barney_pig
Po-cha-na-quar-hip
Last year on here I was trying to get the cash together to fund my MA in Medieval studies, which I was able to start after receiving a grant from the Railway benevolent fund. The grant allowed me to start the first two modules and I'd hoped to find the rest as the year went by.
Now thanks to the kindness of a sponsor I am in the position to complete my MA and I am trying to decide on a dissertation subject.
my BA was somewhat let down by me choosing a poor subject for my dissertation, which had been based on an initial enthusiasm and a chance discovery of a small cache of documents in the county records office, which led me to assume that many more such documents would be accessable- they weren't.
At the moment I am considering studying "The Pre Crusade 'British' experience of Islam" which I think might provide me with plenty of scope for research; I think that this would mean looking at the three main 'British' societies- Anglo Saxon, Viking, and after 1066, Norman. and will focus upon three main spheres;
1. trade; either voluntary or otherwise- with an emphasis on the Great Viking slave market of Dublin, through which many British and Irish people made their unwilling aquaintance with the Caliphate either in North africa or Muslim Spain.
2. Conflict;
a. Irish Viking Raids on Spain,
b. The Norman war machine in which anglo norman militares might find themselves, through obligations of feof or through thirst for adventure and land, fighting Islam's armies in southern Italy, Sicily, or Spain.
c. The Anglo Saxon Diaspora- after 1066 there was an exodus of the surviving Anglo Saxon nobility, who became the bulk of the Varangian Guard ( a possible contributing factor in the distrust and frosty relationship between the frankish and Norman crusaders and the Byzantine armed forces?)
3. Pilgrimage: the medieval craze for physical pilgrimage does not flower till later, but individuals are travelling to the holy land throughout this period.
my main problem will be having had the idea how do I find the evidence to back it up? And what do does one do when the evidence does not turn up?
Now thanks to the kindness of a sponsor I am in the position to complete my MA and I am trying to decide on a dissertation subject.
my BA was somewhat let down by me choosing a poor subject for my dissertation, which had been based on an initial enthusiasm and a chance discovery of a small cache of documents in the county records office, which led me to assume that many more such documents would be accessable- they weren't.
At the moment I am considering studying "The Pre Crusade 'British' experience of Islam" which I think might provide me with plenty of scope for research; I think that this would mean looking at the three main 'British' societies- Anglo Saxon, Viking, and after 1066, Norman. and will focus upon three main spheres;
1. trade; either voluntary or otherwise- with an emphasis on the Great Viking slave market of Dublin, through which many British and Irish people made their unwilling aquaintance with the Caliphate either in North africa or Muslim Spain.
2. Conflict;
a. Irish Viking Raids on Spain,
b. The Norman war machine in which anglo norman militares might find themselves, through obligations of feof or through thirst for adventure and land, fighting Islam's armies in southern Italy, Sicily, or Spain.
c. The Anglo Saxon Diaspora- after 1066 there was an exodus of the surviving Anglo Saxon nobility, who became the bulk of the Varangian Guard ( a possible contributing factor in the distrust and frosty relationship between the frankish and Norman crusaders and the Byzantine armed forces?)
3. Pilgrimage: the medieval craze for physical pilgrimage does not flower till later, but individuals are travelling to the holy land throughout this period.
my main problem will be having had the idea how do I find the evidence to back it up? And what do does one do when the evidence does not turn up?
