Convivium 11.1(2024). The Arts of Medieval Northern Africa. Editors: Nathan S. Dennis & Ravinder S. Binning

This thematic issue focuses on the arts of medieval Northern Africa, from the Mediterranean in the north to the Sahel and Horn of Africa in the south. Africa has long resided on the periphery of medieval and early modern studies; its contributions to art, architecture, and ritual experience have been subsumed by larger cultural traditions in Europe and the Levant. More recently, however, both scholarship and museum exhibitions have recentered Northern Africa as a distinct bloc within Western medieval, Byzantine, and Islamic art. Greater attention has thus been given to African iconographies, acts of making, and material traditions in addition to pathways of influence and exchange across continents. The articles in this volume participate in this recentering of medieval Northern Africa, examining works from early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic centers in Egypt and the Maghreb to the southern kingdoms of Nubia (Sudan) and Ethiopia.

CONTENTS INCLUDE

Two Textiles with Interlace Designs from Byzantine Egypt and Their Interpretation in the Light of Floor Mosaics
Henry Maguire 

Ananeosis at Qasr el Lebia. Introducing Renewal after Justinian’s North African Victory
Eunice Dauterman Maguire

“Where the World Did Not Walk”. The Desert as Sacred Space on the Klimax Painting at Sinai
Ravinder S. Binning 

Mary's Open Palm in the Iconography of the Virgin in Medieval Nubia
Aleksandra Sulikowska-Bełczowska

Dress and Identity in Christian Nubia
Arielle Winnik

Ifrīqiyan Ceramics. Connectivity and Interaction across Medieval Africa
Michelle Al-Ferzly

Aestheticizing Enslavement. Representations of Jawārī in Fatimid Visual Culture
Holley Ledbetter

Israelite Identity and Anti-Judaism in Late Antique and Medieval Ethiopia
Marcia Kupfer

Die Stillende Jungfrau in der äntiopischen Buchmalerei des 15. Jahrhunderts. Bemerkungen zu Stil, Medium, Gegenwärtigkeit und (Un)Mittelbarkeit
Jutta Sperling