Stephen Mitchell— It’s something of a miracle that any of our ancient literary masterpieces survived the downfall or shift of civilizations, since they all might easily have been lost. Of Heraclitus’s profound insights, we have only tantalizing fragments. Of Sappho’s nine books, there remain just four poems and scattered verses
Mohammad Fadel— The great western scholar of Islamic law, the late Joseph Schacht, famously characterized Islamic law as a “jurist’s law,” by which he meant to draw scholarly attention to the central role that scholars of the law—the fuqahāʾ (s. faqīh)—played in the formulation of Islamic law in contrast to
John Freed— On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa. Hitler’s personal decision to name the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union after Frederick Barbarossa (b. 1122, r. 1152-90) was the culmination of the nineteenth-century appropriation of the medieval emperor as the symbol of German national unity. Frederick’s uncle and
Charles B. McClendon’s book The Origins of Medieval Architecture: Building in Europe, A.D. 600-900 has won the 2007 Otto Gründler Prize sponsored by Western Michigan University. Presented at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, the Otto Gründler Prize is awarded to the author of a book or monograph judged