ORIAS is a unit of the University of California, Berkeley under the Dean of International and Area Studies (IAS) dedicated to providing outreach support to educators in the classroom. The IAS centers represent virtually every area of the world and provide a program of workshops, visiting speakers, electronic mentors and resource materials for K-12 teachers. We view outreach activities as a partnership and encourage educators to contact us with ideas as well as requests.

Classes will combine morning lectures by university scholars and afternoon hands-on workshops in campus computer labs to explore resources and develop lesson plans integrating technology into the classroom.

Classes will be held from 9:00AM to 4:00PM on the UC Berkeley campus. They are free of charge for auditors. The series may also be taken for two graduate credits through International and Area Studies. This course is conceived as interrelated units but single sessions may be audited, subject to space availability.

120 A Stephens Hall #2306

Berkeley, CA 94720-2306

tel: (510) 643-0868

fax: (510)642-9850

Michele Delattre

Program Assistant

orias@uclink.berkeley.edu

http://orias.berkeley.edu

Steven Poulos

Executive Director

Introduction/West Africa (Joseph Campbell/Sunjata epic)

Saturday, November 20^th

Dar al Islam (Islamic heroic tales of Spain and East Africa)

Saturday, January 22^nd

Japan (Tale of the Heike)

Saturday, February 26^th

Western Europe (Beowulf, Roland, Erec and Enide)

Saturday, March 25th 

Mesoamerica (Popol Vuh)

Time: Saturday, October 30

10:00 AM to 1:30 PM 

Place: Meet at the Institute for East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton Street 6th Floor

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to: Michele Delattre

UC Berkeley - ORIAS 

120A Stephens Hall #2306

Berkeley, CA 94720-2306

For more information contact: Michele at 643-0868 or orias@uclink4.berkeley.edu

The ORIAS Summer Institute for teachers was held July 19-23, 1999 at the Institute for East Asian Studies. It was sponsored by the Center for African Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for Slavic and East European Studies, Center for South Asian Studies, Center for West European Studies and the International and Area Studies Teaching Program.

The 1999 ORIAS Summer Institute looked at cultural interaction in the medieval world through the eyes and influence of travelers. The primary focus was on the vast region of Afro-Eurasia from Europe and West Africa to East Asia connected by trade routes and religious travel. At the end of the week the institute looked at cultural encounters in the New World and ways in which examining the process of travel can enliven the study of history for adolescent students today.

Islamic Travelers

The religious incentives and institutionalized protection Islamic states offered pilgrims gave Dar al-Islam (Realm of Islam) a unique place in the history of early travel. Professor Marina Tolmacheva, from Washington State University, opened the institute with a keynote presentation on the incurable fourteenth-century traveler, Ibn Battuta. In the professional capacity of Islamic judge and scholar, Ibn Battuta visited close to fifty countries, traveling three times as far as Marco Polo. 

Professor Tolmacheva pointed out that stories of travel had a special place in the world of Islamic social culture. Story telling was a respected and cultivated occupation, serving as entertainment and education from royal courts to the bazaars. Particularly fascinating travel stories might be brought to the attention of local rulers who would commission someone else to write down the narrative as a rihla, or travel journal. This was the case with Ibn Battuta, whose rihla was commissioned by the Marinid ruler of Morocco and written down by a young literary scholar named Ibn Juzayy. Ibn Battuta's rihla paints a vivid picture of the Islamic world including social customs, trade, travel conditions and geography. It also includes plenty of high adventure and his personal observations about Islamic life and institutions in the far reaches of Dar al-Islam. 

Professor Tolmacheva drew special attention to what Ibn Battuta's rihla tells us about the mobility of women in the countries where he visited. The right to pilgrimage could not be denied to women who had the means to find appropriate escort. Ibn Battuta traveled under the protection of one "lady ascetic" who, like himself, made a career of religious travel. But travel remained a dangerous occupation and free women could not be forced to take to the road. On a number of occasions Ibn Battuta had to divorce wives who are unwilling to accompany him on his travels. "Wives come and go," remarked Professor Tolmacheva. "It is the slaves who stay." It may not be surprising then that the only woman he openly professes to love is a slave who travels with him.

Professor Tabitha Kanogo, from the Berkeley's History Department, introduced another Muslim traveler, Mansa Musa, whose reputation for wealth and largesse lured Ibn Battuta to Mali. In 1324 Mansa Musa, king of Ancient Mali, made a splendid royal pilgrimage to Mecca that caused a sensation in the Muslim world. In Cairo he was so generous with his gold that it took twelve years for the gold market to recover from his visit. Kanogo contextualized the legend of his travels with background on the political and social structures of the savannah kingdoms. Reviewing the strategic location of this region between the Sahara to the north and the forest kingdoms to the south, Kanoga discussed the significance of trade and the necessity for peace and administrative infrastructure in West Africa. She reviewed the social and political structures of royal patronage and tribute developed for maintaining political cohesion in a huge area of ethnic heterogeneity and international contact. 

Professor Kanogo suggested that Islamic travelers' accounts, such as Ibn Battuta's rihla, have been important resources for reconstructing African history. However, she also suggested that much is still to be learned from the oral tradition kept by African griots. In Mansa Musa's travels we see the role of Islam as it provided an administrative basis for religion and government co-existing with indigenous religious and political structures. Thus Mansa Musa performs the pious Muslim act of taking the hajj at the same time as he employs soothsayers and maintains royal authority by bringing the heads of vassal states along as political hostages. 

Trade and Tribute

The second day of the Institute focused on Trade and Tribute beginning with a presentation on the Venetian trader Marco Polo by Eddi Vulic of Berkeley's History Department. Like Ibn Battuta's rihla, Marco Polo's travels were dictated to a professional romance writer, Rustichello of Pisa, whose editorial influence on the style is apparent in many places. Vulic pointed out that Marco Polo's Travels fall into a different genre than the Islamic rihla. Instead of putting himself into the narrative as in a diary, Marco Polo's Travels functions as a sort of "how to" manual for travel to the Far East. Taking advantage of the freedom to travel under the Pax Mongolia, Marco Polo reports on trading goods, geography and travel conditions on the Silk Road and areas of Southeast Asia, India, East Africa, and ports around the Red Sea. As a business traveler, Marco Polo is most impressed by the efficiency of Mongol bureaucracy and writes with admiration of Kubilai Khan's infrastructure for trade and communication including passports, paper money, and posting hostels. Vulic noted that for all Marco Polo's current fame in the West, his Travels were not widely read until the late 1400's. He is perhaps best known for inspiring a kindred spirit in Christopher Columbus two-hundred years after Islam and the breakdown of the Pax Mongolila had once again closed the doors on Western travel to the Far East.

Mentor teacher Carolyn Rinetti, from Pleasanton Middle School, modeled her own class on 

The discussion of trade and tribute ended with a presentation on China's Ming Dynasty admiral, Zheng He (or Cheng Ho) by Professor Frederic Wakeman from the Berkeley History Department. Zheng He made tribute expeditions for the imperial state as far as the coast of Africa to announce China's triumph over Mongol rule and to reestablish Chinese dominance. Clearly constructed to be as impressive as possible, Zheng He's fleet employed nine-masted ships six times as large as English merchantmen. The Chinese crews were nearly three times as large as those employed by the Spanish Armada. Though the official purpose of the voyages was tribute rather than trade; nevertheless, the class of eunuchs who controlled the mercantile field amassed personal fortunes trading in luxury goods along the way.

This display of naval might began in 1405 and was abruptly halted in 1433 when the Ming emperor officially closed trade to the outside world. The termination of the tribute voyages is often pointed to as the moment Ming China turned back on itself and rejected the outside world. According to Professor Wakeman, a literati reaction against the growing power of these eunuchs and Confucian rejection of a mercantile focus contributed to the remarkable decision to turn away from maritime expansion. By the seventeenth-century it became a capital offense to leave China for trade. But the imperial Chinese state could not effectively control private maritime ventures and Professor Wakeman suggested that private merchants in the coastal regions, who were competing economically with the officially sanctioned eunuchs, may also have influenced the decision to end the tribute trips. The private seafaring and trade in these coastal regions continues to be a powerful social and economic force up to the present day.

Scripture Bearers and Mythic Travelers

The third day of the institute was devoted to scripture bearers and mythic travelers. Before looking at historic travelers who transported new tools for communication the institute devoted some time to looking at new communication tools being brought into today's classroom. Mentor teacher Sheryl Hott from Little Oak School in Dobbins led a working session in the campus computer labs looking at ways for teachers to search out resources and communicate using the Internet. 

Returning to the realm of historic communication, Sabine Stoll, from Berkeley's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, reviewed the lives of two ninth-century Byzantine travelers, Cyril and Methodius, and their contribution to the development of Slavic letters. The two churchmen were brothers sent by the Byzantine emperor to Moravia in answer to a diplomatic appeal for Slavic-speaking missionaries willing to teach the Gospel in the vernacular rather than 

Dekel also introduced the legendary traveler Prester John, who rather than carrying documents, seems to have been created by one himself. Dekel unwound the complicated legendary history of Prester John beginning with his initial appearance as early as the twelfth-century, when he is described as a Christian king living in India ready to fight Islam in defense of Christianity. The "letter of Prester John" written in Latin and translated and elaborated on in nearly every European language, is addressed to Christian leaders and describes a utopian kingdom located in India combining fabulous wealth, unsurpassed military prowess and spiritual purity. The myth of a powerful champion of Christianity held an irresistible appeal for the medieval European population threatened by the spread of Islam and drawn to tales of oriental splendor. Dekel unwound the tangled thread of the Prester John legend which persists up to the Age of Exploration. As the legend grows it accrues elements of Eastern and Western romance and folklore and is credited with several historic victories against Islamic powers, including those of such non-Christian figures as Genghis Khan. Prester John's residence shifts from India to China and finally to Ethiopia, where in 1498 Vasco de Gama is told that Prester John's kingdom is not far from Mozambique. Dekel suggested that the fabricated history of Prester John is really a history of how people processed information from travelers. It reminds us that we never get a truly objective account; we are asked to combine multiple sources to interpret reality.

Conquerors

The fourth day of the institute was devoted to conquerors. Eddi Vulic returned to introduce this topic with an unwelcome "traveler" who traversed the great trade routes of the fourteenth-century and crept along smaller roads into the countryside - the Black Death. Vulic traced the spread of disease from China in the 1330's to its appearance in the West when Mongols catapulted infected corpses over siege walls in 1346, to its rapid spread through Northern Africa and European seaports onboard rat-infested ships. Living conditions in overcrowded Europe allowed the bacteria to thrive so that areas visited by the plague during the recurring outbreaks of the fourteenth-century lost one-third to one-half of their population. Vulic discussed some of the social and economic consequences of this decimation. With no scientific means of explaining the disease and no effective means of combating it, people interpreted the plague in different ways. Vulic described different popular, Christian and Islamic reactions and compared the process of these responses to some of the contemporary responses to AIDS. 

Professor Jose Rabasa, from Berkeley's Department of Spanish and Portuguese, took up the question of multiple perspectives in the afternoon session when the institute turned its focus to the conquerors of the New World in the Columbian Encounter. Professor Rabasa opened his talk by reading in Spanish the Requerimiento- the document which legitimized war by explaining to Native Americans the foundations of Christian rule and offering them the choice of recognizing the Spanish Crown or facing war and slavery. Rabasa presented the document itself, read in a foreign tongue by armed men, as an act which lay an inevitable foundation of hatred and violence between the European and American cultures. By examining the nature of the Columbian Encounter, suggested Professor Rabasa, students can come to understand how much violence in this country now is a legacy of the violence brought into the New World five-hundred years ago. Professor Rabasa used the Nahuas' writing of their own history to introduce a discussion of the distinction between violence as it existed between warring indigenous cultures and the violence of Columbus' "discovery" which set about reinventing the societies and countryside he encountered. 

Mentor teacher Christiana Hart, from Horace Mann Middle School, shared her lesson activities for examining the Columbian Encounter including the use of "dialogue poems" which present a sort of verbal fugue, juxtaposing the perspectives of the conquered and the conquerors in two columns and read as a dialogue.

Towards the Modern Age

On the last day of the institute the lure of the Indies for European travelers was brought to the brink of the modern world in a presentation by Professor Gail Minault from the University of Texas. Professor Minault introduced the travel writings of Bernier and Tavernier, two French visitors to the Mughal court of India. These two widely-read chronicles combined elements of the old regime with modern observations of accurate commercial measurement and social analysis that would characterize the modern age of trade. Francois Bernier was a French physician who visited India from 1656 to 1668 and took service in the Mughal court. Bernier's widely read Travels, published in 1670, include vivid descriptions of Mughal life, from political intrigues among the aristocracy to mountebanks in the bazaar. Jean Baptiste Tavernier made six voyages to India between 1631 and 1657, supporting his wanderlust and making his fortune by trading in diamonds and precious stones. Like Marco Polo, Tavernier offers extensive insight into the nuts and bolts of commerce and administration. Professor Minault brought the scenes these two travelers witnessed to life with a vivid slide show of Mughal monuments and painting.