Christians in Fifteenth-Century Iraq: the Church of the East as a Conceptual Community
221A Eisenhower St Princeton, NJ 08540
Peter Brown
Building on theoretical work from nationalism and ethnicity, I sketch a general method for analyzing the conceptual dimension of social life, that is, the question how people of the past understood the nature of the groups to which they belonged. After delineating the social diversity of fifteenth-century Iraq and eastern Turkey and the place of Christians in a society ruled by Muslims, separate chapters explore how the Church of the East, one particular Christian denomination, conceptualized their social group in light of their theological worldview, their communal and liturgical rituals, their ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their history.
The Mongol Empire (Rutgers)
Age of Reformation (Rutgers)
Mark Dickens and Nicholas Sims-Williams, with contributions by Thomas A. Carlson and Christiane Reck, “Christian Calendrical Fragments from Turfan,” in J. Ben-Dov, W. Horowitz, and J. Steele (eds.), Living the Lunar Calendar. Proceedings of the Conference at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem (Calendars and Years 3; Oxford: Oxbow Books, forthcoming).
“The Nature of the Church (of the East) in Ishaq Shbadnaya’s ‘Poem on the Divine Economy,’” The Harp: A Review of Syriac and Oriental Studies 26 (2011): forthcoming.
“A Light From ‘the Dark Centuries’: Isḥaq Shbadnaya’s Life and Works,” Hugoye 14 (2011): 191-214.
“The edge-isoperimetric problem for discrete tori,” Discrete Math 254 (2002): 33-49.
Conference and Colloquium Presentations:
“Christians in Muslim Society: the Case of Fifteenth-Century Jazira and Iraq.” Presented at the Princeton Islamic Studies Colloquium, November 17, 2011.
“Syriac Patriarchs and Muslim Rulers in the Fifteenth Century.” Presented at the 6th North American Syriac Symposium, Duke University, June 26-29, 2011.
“Community Self-Concepts and Social Diversity From Trebizond to Tabriz.” Presented at the 6th Annual Pearl Kibre Medieval Study Graduate Student Conference, City University of New York, March 4, 2011.
“Concepts of Community as Historical Forces.” Presented at the Graduate Medieval Studies Colloquium, Princeton, November 29, 2010.
“The Nature of the Church (of the East) in Isḥaq Shbadnaya’s ‘Poem on the Divine Economy.’” Presented at the 7th World Syriac Conference, Saint Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (SEERI), Kottayam, Kerala, India, September 8-16, 2010.
“Dogma and Diplomacy in Persia.” Presented at the 4th Annual Archbishop Iakovos Graduate Students Conference in Patristic Studies, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, Massachusetts, April 17-19, 2008.
“A Light From the Dark Ages: Isḥaq Shbadnaya’s Life and Works.” Presented at the Dorushe Annual Graduate Student Conference on Syriac Studies, Notre Dame University, April 5, 2008.
2003 ΦΒΚ Pathfinder Award
MSt. in Syriac Studies (Oxon.); MDiv, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School