Volume 16: Conceptualizing Frankish-Muslim Partition Truces in the Coastal Plain and Greater Syria

Bogdan C. Smarandache
76 pages, paperback,
14,8 x 21,0 cm, 2019

This paper is an attempt to clarify the development, function, and conceptualization of shared‐revenue arrangements between Franks and Muslims in the Coastal Plain (al-Sāḥil) and Greater Syria (Bilād al-Shām) in the medieval period. I first catalogue truces that established partitions while assessing their defining characteristics. I then analyze how Frankish and Muslim conceptualizations of property and territory may have informed two slightly different notions of partitioning. Based on an analysis of these conceptualizations of ownership and territory, I argue that the only basis for partition truces in the Frankish‐Muslim context was a division of revenue that resembled tributary status.

The Author

Bogdan is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, where he is writing his thesis under the supervision of Prof. Mark Meyerson, Prof. Linda Northrup, and Prof. Michael Gervers. In his dissertation, he is investigating the linkage between diplomatic relations and minority conditions in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Bogdan finished his undergraduate studies at McGill University in 2011 and his MPhil at St. Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge, in 2012.