The tiny Indian Buddha featured on the cover of this book was found in 1954 in a hoard of treasures, mostly gold coins and jewelry, buried during the medieval period on Helgö Island in Sweden. For the authors, it represents the goal of this book: to show the amazing connections across geography and time during a distant past when those connections might seem impossible. This small bronze figurine was made in the sixth century, possibly in Kashmir, a region in the far north of present-day India. It was carried by hand, or many hands, from the heights of the western end of the Himalaya mountains, across many rivers and landscapes to the edge of the North Sea. It was valuable enough to be interred along with precious gold and other treasures such as a large spoon or cup probably made for Christians from far off Egypt. How and why were such objects valued enough to be carried over long distances and buried as part of a treasure hoard? Questions like this one form the basis for the book you have just opened.
Global Medieval Contexts 500–1500: Connections and Comparisons emphasizes the organization of individuals into larger social groups that experienced global developments, changes, and practices common to all cultures, such as trade, worship, warfare, survival, exploration, and migration. We work with two kinds of systems. The first is connections: evidence of networks of actual exchange and communication across cultures. The second is comparisons: to show that because all human beings are biologically the same, communities that have no direct interaction develop and sustain similar practices and customs. For instance, all people need food and water, shelter from heat and cold; they organize themselves into social hierarchies, have families, worship divinities or the supernatural, and tell stories to explain phenomena. In this book, we are interested in describing connections and comparisons, providing opportunities for students to consider the view from different locations, perhaps even close to home.
This book has four sections. Section I contains the Orientation, which provides a broad overview of the book’s subject matter. Section II covers the period 500–900. Sometimes, to emphasize a point about travel or trade from 500 to 900, we need to explain earlier events or provide examples from a later period. This is true for Section III (900–1300) and Section IV (1300–1500) – occasionally it is important to stretch the envelope of time in one way or the other. Sections II, III, and IV each have four chapters: one focused on religion, one on economies, one on politics, and one on society. These chapters necessarily overlap and inform each other; no one perspective can be considered without the other three.
The chapters on religion consider answers to such questions as: What were the spiritual beliefs that inspired and motivated people in their individual and social lives? What were their worship practices, and how did they pay respect to the divine? How did they celebrate blessings or cope with tragedy? How did different religious systems face similar questions about how to live the best life? And how did religions, sacred texts, and objects such as the Helgö Buddha move from place to place around the premodern world?
Through economic systems of trade and travel, we think about what people harvested, created, and sold in order to survive and even prosper. What were they interested in having or buying that they could not produce themselves? How far did goods travel, carried from one culture to another, finally arriving at a place so far from the start that the object became a great wonder and a symbol of the owner’s status and honor? And what else traveled alongside commercial merchandise? Technologies, people, texts, ideas, and even disease traveled these same routes.
Politics is the study of how people organize in groups to compete or cooperate for resources. It is also the way a society creates a sense of identity that separates it from other ones. Which groups had power, and how did they acquire it? How were they governed – by tribal blood feud or centralized justice systems? How did spiritual beliefs and economic needs inform government systems and the ambition of rulers? What drove a society to war, and what are the lasting effects of those conflicts?
Each section concludes with a chapter on society, introducing ideas of how individuals, families, and communities survived and behaved. What were the social roles they were meant to fulfill? How were class systems structured? Who had a voice, and which voices were silenced? How did they deal with adversity and diversity? What was their treatment of those perceived as outsiders? How did they accept and absorb ideas and innovations from other cultures or transmit knowledge of their own innovations?
These questions and more are explored in this text, often leading to more questions that we hope will encourage further discovery. Although it is not possible to examine and compare each culture over this era, we hope that students will continue to develop their own knowledge by exploring ideas or geographies that are not fully covered in this book.