Cities of the Living and the Dead: burial practices and emotional communities in late medieval Mediterranean cities

我的博士项目是对中世纪晚期地中海地区欧洲和伊斯兰城市的埋葬习俗进行比较研究，并从中了解城市的社会构成。丧葬习俗为我们了解中世纪晚期地中海城市的情感群体提供了一个视角。我将使用情感社区的概念来指通过特定的葬礼习俗和悲伤而团结在一起的社区。在这些城市中，丧葬习俗及其意义在不同的情感群体中有所不同，这反过来又影响了它们的构建。因此，它们为我们提供了一种自下而上重建这些城市的独特方式。我将研究实践及其意义在构建的社区中是如何不同的，以及它们如何与宗教信仰、社会地位、性别、职业和亲属关系等社会类别交叉。我的研究将集中在四个城市：开罗、大马士革、马赛和佛罗伦萨。通过研究这四个城市，两个伊斯兰城市和两个基督教城市，可以分析每个社会宗教系统内部和之间的特殊性。根据我将使用的原始材料，我将撒下一张大网。其中包括编年史、传记、朝圣指南、旅行者记录、法律著作和考古证据，还有当代文学记录，其中包括对死亡和埋葬的社会评论，如《十日谈》和《一千零一夜》。该项目将按主题分为五个章节，然后我将从我的方法论基础上挖掘出这四个城市的异同。第一章将着重于埋葬习俗的空间因素，在这些城市更广阔的地形景观中建立一幅埋葬地点的图景。第二章将进一步研究不同的社区是如何被埋在这些空间中的。在这里，我将把重点放在物质文化上，考虑坟墓的结构，并结合考古和碑文证据。接下来的章节将更具体地集中在丧葬仪式上，第三章侧重于哀号的实践，第四章分析丧葬队伍的性质。第五章将更具体地探讨葬礼后对死者的纪念做法，进一步探索“生者之城和死者之城”之间社区连续性的概念。

My doctoral project is a comparative study of burial practices in European and Islamic cities in the later medieval Mediterranean world and what these can tell us about the social make-up of cities. Burial practices offer us an insight into the emotional communities which inhabited later medieval Mediterranean cities. I will employ the concept of emotional communities to refer to communities united by particular burial practices and grief. In these cities, burial practices and the meanings attached to them differed between emotional communities, and in turn contributed to their construction. Thus, they offer us a unique way of reconstructing these cities from the bottom-up. I will look at how practices and their meanings differed across constructed communities and how these intersected with social categories such as religious affiliation, social status, gender, occupation and kinship ties.My study will focus on four cities: Cairo, Damascus, Marseille and Florence. In examining these four cities, two Islamic and two Christian, the specificities within and between each socio-religious system can be analysed. A wide net will be cast in terms of the source materials that I will use. These will include chronicles, biographies, pilgrimage guides, travellers' accounts, legal writings and archaeological evidence, but also contemporary literary accounts featuring social commentaries on death and burial, such as the Decameron and the One Thousand and One Nights.The project will be divided thematically into five chapters, where I will then work from my methodological base to prise out the similarities and differences within these four cities. Chapter One will focus on the spatial element of burial practices, building up a picture of where burial takes place in the broader topographical landscapes of these cities. Chapter Two will further examine how different communities were buried in these spaces. Here, I will focus on material culture, considering the structure of tombs and incorporating archaeological and epigraphical evidence. The following chapters will centre more specifically on funerary rites, with Chapter Three focusing on the practice of wailing and Chapter Four analysing the nature of funerary processions. Chapter Five will look more specifically at memorial practices for the deceased after funerals had taken place, further exploring conceptions of community continuity between 'cities of the living and the dead'.