The Medieval History Journal

How do colonial scribal practices and archival practices shape our understanding of the past? Logbooks from the San Juan de Dios Hospital in colonial Guatemala showcase both the potential and the constraints of scribal interventions. A Hidden Plague examines the logbooks alongside contemporary criminal cases to demonstrate how individual scribes chose to conceal or reveal information in their official writings. This method challenges the contention by past scholarship that epidemic disease was the greatest health threat to women in the city of Guatemala. While epidemics did indeed affect women, reading the logbooks in new ways reveals the presence of a hidden epidemic: domestic violence.

One of the most popular Mangalkavyas of Bengal was the Chandimangal of Mukunda Chakraborty. This article examines the ideas of kingship that were articulated in this text. Mukunda’s fictitious protagonist Kalketu came to represent an ideal king within his narrative. Mukunda’s conception of this ideal king was largely influenced by his personal experiences and aspirations, some of which have been outlined in the first part of this article. The remaining part of this article goes onto claim that the ideal kingship constructed around the figure of Kalketu involved a re-orientation of some of the more conventional norms of kingship; the product being what has been termed by the current author as a ‘pacified kingship’. This pacified kingship ensured that the heroic qualities of valour and martial prowess, so desired as essential in every conception of an ideal king came to be tempered with some of the more ordinary and ‘un-heroic’ qualities within the person of the fictitious Kalketu. This alternative notion of kingship, espoused by Mukunda is also instrumental in exploring some of the varied interactions that went on to constitute the Bengal frontier.

The aim of this article is to analyse the significance of the legal discourses and the urban practices against female and male sodomy for the governance in the Late Medieval Kingdom of Castile. The motivation for the persecution of sodomy was not solely to judge and punish persons engaging in same sex acts or relations according to moral values, as it might be inferred from a superficial reading of the trials, but rather, the persecution of sodomites, both men and women, took part in the everyday life and political arena in Castilian cities. Firstly, the medieval Castilian laws regarding the crime of sodomy, which entailed the social and political exclusion are analysed. Penal legislation composed a fertile territory to know closely the existing relations between politics and the values of the Castilian medieval society. Secondly, urban rulers deployed the prosecution of sodomy in the Castilian courts of justice to justify their good government and to assert their authority. In conclusion, the changes in the legal and cultural interpretation of sodomy, emphasising the communitarian shame, revealed how the accusation of having committed the crime of sodomy worked as a political instrument of urban governance in Late Medieval Castile.

The dome, one of the most stable forms of roof coatings, has passed many of its evolution stages in the dome-chambers of Iranian mosques. From the Seljuk era, when the first dome-chambers were seen, to today, the extent of the openness of the dome-chamber space to the adjacent space—shabestans and the porches—has changed a lot. This research seeks to answer the questions of why and how openness has happened and what factors have influenced their intensity. Since there may be different answers to these questions at different periods, the physical properties of the domes were studied in terms of measurable variables, both in the general context and in each period. For this purpose, 51 dome-chamber mosques were selected from Seljuk to Qajar periods, with variation in physical characteristics. The research method is a combination of content analysis method, comparative study and logical reasoning based on the descriptive and correlational statistics. As a result, it has been shown that structural constraints related to the extent and magnitude of the dome-chamber, are considered the main reasons for deciding how much and how to open the dome-chamber’s walls in different periods and that as the ratio of the span to the wall thickness increases, the openness of the walls decreases to the same extent. Also, the architecture of seljuk and safavid mosques are more similar than the other periods, possibly due to the common religious characteristics that affected them both.

The historiography of the Mughal Empire has gone through many twists and turns since its inception. Significant shifts in terms of methodologies and arguments notwithstanding, a certain elitism has characterised this body of literature. This is manifested by the tendency of most historians to conceptualise the career of the empire primarily in terms of elite action. This elitism has kept the contributions of non-elite groups to the making of the empire fairly obscured. Problematising this lopsided historical understanding, the present article offers a people’s history of the empire by focusing on the domain of war as a case study. It explores the role of two non-elite groups in Mughal military campaigns. These are the common infantry and the logistical workforce. The article discusses their tactical importance, social basis, modes of recruitment, pay, and organisation. It argues that taking cognizance of the contributions of these groups to the processes of war-making and territorial expansion helps us challenge the view of the Mughal Empire being primarily an elite enterprise. It enables us see the broad-based, inclusive, and collaborative nature of Mughal state-formation and empire-building.

Adriano Prosperi, Crime and Forgiveness: Christianizing Execution in Medieval Europe. Translated by Jeremy Carden. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020, pp. xiii + 621, ISBN: 9780674240261.

Irfan Habib and Tarapada Mukherjee, Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times: The State, Peasants and Gosā’ins. New Delhi: Primus Books, 2020, pp. xii + 286. ISBN: 978-93-89850-22-2.

Suraj Bhan Bhardwaj, State and Peasant Society in Medieval North India: Essays on Changing Contours of Mewat. Delhi: Primus Books, 2019, pp. 220. ISBN:978-93-86552-23-5 (Hardback)