Academic literature on the topic 'Balkan Peninsula – Civilization'

ABSTRACTThe article was conceived as a guided tour through the Balkan Peninsula including descriptions of two selected towns from Hungary, Croatia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It gives a summary of Western perceptions of the Balkan towns as noted by Western Europeans who visited the area in different periods from the seventeenth century onwards. The civilization they found and described there was a part of an entity encompassing the material and spiritual culture of urban life in the Near East. During the nineteenth century the Balkans underwent major political changes and contemporary travellers' reports were rich with observations about the process of ‘Europeanization’ of the Balkan towns. During the process which meant nationalism and fragmentation in what had been a fairly uniform culture area, paradoxically, ‘Balkanization’ was the final result.

The emergence of Islam influenced the revolution and made a wave of culture toward a new world when experiencing an era of darkness. The progress of Greek civilization in the Westcould not be continued by the Roman empire and Roman domination in the classical era until the middle ages; which was then therise of the West in the era of renaissance in the 14-16th century.This paper will reveal the influence of Islam on the development of the Western world, since the emergence of contact between Islam with the West in the Classical era until the middle ages. There are different opinions among historians about who and when the first contact between Islam and the West took place. The first contact, however, occurred when the areas of East Roman government (Byzantium), Syria (638) and Egypt (640) fell into the hands of the Islamic government during the reign of Caliph 'Umar bin Khaţţāb. The Second contact, at the beginning of the eighth and ninth centuries occurred when the kings of Islam were able to rule Spain (711-1472), Portugal (716-1147), and important Mediterranean islands such as Sardinia (740-1050), Cicilia (827-1091), Malta (870-1090) as well as several small areas in Southern Italy and French Southern France. The third contact, took place in Eastern Europe from the fourteenth to early twentieth century when the Ottoman empire ruled the Balkan peninsula (Eastern Europe) and Southern Russia. The Ottoman empire's powers in Europe covered Yunāni, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, parts of Rhode, Cyprus, Austria and parts of Russia. Of the three periods of contact, the greatest influence was in the second contact period, where the decline of Western science in the dark era, while in the Islamic world developed advanced and produces scientists, thinkers and intellectuals in various sciences. This influence can be seen from the sending of students studying to the university of Islamic area, the establishment of the university, the translation and copying of various scientific literature such as natural science (Science of astronomy, Mathematics, Chemistry, Pharmacy, medicine, architecture etc) and Social Science history, philosophy, politics, economics, earth sciences, sociology, law, culture, language, literature, art, etc.). The Historians recognize that the influence of Islamic civilization is very great on the development of the West, which culminated in the renaissance or rise of Western civilization in Europe after the dark era.

The emergence of Islam influenced the revolution and made a wave of culture toward a new world when experiencing an era of darkness. The progress of Greek civilization in the West could not be continued by the Roman empire and Roman domination in the classical era until the middle ages; which was then the rise of the West in the era of renaissance in the 14-16th century. This paper will reveal the influence of Islam on the development of the Western world, since the emergence of contact between Islam with the West in the Classical era until the middle ages. There are different opinions among historians about who and when the first contact between Islam and the West took place. The first contact, however, occurred when the areas of East Roman government (Byzantium), Syria (638) and Egypt (640) fell into the hands of the Islamic government during the reign of Caliph 'Umar bin Khaţţāb. The Second contact, at the beginning of the eighth and ninth centuries occurred when the kings of Islam were able to rule Spain (711-1472), Portugal (716-1147), and important Mediterranean islands such as Sardinia (740-1050), Cicilia (827-1091), Malta (870-1090) as well as several small areas in Southern Italy and French Southern France. The third contact, took place in Eastern Europe from the fourteenth to early twentieth century when the Ottoman empire ruled the Balkan peninsula (Eastern Europe) and Southern Russia. The Ottoman empire's powers in Europe covered Yunāni, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, parts of Rhode, Cyprus, Austria and parts of Russia. Of the three periods of contact, the greatest influence was in the second contact period, where the decline of Western science in the dark era, while in the Islamic world developed advanced and produces scientists, thinkers and intellectuals in various sciences. This influence can be seen from the sending of students studying to the university of Islamic area, the establishment of the university, the translation and copying of various scientific literature such as natural science (Science of astronomy, Mathematics, Chemistry, Pharmacy, medicine, architecture etc) and Social Science history, philosophy, politics, economics, earth sciences, sociology, law, culture, language, literature, art, etc.). The Historians recognize that the influence of Islamic civilization is very great on the development of the West, which culminated in the renaissance or rise of Western civilization in Europe after the dark era.

Статья посвящена анализу научного наследия выдающегося сербского ученого конца XIX – первой четверти XX века Йована Цвиича (1865–1927) и обзору развития концептуально близких его профессиональным интересам идей в России. Популярный при становлении научных взглядов исследователя антропогеографический метод был осмыслен Цвиичем в силу его широкой эрудиции и опыта полевых исследований по-своему. Будучи географом по образованию, Цвиич смог в своей деятельности по изучению природы и хозяйственного уклада населения Балканского полуострова мастерски скомбинировать точку зрения географа с историческим подходом. В этом видел заслугу Цвиича российский этнолог С.А. Токарев. По его мнению, разработанный Цвиичем антропогеографический метод во многом отличается от одноименного метода Фридриха Ратцеля (1844–1904), и в выгодную сторону. Научные доктрины Йована Цвиича не только предопределили традиции сербской этнографии XX века, но и получили мировую известность. Не прошли они бесследно и для российской науки. Некоторые из работ Цвиича – «Заметки по этнографии македонских славян» и «Аннексия Боснии-Герцеговины и сербский вопрос» в начале прошлого века были переведены на русский язык и изданы в Санкт-Петербурге. Антропогеографический вектор исследований нашел своих сторонников и в России, а также в дальнейшем в значительной степени способствовал появлению у нас в стране «этнического картографирования» и этноэкологии (антропоэкологии). Разработанная Й. Цвиичем культурно-географическая классификация областей Балканского полуострова, так называемых «зон цивилизации» во многом схожа с концепцией «хозяйственно-культурных типов и историко-культурных областей», предложенной в 1970-х годах отечественными учеными М.Г. Левиным и Н.Н. Чебоксаровым. Научное направление, объектом изучения которого являются связи и взаимодействия человека с окружающей средой, развивается и совершенствуется, как в мировой науке в целом, так и в российской науке, в частности. The purpose of the article is to investigate the scientific heritage of Jovan Cvijić (1865–1927), a prominent Serbian scholar of the late 19th and first quarter of the 20th century, and explore how the ideas related to his agenda developed in Russia. Cvijić’s profound erudition and field research experience helped him to give his own interpretation to the anthropogeographical principle, popular when he was starting his scientific career. A geographer by training, Cvijić masterfully combined geographic perspective with a historical approach in his activities aimed at studying the nature and economic setup of the Balkans. S. A. Tokarev, a Russian ethnologist, believed that Cvijić deserved much credit for doing so. According to Tokarev, the anthropogeographical method developed by Cvijić was considerably different from the homonymous method of Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) and compared favorably to it. Jovan Cvijić’s teachings had both ordained the traditions of Serbian ethnography of the 20th century and become well-known globally. Their impact on Russian academia was noticeable, too. Some of Cvijić’s works, namely “Nekolika posmatranja o etnografiji makedonskih Slovena” and “L’anexion de la Bosnie et la question Serbe”, were translated into Russian in the early 1900s and published in St. Petersburg. In Russia, too, there emerged a number of scholars pursuing the anthropogeographical vector of studies. Later it contributed greatly to the nascence of “ethnic mapping” and ethnoecology (anthropoecology) in this country. Cultural-geographical classification of various areas of the Balkan Peninsula, the so-called “civilization zones” developed by J. Cvijić, is in many aspects similar to the concept of “economic-cultural types and historic-cultural areas” proposed in the 1970s by Soviet scholars M.G. Levin and N.N. Cheboksarov. The discipline studying humans’ connection to and interaction with the environment is developing and progressing both globally and in Russian academia.

This review is dedicated to the monograph by Filip Škiljan, а Researcher from the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (Zagreb), whose area of interest includes the position of ethnic minorities in contemporary Croatia. The book is an extremely detailed and scrupulous piece of research on the origins and history of the Italian community in Zagreb from the 12th Century to the present day. A significant part of the work is devoted to the results of field research conducted by the author, including interviews with different representatives of the Italian diaspora. As a result, this work creates a very comprehensive picture of the Italian presence in Zagreb with a broad historical perspective, which makes it a great contribution to the question of the position of the Italian minority in Croatia as a whole. It is worth emphasizing that this work is not free from different theoretical and methodological limitations which reveal a great deal about the historical and national psychology of Croatia. In this respect, it is quite interesting to look in particular at the chapter devoted to the Middle Ages regarding the methods, evaluations, and approaches used by author. According to F. Škiljan the Ottoman conquest of the Balkan peninsula led to the divide between Croatia and the Italian (and, consequently, European) civilizational space, which had a serious impact on Croatian identity.

Abstract The geographical location and shape of Apulia, a narrow land stretching out in the sea at the South of Italy, made this region a Mediterranean crossroads connecting Western Europe and the Balkans. Such movements culminated at the beginning of the Iron Age with the Iapygian civilization which consisted of three cultures: Peucetians, Messapians, and Daunians. Among them, the Daunians left a peculiar cultural heritage, with one-of-a-kind stelae and pottery, but, despite the extensive archaeological literature, their origin has been lost to time. In order to shed light on this and to provide a genetic picture of Iron Age Southern Italy, we collected and sequenced human remains from three archaeological sites geographically located in Northern Apulia (the area historically inhabited by Daunians) and radiocarbon dated between 1157 and 275 calBCE. We find that Iron Age Apulian samples are still distant from the genetic variability of modern-day Apulians, they show a degree of genetic heterogeneity comparable with the cosmopolitan Republican and Imperial Roman civilization, even though a few kilometers and centuries separate them, and they are well inserted into the Iron Age Pan-Mediterranean genetic landscape. Our study provides for the first time a window on the genetic make-up of pre-Roman Apulia, whose increasing connectivity within the Mediterranean landscape, would have contributed to laying the foundation for modern genetic variability. In this light, the genetic profile of Daunians may be compatible with an at least partial autochthonous origin, with plausible contributions from the Balkan peninsula.

The article analyzes the scientific heritage of Ukrainian scientists of Eastern Galicia in the 19th century on current issues with the history of South Slavic peoples. Its content, topics and methodology in the context of the development of national Slavonic studies are described. Special studies on the history of Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro are analyzed. The most comprehensive of these studies are the scientific investigations of Denys Zubrytsky: Statement about Montenegro People; and Jakyw Holovatsky: Types of Slavic Peoples. Bulgarians, On the Transdanubian Slavs living on the Balkan Peninsula, Greater Croatia or Galician-Carpathian Rus. The content and problems of these studies give ground to claims that Galician scholars have a weak, sporadic knowledge of these peoples compared to the history of the Western Slavs. In spite of this, the questions raised by the scholars on: the peculiarities of the introduction of Christianity by Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria; cultural, national, religious policy of the Ottoman Empire towards the Southern Slavs; the liberation movement of Bulgarians, Serbs, Montenegrins in the 19th century, etc.; testify to the scientific interest of scholars of Eastern Galicia in the Southern Slavs. At the same time, the interpretation of their history was of a civilizational nature and reflected the general trends in the development of Ukrainian historical Slavic studies in the 19th century.

Modern-day Trieste keeps following its tradition by maintaining its status of a border city for the Roman and Slavic civilization. For the new Croatian settlers who began to play an essential role from XIX century onwards the city was a window to the world and an attractive place for the contact with the European civilization. As the Croatian diaspora had to make difficult experiences in the 20th century as well as socio-political changes after 1990, especially on the Balkan Peninsula (the fall of communist regimes, the establishment of new structures of the European Union) substantially changed the relationship between Croats and Italians.