The concept of a Global Middle Ages has shifted the paradigm of medieval studies over the past two decades. [1] Itโs impelled scholars to look beyond their particular region or language of expertise to explore the interconnectivity of the world circa 500 to 1500 C.E. New research and publications are examining how commercial, intellectual, artistic, and cultural exchange brought different areas of the globe into contact. New graduate programs and undergraduate courses are training students to dialogue across disciplines, combining the humanities with computer science and bioarcheology. This approach promises to transform medieval studies for the twenty-first century.
Transformation is needed if we want secondary-school students โ our future undergraduates โ to continue learning about this period. Many state curricula have dropped the requirement to study anything premodern, implying that history began in 1500.
Happily for us, talking about the Global Middle Ages sparks young peoplesโ curiosity. They are intrigued by historical narratives that overturn popular notions of the Dark Ages and lift up the cultural achievements of places other than Western Europe.
I speak from experience. This spring I taught an introductory medieval studies course at John Adams High School in South Bend, IN, through a partnership between Notre Dameโs Medieval Institute and the South Bend School Corp. The MI approached John Adams because it is an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School. The IB is a global educational program that aims to form โinternationally minded young peopleโ ready to meet the challenges of world citizenship in the twenty-first century. The IB history curriculum is designed to โdevelop intercultural understandingโ though the comparative study of more than one region. The ultimate goal is to โincrease studentsโ understanding of themselves and of contemporary society by encouraging reflection on the past.โ
Teaching the Global Middle Ages can meet these IB learning objectives by introducing high schoolers to the pluralistic cultures of the deep past. By reading travel narratives students learn that medieval merchants, envoys and missionaries needed to develop intercultural understanding in order to survive. After a guest lecture on trade, travel and migration by MI Mellon Fellow Mohamad Ballan, the John Adams students read excerpts from the tenth-century Travels of ibn Fadlan and the thirteenth-century Journey of William of Rubruck. These texts helpfully debunk the myth that all cross-religious encounters in the Middle Ages erupted in violence.
At the same time, medieval travel narratives describe the terror that humans feel when interacting with those who do not speak the same language or who subscribe to alternate belief systems.[2] Students reading these texts come to see the difficulty of acquiring cultural competence โ a task that remains difficult today. That knowledge can foster humility, a virtue needed in globally minded citizens.
The John Adams course succeeded in helping students perceive the medieval globe as a place of cultural and religious diversity. One wrote in a final reflection:
One aspect of the Middle Ages that I was clueless about at the beginning of the semester is the significance of Islam in the medieval world, and the effect that Muslims had on architecture, technology, language, and philosophy in the Middle Ages.
Another reported gaining an โunderstanding of how every country and culture was connected and in relation to one another. It would be unfair to continue believing that the Middle Ages were this dark and clueless when it came to things that they had to use in their everyday lives.โ Looking ahead to next year, Iโm excited to help students explore this interconnectivity in greater depth and breadth.
Students from John Adams High School, South Bend, visited the Rare Books & Special Collections room in Hesburgh Library to see some of Notre Dameโs medieval manuscripts.
The MI hopes our school partnership will serve as inspiration for other medieval studies programs wanting to do public humanities and engagement work. Collaborating with an IB school proved fortuitous. Both parties share the goal of enabling students to understand our world today by reflecting critically on the deep past.
Annie Killian, Ph.D. Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow Medieval Institute University of Notre Dame
[1] On coining the term and conceptualizing โThe Global Middle Ages,โ see Geraldine Heng, โThe Global Middle Ages: An Introduction,โ Elements in the Global Middle Ages, November 2021. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009161176.
[2] On Rubruckโs disorienting experience at a Mongol court, see Shirin Azizeh Khanmohamadi, โWorldly Unease in Late Medieval Travel Reports,โ in Cosmopolitanism and the Middle Ages, ed. John M. Ganim and Shayne Legassie (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 105-20.
This tutorial is for those of you who want to learn some basic programming in Python for the digital humanities, but also for those who have never programmed or may become filled with terror at the sight of a single line of code (trust me, I know the feeling!). At the end of this guide, you should know how to perform optical character recognition (OCR) to make a pdf searchable. For this, we are going to use โocrmypdfโ, a Tesseract-based Python package with wonderful capabilities. Everything will be done online from your web browser, so donโt worry, you will not have to install anything on your computer!ย
I have tried to keep the tutorial very simple and straight to the point, at the cost of occasionally sacrificing some useful and important explanations about the code. For that, I profusely apologize to my colleagues in the department of computer science. Please, do not send the Spanish Inquisition.
The name “Python” is a tribute to Monty Python (please excuse the poor joke).
Why Tesseract and ocrmypdf?
Some of you may be familiar with, or even regular users of the OCR function provided by Adobe Acrobat DC pro. The ctrl+f function is one of the simplest and most efficient tools to support analysis of text and research. Acrobat DC is a powerful and very easy to use software, but this comes at a price. First, Acrobat works only with a handful of common modern languages such as English, French, German or Japanese. Tesseract on the other hand can recognize characters from a broad variety of modern and classical languages, including, but not limited to, Armenian, Classical Arabic, Classical Greek, Syriac, and Old Georgian, to name only a few. Second, Tesseract is a free, and open-source software, presenting a more cost-efficient option compared to other expensive commercial options and I am sure many of you would rather settle for the free but equally powerful alternative.
This is a free Jupyter notebook that will save your data on your personal google drive. Just remember to hit the save button before closing the page.
Open a new notebook and sign up with a Gmail address. You will want to use your @nd.edu address but any personal google account will work too.
As a first step, we need to download ocrmypdf, and all its dependencies. To do so, simply type the following lines. The first will download the python package ocrmypdf, while the other lines will deal with the dependencies. For those of you new to coding, you will learn the first rule of coding: any errors in spelling, indentation and so forth can break your code. Be careful!
When the above lines have been written, run the cell by pressing ctrl+enter or press the button in the upper left corner. The download process should take around a minute. Once the download is complete, you should see a little green tick next to the upper left arrow.
Once the package and its dependencies have been downloaded, we will need to import โocrmypdfโ so that we can put it to work. Add a line of code to your colab sheet by clicking on + Code and write the following code:
Next, add a copy of your scanned pdf to the “files/content” folder on the left side of your screen (or any other folder of your choice, you will just have to note its path somewhere). In our case, we are going to work with the first page of an article on the Mevlevi Sufi order published by the Byzantinist Speros Vryonis Junior.
In a new cell, enter the following lines of code (beware, the underscores are double underscores!).
Here, the name on the left should be that of the file you want to ocr (or its path if put in another folder), the one on the right should be that of the new, postprocessed file. The code uses the exact name of the file, โVryonis_Article.pdfโ. You can keep the exact same name if you want the new file to overwrite the original one. In my case, my code is directing ocrmypdf to create a new file: โVryonis_Article_OCR.pdfโ. Once generated, the post-processed article should appear in the same folder.
If you ever get an error, simply restart the runtime before running the cell again.
Et voila! You can now search your pdf with ctrl+F or copy and paste any sentence you want.
But this is not the most exciting part of this tutorial, and we may want to spice things up a little bit. Tesseract is very good at OCRing (yes, this is a verb, at least according to the WordSense dictionary) non-Latin scripts, but the process is a bit more involved. As an example, letโs take a page from the Masฤlik al-abแนฃฤrfฤซmamฤlik al-amแนฃฤr written in the 14th century by the Syrian polymath al-สฟUmarฤซ.
And here we are. Those who can read Arabic will notice that the result is extremely impressive. This, however, is a rather neat scan and Arabic is often difficult to properly OCR because of the cursive nature of the script. If the quality of your scan is poor, you may also be able to clean it with Python beforehand for a better result. I may develop this point further in another post.
Beyond Arabic, Tesseract works very well with other non-cursive Semitic scripts, and you may get excellent results with Hebrew for example. Here is a last example from a Syriac Bible.
If you have any questions or comments about this guide, feel free to contact me.
Today’s blog continues from last week’s discussion of the Nasrid College and the multicultural exchange it fostered in Medieval Iberia by shifting the focus to the intellectual and political.
In Muแธฅarram 750/April 1349, the Nasrid College, located directly across from the former Great Mosque of Granada (today the cathedral) and near the main market, was completed.[1] It reflected the intersection between knowledge and power, cosmopolitanism and learning, in Nasrid Granada. Although the Nasrid College was certainly the most significant example of an Andalusi madrasah during the Middle Ages, the Granadan scholar-statesman and historian Lisฤn al-Dฤซn ibn al-Khaแนญฤซb (d. 1374) states that โthe admirable college was constructed during the reign of Yลซsuf and was the most illustrious of all the colleges in his capital,โ indicating that there may have been other such colleges in the kingdom.[2] The Nasrid College sought to establish the preeminence of the Granada as a leading intellectual and cultural center in the Islamic West. Its prominence reflected the transformation of Granada from an embattled frontier polity into a major center of learning in the Islamic West, competing with other intellectual centers such as Fez, Tlemcen, Tunis, Marrakesh and Meknes. Although law, Arabic grammar, and theology constituted the integral components of the curriculum, the subjects taught at the Nasrid College encompassed both the โtraditional sciencesโ (al-โulลซm al-naqliyyah) as well as the โphilosophical sciencesโ (al-โulลซm al-โaqliyyah), and included jurisprudence, logic, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, mathematics, arithmetic, and geometry. Some of these subjects would also be studied with professors from the Nasrid College in other spaces in Granada, including the home and chancery. The students and teachers at the Nasrid College included some of the greatest luminaries from al-Andalus as well as North Africa during the 14th and 15th centuries. The Nasrid College contained a significant library that housed many of the most important works produced in the late medieval Islamic West, as well as many books from across the Islamic world. According to a note by the 15th-century Andalusi scholar Abลซ โAbd Allฤh Muแธฅammad b. al-แธคaddฤd al-Wฤdฤซ ฤshฤซ, for example, an ornamented and calligraphic manuscript of the monumental โComprehensive History of Granadaโ (al-Ihฤแนญah fฤซ Akhbฤr Gharnฤแนญah, authored by Ibn al-Khaแนญฤซb) was deposited in the library of Nasrid College during the reign of Muแธฅammad V (r. 1354-1359, 1362-1391), where it remained as an endowment (taแธฅbฤซs), and was consulted by subsequent generations of scholars.
Details of the miแธฅrฤb of the Nasrid College. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.
Following the Iberian Christian conquest of Granada in 1492, the Nasrid College survived largely intact, until much of it was demolished during the early 18th century to make way for a new Baroque structure. Although only the prayer niche (miแธฅrฤb) and the Oratory of the Following the Iberian Christian conquest of Granada in 1492, the Nasrid College survived largely intact, until much of it was demolished during the early 18th century to make way for a new Baroque structure. Although only the prayer niche (miแธฅrฤb) and the Oratory of the Nasrid College survives to the present day, recent studies by historians and archaeologists have sought to reconstruct the original structure, which included a monumental gate and pool.
Bilal Sar and Luca Mattei. โLa Madraza Yusufiyya en รฉpoca andalusรญ: un diรกlogo entre las fuentes รกrabes escritas y arqueolรณgicas,โ Arqueologรญa y Territorio Medieval 16 (2009), p. 73.
The survival of several contemporary Marinid colleges in North Africa, including those in Fez, Meknes, and Salรฉ built during the 1340s and 1350s, may also provide an idea of both the scale and style of the Nasrid College.
College of Abลซ al-แธคasan โAlฤซ in Salรฉ, Morocco, completed around 1341. Source: Wikimedia. Miแธฅrฤb, or prayer niche, of the College of Abลซ al-แธคasan โAlฤซ in Salรฉ, Morocco. Source: Wikimedia.Bou Inania Madrasa, Fez. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.Bou Inania Madrasa, Fez. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.Bou Inania Madrasa, Fez. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.Bou Inania Madrasa in Meknes, built in the 1350s. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.Bou Inania Madrasa in Meknes, built in the 1350s. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.Bou Inania Madrasa in Meknes, built in the 1350s. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.
Like the monumental colleges constructed by Marinid rulers in North Africa, especially Abลซ al-แธคasan โAlฤซ (r. 1331โ1348) and Abลซ โInฤn (1348โ1358), this structure was intended to c
Like the monumental colleges constructed by Marinid rulers in North Africa, especially Abลซ al-แธคasan โAlฤซ (r. 1331โ1348) and Abลซ โInฤn (1348โ1358), this structure was intended to celebrate the elaborate wealth and power of the sovereign, while proclaiming his commitment to knowledge. There are remarkable architectural and artistic similarities between the Nasrid College and other royal monuments in Granada, including the Alhambra, as well as with Marinid colleges in North Africa, particularly the College of Abลซ al-แธคasan โAlฤซ in Salรฉ, which was built several years earlier. Similar to the Marinid colleges, the verses inscribed on the walls of the Nasrid College, which were preserved in medieval and early modern texts, were authored by leading scholars, litterateurs and courtiers. These celebrated the patronage of learning by Yลซsuf I, and illustrate the interrelationship between royal power and learned elites in the Nasrid kingdom.[3]
Nasrid dynastic sloganโโThere is no Conqueror except Godโ (wa lฤ ghฤlib illฤ Llฤh)โinscribed on the prayer niche of the Nasrid College. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.Another instance of the Nasrid dynastic sloganโโThere is no Conqueror except Godโ (wa lฤ ghฤlib illฤ Llฤh)โinscribed on the prayer niche of the Nasrid College. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.
In addition to reflecting a shared idiom of sovereignty and learned kingship across both Islamic Spain and North Africa, the similarities between these colleges, which were built within several years of one another, provides an important indication of the cultural and artistic exchange across the Islamic West. It also illustrates the role of interregional connections in strengthening the ties of affiliation and the diffusion of institutions between Iberia and North Africa during this period. Itinerant scholars, administrators and artisans served as cultural intermediaries and conduits for the exchange of ideas and institutions between Nasrid Granada and Marinid Morocco. The Nasrid College was merely one illustration of this broader phenomenon.
While the College came to be known in later sources as al-Madrasa al-Yลซsufiyya or โThe College of Yลซsuf,โ and came to be associated with the name of Yลซsuf I (r. 1333-1354), it was in fact the creation of Abลซ Nuโaym Riแธwฤn al-Naแนฃrฤซ (d. 1359), this Nasrid sovereignโs royal chamberlain.[4] Abลซ Nuโaym Riแธwฤn was a prominent example of a particular class of Nasrid society that modern scholarship has referred to as โrenegades,โ enslaved people and freedmen and their descendants who were an integral part of Granadaโs population. Riแธwฤn was born into a Castilian Christian family in Calzada de Calatrava before being enslaved as a child during a Nasrid raid in the late 13th century. Following his captivity, he was converted to Islam and manumitted, received an education in the Nasrid court, and eventually appointed to leading positions of executive authority, including royal chamberlain, chief minister and commander of the military. The rise to prominence of Riแธwฤn during this period is also corroborated by contemporary Castilian and Aragonese sources, including the Crรณnica de Alfonso XI, which describes him as โa Muslim knight known as Reduan, the son of a Christian man and Christian woman, whom the king of Granada trusted immensely (un cavallero moro que dezian Reduan que fuera fijo de christiano e de christiana e era ome quien fiava mucho el rey).โ[5] There is substantial evidence that Riแธwฤn served as an intermediary with the Iberian Christian kingdoms, and corresponded directly with Alfonso IV (r. 1327โ1336) and Pedro IV (r. 1336โ1387) of Aragรณn in order to secure a peace treaty between the Nasrids and Aragรณn. In these documents, four of which have been preserved in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragรณn, Riแธwฤn consistently refers to himself as โRiแธwฤn, son of Godโs servant, the chief minister of the Sultanโ (Riแธwฤn ibn โAbd Allฤh wazฤซr al-sulแนญฤn).
Signature of Abลซ Nuโaym Riแธwฤn on surviving document produced by the Nasrid chancery during the 1330s.Signature of Abลซ Nuโaym Riแธwฤn on surviving document produced by the Nasrid chancery during the 1330s.Signature of Abลซ Nuโaym Riแธwฤn on surviving document produced by the Nasrid chancery during the 1330s
Fragments of the foundation inscription of the Nasrid College. Source: andalfarad.com.Details of the miแธฅrฤb of the Nasrid College. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.
This concerted program of urban expansion and elaborate construction in Granada during the 14th century was accomplished through the close collaboration between the secretarial class, nobles, artisans, and craftsmen. The establishment of the Nasrid College and its transformation into one of the most important institutions of learning in Granada was made possible by the close relationship between the sovereign, leading statesmen such as Riแธwฤn and the various secretaries and functionaries within the Nasrid chancery. The construction of the Nasrid College and the circumstances surrounding it demonstrate that, far from being a period of โintellectual decline,โ the 14th and 15th centuries in the Islamic West witnessed the emergence of a rigorous scholarly culture that produced brilliant individuals and prolific scholars. The Nasrid College, which has now become the subject of numerous interdisciplinary studies that have included historians, philologists, and archaeologists, has the potential to shed light on this larger cultural renaissance.
Ceiling of the Oratory of the Nasrid College, Granada. Source: flickr.com
Bennison, Amira K ed. The Articulation of Power in Medieval Iberia and the Maghrib. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Buresi, Pascal and Mehdi Ghouirgate. Histoire du Maghreb medieval (XIeโXVe siรจcle). Paris: Armand Colin, 2013
Cabanelas, Dario. โLa Madraza รกrabe de Granada y su suerte en รฉpoca cristiana,โ Cuadernos de la Alhambra, nยบ 24 (1988): 29โ54
________. โInscripciรณn poรฉtica de la antigua madraza granadinaโ Miscelรกnea de Estudios รrabes y Hebraicos Secciรณn รrabe-Islam 26 (1977): 7-26.
Mattei, Luca. โEstudio de la Madraza de Granada a partir del registro arqueolรณgico y de las metodologรญas utilizadas en la intervenciรณn de 2006.โ Arqueologรญa y Territorio 5 (2008): 181-192
Prado Garcรญa, Celia. โLos estudios superiores en las madrazas de Murcia y Granada. Un estado de la cuestiรณn.โ Murgetana 139 (2018): 9-21.
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Rubiera Mata, Marรญa Jesรบs. โDatos sobre una โMadrasaโ en Mรกlaga anterior a la Naแนฃrรญ de Granada.โ Al-Andalus 35 (1970): 223โ226
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[1] The most important scholarship about the Nasrid College includes La Madraza: pasado, presente y futuro (Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2007), eds. Rafael Lรณpez Guzmรกn and Marรญa Elena Dรญez Jorge; La Madraza de Yusuf I y la ciudad de Granada: anรกlisis a partir de la arqueologรญa (Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2015), eds. Antonio Malpica Cuello and Luca Mattei.
[2] Ibn al-Khatฤซb, al-Lamแธฅa al-Badriyya fฤซ al-Dawla al-Naแนฃriyya (Kuwait, 2013), p. 153. For a discussion of an earlier college built in the Nasrid kingdom, see Marรญa Jesรบs Rubiera Mata, โDatos sobre una โMadrasaโ en Mรกlaga anterior a la Naแนฃrรญ de Granada,โ Al-Andalus 35 (1970), pp. 223โ226.
[5] Fernรกn Sรกnchez de Valldolid, Crรณnica de Alfonso XI, BN MS 829, ff. 190rโ190v.
[6] For a comprehensive study of awqฤf in al-Andalus, see Alejandro Garcรญa-Sanjรบan, Till God inherits the Earth: Islamic Pious Endowments in al-Andalus (9-15th centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
[7] Ibn al-Khaแนญฤซb, al-Iแธฅฤแนญa, 1: 508โ509.
