This volume explores social practices of framing, building and enacting community in urban-rural relations across medieval Eurasia. Introducing fresh comparative perspectives on practices and visions of community, it offers a thorough source-based examination of medieval communal life in its sociocultural complexity and diversity in Central and Southeast Europe, South Arabia and Tibet. As multi-layered social phenomena, communities constantly formed, restructured and negotiated internal allegiances, while sharing a topographic living space and joint notions of belonging. The volume challenges disciplinary paradigms and proposes an interdisciplinary set of low-threshold categories and tools for cross-cultural comparison of urban and rural communities in the Global Middle Ages.


Contributors are Maaike van Berkel, Hubert Feiglstorfer, Andre Gingrich, Károly Goda, Elisabeth Gruber, Johann Heiss, Kateřina Horníčková, Eirik Hovden, Christian Jahoda, Christiane Kalantari, Odile Kommer, Fabian Kümmeler, Christina Lutter, Judit Majorossy, Ermanno Orlando, and Noha Sadek.