Showing papers in "Past & Present in 1985"

From polis to madina: urban change in late antique and early islamic syria

Abstract: La civilisation urbaine qui, en Occident, s'est effondree sous les coups des invasions barbares, a continue a s'epanouir en Orient, mais en subissant des changements qui, en plusieurs siecles, transformerent la polis antique en madina islamique. Exemple de la Syrie.

The cost of courage in aztec society

Abstract: Proud of itself is the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Here no one fears to die in war. This is our glory … Who could conquer Tenochtitlan? Who could shake the foundation of heaven? Today we are tempted to read this fragment of an Aztec song-poem as a familiar piece of bombast: the aggressive military empire which insists on its invincibility, its warriors strangers to fear. In what follows I want to indicate how the business of war was understood in the great city of Tenochtitlan, and then, in more but still inadequate detail, to enquire into how warrior action was sustained and explained, in the hope of drawing closer to an Aztec reading of this small text. That Tenochtitlan was the creation of war and the courage and stamina of its young fighting men was indisputable. The splendid city which Cortes and his men saw shimmering above its lake waters in the autumn of 1519 had been founded as a miserable collection of mud huts less than two hundred years before. Some time late in the twelfth century the final abandonment of the once-great imperial city of Tula to the north had begun a restless movement of peoples southwards, to the gentler lands of the valley of Mexico. By the close of the thirteenth century more than fifty “miniscule polities” jostled in the valley, bound together by trade and increasingly, as population and ambition grew, by the determination to exact tribute from each other.

The Coexistence of Carcinoma and Tuberculosis in the Uterine Cervix -Report of2 Cases

Abstract: Coexistence of tuberculosis and cancer in the uterine cervix is extremel- rare. Two of such cases are presented. In these cases, extension of tuberculous lesions is much wider than cancerous lesions. Pathological findings and positive acid-fast stained M-cobacterium tuberculosis in the tissue give authenticit- to the two cases. With regard to mutual influence between the two clinical entities nothing can be said on the basis of onl- two cases. However, it seems that at least tuberculosis did not aggravate the cancerous lesion.