Christian, Palestinian, Asanid picture so in the way the Rasalees which are all Christian Palestinians nowadays so it's problematic that it's very good all of you have a political bias so one has to be more careful I think that's also what I was aiming at in my country in the last second bit with Al-Lah so Al-Lila I would say some Al-Lah but it goes to Al-Lah one of my daughters and this again is one of these deities that have been identified who has the companion Lucifer the Moistur but then of course we talked about it yesterday over lunch in my colony says that it comes from the Lata to Moisten because there was a guy who was moistening porridge which we had yesterday because he was moistening porridge on a stone after a while stone or he was called Al-Lah because it's the Moisturized and then dated to its name for example it's the first type that his name is mentioned so no study here this is on the corner on history of Al-Lah it's strange that it's so early and there is no interest in the details or the differences in millions of interest that this is Aphrodite and then it's okay and then you can call it Aphrodite and if there are any I think a potential data how you might call it so the focus for us is otherwise than the focus of the Greeks that's the problem it's of interest and you like this Aphrodite and then you can deal with Aphrodite I guess modern history and I also do know how to copy in the old Greeks I'm questioning that you always have to be there thank you very much we moved over we covered Dr. Martin Martin Stock who will talk about the work of IACS and the radiant of Martin his assistant professor of German at Gulf University for science and technology for the University of California Santa Barbara and has previously held positions at IOS State University of the United States thank you very much for those kind and perfect words my thanks also to the ARGNA team and of course the AUS team for putting together this fantastic conference I've learned a lot these past few days and also been a lot better and I don't believe that I should probably say by the way of practice this is the work in progress as you will see there are still some gaps in the story and it will probably take me another research trip to film however I believe I have found enough thus far to sketch for me the work of Matt who came through the Gulf in the late 18th century so we are jumping into part two and to situate him in his age to show how contemporary discourses are in his work and also to suggest why his encounter with the Gulf group of us has suggested a lot of things to come this is the work in question voyaged from England to India published in 1773 that's the first edition we've seen there on the left in the center and is today housed proudly in the center for research and studies on Kuwait a copy of the book on the Indian cited on the left side just so you can get a little of the title of the thing and it's written on a hundred pages almost and the man who wrote this book was Edward Ivers a surgeon in British Navy in which capacity he served in the Franco-British Wars in India between 1754 and 1757 the title of this book is some of this leaving from the voyaged from England to India by the king of the Gulf of Madagascar when he takes up the first chapter of his narrative chapters 2 through 13 described his years in India these chapters are then followed by the second half of the volume counting of this return voyage to England by the Arabian Gulf so it came through here literally past charger we could come back in time 260 years we see in India now and then through Mesopotamia and Syria, Cyprus Italy, Austria some of the German states and Holland and then across the channel and back to England in the early pages of this second half I is then Chronicles in Counter which has a pure count based in the history books which is the reason why this book is today on display in its last case in the library of the Center for Research and Studies so let me give you this quote on Friday the 14th of April and the year 1738 to our great satisfaction a small boat probably seen the triangular sail returned on grain and brought the line expected Arab he behaved very complacently ensuring us of his best assistance and how ready he was to accompany us to Aleppo and that this state was the seventh of moon and by letters received from different places of gear the great caravan for example would be near grain on the 20th the shape seemed to like our determination and advised us to leave the car deck on the 15th that we might then get to grain in proper time ensuring us that he was up to return back grain in a day or two to get to the Tamales etc ready for our use and you can see this in some case in 1922 so we are already well entitled to this narrative grain is a transliteration of al-Qaeda and this pronouncing this but I was assured that at least in Kuwaiti Arabic translates as small hill and the ancient name Kuwait and these are the lines that mention it for the first time ever in western literature and the precise al-Qaeda of al-Qaeda is probably not the date of Kuwait where the city is located today but rather in the south of the country near the Saudi Kuwaiti border and on the basis of al-Qaeda there has been so many things in terms of speculation as to the identity of ISIS long expected Arab though it's unnamed of course in ISIS narrative but it is at least possible that the minor question was the first rule of Kuwait in the scheme includes the country to this day ISIS references as the locale of the encounter with the sheikh is the island of Qaq which I like to pair with that red contour across from Kuwait near the Persian coast where the Dutch had established a fort and created house in 1753 which they then lost again 13 years later in 1766 what is apparent from ISIS words is that Kuwaita can already serve as a transportation hub here at the northern end that developed the caravans sometimes 5,000 camel strong assembled and rested before then commencing the voyage three to four weeks across the desert to a level transporting goods from the Gulf from India and from the East before then they could return the voyage with goods from the land and from Europe to European travelers on the way home with a model of purchasing and hospitality which is a standard trope of the European capital of the future of the Arab world at this time already and a standard feature of writing in the coming centuries later on though the sheikh will also drive a hard part in the country of the European who have to negotiate back and forth with the price for the voyage to this too is a standard trope of the European capital of the Arab center of the Arab world in the western future this is what we want to call it is not framed in any particularly original manner nor in his eyes is portrayal of the encounter between nuance but he is the person who made this contribution and like I said he had a dozen other western men of the British of course most famous traveling party or the dozens who were making similar voyages around this time when Britain secured its grasp on India and developed a famous strategic game for the Britain between Europe and India what has been of interest to me in their voyage to reconstruct the biography of Edward Isis and to establish a sense of the intellectual paradigms through which you perceive this world is it yet like to know who this man was and what kind of thinking had shaped his perceptions so let me give you a quote this time related to his years in India and it's not a particularly exciting quote but that is kind of the point having already mentioned the nut as a favorite of the Indians which were known for shallow line and a shrub that grows like a line I shall here so join a brief description of the Arabic tree which produces the nut it is a finest slender upright tree not above six inches at the bottom close upwards of 13 feet high and it's jointed about eight or nine inches distance perhaps the last year's growth it contains a large quantity of pit the way part being thin as though thin but as tough as wheel bone the leaves grow in the same manner and it goes on for another dozen lines and that is just one of many examples so the point I'm trying to make is that eyes perceives the worry with the eyes of an actualist he's focused on detail to the point being he's obsessed with what he means to things he's a poster child of the Enlightenment age sometimes someone describes, identifies, quantifies organizes, classifies the world around him and speculates on connections and possible new studies the latter, of course, often of regard to possible medical properties and counts are pure to the functions of major profit practices he observes however, his desire for knowledge extends not immediately practical and suggests a multi-dimensional perception of the growing scientific yes, primarily scientific I would argue but also economic culture historical, archaeological in fact the phrase I used for the text of my talk of the sake of curiosity he uses in the context to visit the ruins of Babylon where he appropriates some ancient priests about the sake of curiosity and the meaning of the word curiosity, curiosity is between the one we have preserved in the word like curiosity shock an item that is of interest because of its rarity and the primary meaning of the word still has to be it is also what it had in fact this time I eat something someone desires, someone's desire for knowledge one might also point out that curiosity is a key term in the writings of Isis and Henry and in Burke who in fact published his philosophically integrated to the origin of a lot of ideas of the sublime and beautiful in 1757 just as Isis was watching his return to England Burke begins his book by stating, quote the first and the simplest emotion which we discovered in the human mind is curiosity and whether I discovered this sentence I cannot say he never mentions Burke in his book I'm still hoping to lay my hands on some letters which are apparently in some archive and maybe that would be more enlightening I suspect however that he did not read Burke I will never mention Burke's key term sublime though he argues that his would have had ample opportunity to do so of the ragged coastlines of Oman and she passes this and she does describe the sense of people that never dropping that term to be that as of May Isis would certainly have a brief with Burke's statement of curiosity and I assume that you might curiosity was in the air at the time you might say Isis is an exponent of what he described her although none other than Joseph Conrad has affirmed and quote exemplified by the word quest for knowledge about the geography of the earth marked by Voyager's exploration by C. F. Land in contrast to the previous period of geography tablets which I probably would say the presentation we heard last yesterday on an image of maps with the one two and which was marked by a projection of imaginary dimensions onto the black spaces of the world and also distinct from the total period of geography travel into the novel black spaces have disappeared and the geography has been fully absorbed into the power dynamics of empire I would say was a militantly curious scientific observer empire is certainly on its mind and in fact he has been engaged in the building of empire but its curiosity is not committed solely to this project but rather exists as a same feature of its character, free floating that is sometimes a feature with no conscious purpose. The argument could of course be made and it has to be made that the innocence of the scientific travel of spears, liberty or the consciousness of a man has the projection of power inherent in such an appropriate gesture in the case of Einstein that the military endeavor is involved in is that I think first of all against another European idea of power of France and that it is scientific appropriation of the world as it does one might say twice removed from real life appropriation which did however follow and which I would certainly have condoned not celebrated that is in the context of the scientific interests that would of course be interesting to note that I have this education of biography he seems to have had a classical education as well as full of references to many passages throughout the Cicero all of them seem separate and original but this is a thing whole in the eyes of biography that has so far been unable to fill he was born in Lyman on the south coast of England in 1713 there is a possibility that his people, his family were not church people and the community which grew up was a center of protest in the center and so this might have made him an outsider during his adolescence and his writings go on to religious higher directed against the Catholics and inhabitants of Polish countries particularly against the Portuguese who's presence in the world in regard to the suspicion and he takes the task of the imposition which is a popular obsession at the time the effects of which you can see all the way to the late 70th and the 18th century in the Gothic novel in general though, Ayers does not tell it as seem to have been more than conventionally observant and not particularly invested or interested in metaphysics after his birth there is a crucial gap in his biography of 23 years and he then again enters the historical record and signs up as a surgeon second mate on the Navy warship Norfolk in 1736 and this is Ayers' superannuation document which he received when he was discharged from the Navy and he came literally to the day he charged his rights to the ranks so what happened in those 23 years where did he go to university where did he go to university he put also a apprentice as a surgeon even as an arbor and then he gave himself even the level of classical references and also his awareness of certain contemporary discourses on that moment I think both apprenticeship and autodidacticism are less likely so my goal for next summer is to fill in those gaps in Ayers' biography and if anyone here has good idea of where to look talk to me please from the moment he enters the Navy I would go over and try to fight this definitely he never drops out of sight he writes through the rights of a surgeon second mate first mate on the warship he larger ships and when he is discharged because of illness in 1737 he is searching on the fraction of the British had relatives and officers rank after his return home he marries his four children by his property which he publishes in his book and it is a handsomely produced model model in August and here are some of the illustrations a lot of standard catalog stuff but also archaeological or quasi anthropological material and a certain amount of design to buttress the discourse of objectivity the book is dedicated to the son of his commanding officer so clearly Ayers was making a big part of the accumulation of social capital and it worked hard for him when he dies in 1776 away from his hometown and back he is a well known and have a local back paper which realizes him as a political community someone who is who exemplary acts in honor to the future to other discourses present in Ayers' work psychically, arguably dominant on a local modern and empiricist scientific new world there is of course the healthy dose of patriotism of this celebration of the free British spirit there is also a discourse of usefulness difficult on account of the material voyage Ayers a few times expresses his hope that his texts will be of advantage to future travelers there are some quite interesting passages on generations and far lands and by whom it subtexts of self-ironization and here he exhortes his illusions to himself as the most popular person in the party but what I'd like to conclude with is a look at what I knew as the Dispersive competitor to empiricism and following that I released here with himself with our spreader that hope that the Enlightenment travelogue was superseded by it hope within a folk romantic quest which means ultimately back into the tango itself I'm sorry I was not able to get a word of separate look and co-eight so I'm quoting her here by at least and there's of course more happiness and hope than I can possibly do in this presentation Ayers does in fact drop the buzzword for instance when he writes of the Persian coast aboard the most romantic prospect as also mentioned romantic crazy rocky sand picturesque and romantic prospects never anything sublime though and these are passing references to behold these prospects out of the corner of his eye one might say that there is also this aesthetically charged relationship to the world the romanticization of the Gulf the Arabian desert and in general of the lands Ayers passes through on the voyage from India to the Mediterranean was of course well underway by the time it was writing the first English in the showing of the Arabian 9th century published between 1706 and 1721 150 years before I said it's kind of paper and this type of orient because this course is ever stronger in the 19th century making itself felt in Walter Scott's father's race or for the German speaking part of the audience they have the best writer of Germany in the 19th century called Amadi who made a fortune on romanticizing the Arabian desert in Ayers' work romanticism trolls all need visibility and commitment and they are there and there's a degree of self awareness to them none of the soul searching suffered at least identified as characteristic of texts that are common that there is conscious self stylization Ayers makes a point of stating that many of the incidents were dealt by me with the most exquisite sensibility and another term of the time with clear intention of suggesting that the writer of this book is not the only man of science but the one who appreciates the world in weapons that extend what we today call the effect that he wants to present himself as a well-rounded gentleman someone who understands the world and can organize it in a fashion that makes it accessible and who spoke for a metropolitan audience and can turn here with powers he also wants to make sure he perceives as someone within the aesthetic appreciation of the world someone who not only sees and knows but also can feel let me finally return and develop them as Ayers prepares to embark on his overland voyage to Mediterranean coast the commander of the Dutch work on the Carp Island is incidentally a mercenary from Fritsia in northern Germany by the name of Pablo Kniphausen gives Ayers the list of books he asks him to send back from Europe these are two enlightenment men and Kniphausen is the small heir of the late 6th great also Cervantes and Ceremonial of Vergeraki Kniphausen asks for mechanical instruments any new invented optical instruments the baron is also interested in a diving bell which is a surprisingly old invention out of Scotland a conference already describes the diving bell recently had an unhappy comment thing some improvements to the device so that one can now stay underwater for a couple of hours to consider a certain way to replenish the air in the diving bell Ayers never mentions whether after his return to England he sends the baron in his diving bell not for that matter but for some reason I find oddly compelling the notion that in the middle of the 18th century a small-time German aristocrat in Dutch employ might have been sitting in a British made diving bell in the waters of the northern Arabian Gulf Kniphausen would have been interested in studying the moving life he would also have been interested in pro-backs with the intention of harvesting them and the latter is of course indicated in relation to the Gulf as we develop over the coming century Ayers and Kniphausen were a chariot to be viewed first of all a man of curiosity scientific minds interested in the macro world for its own sake secondly, there were romantics the lower case are thirdly, there were men of empire this discursive view propulsive discourses of science, romance and empire is the one in which most future western travelers who wait under the Gulf in general were looking themselves with relative emphasis they would place on these discourses with very significant key from one point to the other he proposes on such things because you can see in 18th century literature there is a high interest in ancient literature as well so you have a point of continuity in the description of so you can describe it in length and be sure that these descriptions are well received yes, of course there is a dig for authenticity he cites all like we call and of course he cites a lot of plus whether he wrote this was actually correct because he is inscribing himself into this very powerful tradition and as I said the book is as an odd blend because I think partly it's a vanity project as a literary proposition that doesn't work because it's almost unreadable over long stretches so it didn't sell but that wasn't the point the point was essentially to impress the right people to accumulate social capital that we want and by of course referencing all the authorities and by targeting the scientific community at the time you do impress the right people but you lose the larger audience of travel writers try to go to continuous travel narrators which was emerging at the time so he released there is quite a lot of work of British travel writing at the time some of which was commercially successful titles as well as far as I can ascertain basically he held it on the press but he probably wouldn't be that much because he wrote it to travel writers I think sources beyond his own eyes I see what he has said about the story the locals he talks to locals about a lot which is not very people and the sources he cites are the classics but he does of course have guides and he does report on what they are telling him the third thing really his main focus is to reference the writers of antiquity not contemporary writing on these sites which was in the best one more question okay