Cecilia Palombo
Biographic Data
| ID | 6574468 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cecilia Palombo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cecilia |
| FAMILY NAME | Palombo |
| SIGNATURE | PALOMBO C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4856-0595 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 7 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Thinking with the dispersal of Middle Eastern artifacts
This paper considers a corpus of fragmented administrative and legal documents from the Umayyad and early Abbasid periods, once housed in Egyptian monastic libraries, and now scattered in many collections. Viewing archives as both practices and spaces, it postulates that monastic officials and scribes played a role in early Islamic provincial administration, neither as state officials nor as ḏimmī subjects. Rather, they did so as groups of people…
Asking for a Friend
This article explores strategies for obtaining travel documents in Umayyad Egypt, with a focus on the role of intermediaries in those processes. Examining Arabic, Coptic, and Greek letters requesting travel documents for others, it engages with various levels of the provincial administration, revealing, in each letter, several layers of request and mediation. Moreover, the analysis of the letters and their language sheds light on specific strateg…
Lives of Patriarchs, Lives of Qadis
This article discusses the literary representation of religious leadership in the Siyar al-bīʿa al-muqaddasa , also known as “History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria”. It suggests reading accounts on early Muslim rule within the frameworks of Islamicate literature from the Abbasid and the Fatimid periods, when the collection was created, also considering successive layers of redaction. This approach contrasts with a more conventional way of readi…
Ties of Kinship and Islamicate Societies
Embedding Conquest
The ERC-funded research project »Embedding Conquest«, based at Leiden University, studies the mechanics by which early Islamic rule took root in a tapestry of diverse territories and different social contexts. Based on a large corpus of documentary and literary texts, especially letters, the research team has identified elements of political, territorial, and institutional cohesion stemming from interpersonal ties of loyalty and dependency bindin…
Studying Trade and Local Economies in Early Islamicate Societies
The history of trade has been used in many studies comparing different economic and political trajectories, based on the theory of a long-in-the-making "divergence" between the Middle East and the West, and tying together historical and political analyses of growth and development. Recent responses raised from within scholarship on early Islamic history contribute to upsetting the theory's premises. In recent years scholars have produced new stud…
The View from the Monasteries
This paper analyzes a group of homilies composed in Middle Egypt around the early ninth century CE by monastic leaders who had to cope with unsettling changes in local politics and society. The corpus deals with issues of taxation, economic distress and conversion to Islam in subtle and indirect ways, showing the inside perspective of Christian leaders on developments on which we are informed primarily from documentary papyri and historical works…
No prominent works on this page.
The View from the Monasteries
This paper analyzes a group of homilies composed in Middle Egypt around the early ninth century CE by monastic leaders who had to cope with unsettling changes in local politics and society. The corpus deals with issues of taxation, economic distress and conversion to Islam in subtle and indirect ways, showing the inside perspective of Christian leaders on developments on which we are informed primarily from documentary papyri and historical works…
Embedding Conquest
The ERC-funded research project »Embedding Conquest«, based at Leiden University, studies the mechanics by which early Islamic rule took root in a tapestry of diverse territories and different social contexts. Based on a large corpus of documentary and literary texts, especially letters, the research team has identified elements of political, territorial, and institutional cohesion stemming from interpersonal ties of loyalty and dependency bindin…
Studying Trade and Local Economies in Early Islamicate Societies
The history of trade has been used in many studies comparing different economic and political trajectories, based on the theory of a long-in-the-making "divergence" between the Middle East and the West, and tying together historical and political analyses of growth and development. Recent responses raised from within scholarship on early Islamic history contribute to upsetting the theory's premises. In recent years scholars have produced new stud…
Asking for a Friend
This article explores strategies for obtaining travel documents in Umayyad Egypt, with a focus on the role of intermediaries in those processes. Examining Arabic, Coptic, and Greek letters requesting travel documents for others, it engages with various levels of the provincial administration, revealing, in each letter, several layers of request and mediation. Moreover, the analysis of the letters and their language sheds light on specific strateg…
Lives of Patriarchs, Lives of Qadis
This article discusses the literary representation of religious leadership in the Siyar al-bīʿa al-muqaddasa , also known as “History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria”. It suggests reading accounts on early Muslim rule within the frameworks of Islamicate literature from the Abbasid and the Fatimid periods, when the collection was created, also considering successive layers of redaction. This approach contrasts with a more conventional way of readi…
Ties of Kinship and Islamicate Societies
Thinking with the dispersal of Middle Eastern artifacts
This paper considers a corpus of fragmented administrative and legal documents from the Umayyad and early Abbasid periods, once housed in Egyptian monastic libraries, and now scattered in many collections. Viewing archives as both practices and spaces, it postulates that monastic officials and scribes played a role in early Islamic provincial administration, neither as state officials nor as ḏimmī subjects. Rather, they did so as groups of people…
Archaeology and Historical Studies (5 works) · History (5 works) · Islam (5 works) · Islamic Studies and History (5 works) · Ancient history (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Archaeology (3 works)