Assessing the Medieval Climate Anomaly in the Middle East: The potential of Arabic documentary sources

Late Holocene droughts in the Fertile Crescent recorded in a speleothem from northern Iraq

“…The Gej‐1 record as such reflects agricultural droughts, which are of major importance for societies in the Fertile Crescent. When age uncertainties of the Gej‐1 record are taken into account, fluctuations in δ 18 O values and Mg content appear to correlate well with historical accounts of dry and wet winters in Iraq [ Vogt et al , ] (Figure a), although the historical data are not continuous and sometimes scarce (e.g., between 1250 and 1300 C.E). For instance, more frequent droughts at ~1230 C.E.…”

The CRE tambora.org – new data and tools for collaborative research in climate and environmental history

“…Up to now, the tambora.org dataset comprises the two large data collections HISKLID (Glaser and Militzer, ; Glaser, ) and Weikinn (Weikinn, ; Weikinn, ) and among others projects on Middle East (Grotzfeld, ; Vogt et al ., ), the transnational German–French project Transrisk on historical and modern flood risk management (Himmelsbach et al ., ), a citizen science project using early newspapers (Freiburger Zeitung, Nordischer Mercurius) with local and regional information, The IBT dataset (Inundationes Bavariae Thesaurus) by Böhm ((Böhm, ; Böhm et al ., ) on floods in the Alpine foreland and the Madras/Chennai dataset based on missionary data in India (Walsh et al ., ). Within pilot studies, it was possible to experience the aspects of different cultural backgrounds (European vs Arabic sources), transnational aspects (French–German) and specific disciplinary issues (hydrological–meteorological) and interdisciplinary challenges (geographers, historians, meteorologists, hydrologists) (Figure ).…”

“…The thematically focus of the CRE tambora.org is on HC, as most of the incorporated data is related to this field. One major goal of HC is to reconstruct temporal and spatial patterns of weather and climate on a historical scale using hermeneutical principles applied to documentary records and other man-made sources (Alexandre, 1987;Benito, 2003;Bradley and Jones, 1995;Buismann, 1995Buismann, , 1996Caviedes, 2001;Br azdil et al, 2005;Camuffo et al, 2010;Kiss, 2013;Lamb, 1977;Wigley et al, 1981;Le Roy Ladurie, 1983;Pfister, 1999;Liu et al, 2001;Nunn, 2007;Glaser and Riemann, 2009;Vogt et al, 2011;Glaser, 2013). In the context of this CRE-based research, all observations and information of yesterday are regarded as historical.…”

“…In the course of time from the 9th to 15th century, the spatial focus of the reports is moving from the Abbasid centres of power and science in Iraq to the Ayyubid centres in Syria and Palestine and finally to Fatimid and Mamluk Egypt reflecting the political and cultural changes in the area. For details on the dataset see (Vogt et al, 2011).…”

Recent Advances in the Historical Climatology of the Tropics and Subtropics

“…11) offer considerable potential for climate reconstruction, and have already been used to produce preliminary assessments of variations in rainfall (Vogt et al 2011) and winter severity ( Domínguez-Castro et al 2012) for parts of the Middle East during the medieval period. The analysis of collections of Arabic-language manuscripts in various cities across the Sahel (including Timbuktu) would permit the reconstruction of long-term rainfall variability along the southern margin of the Sahara, and bridge the gap between lake sediment and instrumental records.…”