Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean Narratives

Includes ► Introduction (Ch. Fontana / I. Peta) ► Environmental Ghosts and Omens in Ancient Iran: Between Care for Life and Apocalyptic Terrors (A. Piras) ► Drought, Famine and Prosperity: The Slaying of the Dragon and the Legitimation of Iranian Kingship in Persian Epics (Fifth/Eleventh to Eighth/Fourteenth Centuries) (N. Norozi) ► Discussions of Drought in Premodern Ḥadīth Collections: Islamic Ethics and Attitudes to the Causes of and Responses to Natural Disasters (A. Belhaj) ► Divine Trials and Political Authority: Droughts and Plagues in al-Ṭabarī’s Tārīkh (I. Peta) ► The Mythological Control of The River Nile: A Study on the Islamic Sources (M. Demichelis) ► Climate as Catalyst: The Role of a Cold Snap in the Mosul Revolt of 259/873–4 (M. Borroni) ► Sobriety (zuhd) and Hunger (jūʿ): Ethical Responses to Natural Disasters in al-Ghazālī’s (d. 505/1111) Theology of Creation (E. Pisani) ► Scorpions on the Cheek, Stars in the Gaze: Astrology, Power, and Poetic Imagination in the Late Abbasid World (Ch. Fontana) ► Mamluk Maqāmas on the Black Death (M. Omar / N. Fancy) ► How to (Try to) Tame a Disaster? Annotating Approaches to the Integration of Politics and Power Strategies into the Creation of a Disasters Database in Classical Arabic Sources (I. Cicola) ► Natural Disasters and Political Catastrophes: Entangled Feelings and Landscapes in al-Andalus and Beyond (J. Albarrán) ► Notes on Contributors