Historical writing has shaped identities in various ways and to different extents. This volume explores this multiplicity by looking at case studies from Europe, Byzantium, the Islamic World, and China around the turn of the first millennium. The chapters in this volume address official histories and polemical critique, traditional genres and experimental forms, ancient traditions and emerging territories, empires and barbarians. The authors do not take the identities highlighted in the texts for granted, but examine the complex strategies of identification that they employ. This volume thus explores how historiographical works in diverse contexts construct and shape identities, as well as legitimate political claims and communicate 'visions of community'.

The volume extends the mainly European focus of the series 'Historiography and ldentity' to probe into a more global perspective, exploring the historiographical cultures of a number of Eurasian macro-regions: China, Japan, Iran, South Arabia, Syria, Byzantium, Lotharingia, and Spain. The broader, Eurasian perspective can contribute to a deeper understanding of the very different ways in which works of historiography could communicate, promote, and negotiate 'visions of community' and concepts of belonging.

The six-volume sub-series Historiography and Identity unites a wide variety of case studies from Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages, from the Latin West to the emerging polities in Northern and Eastern Europe, and also incorporates a Eurasian perspective which includes the Islamic World and China. The series aims to develop a critical methodology that harnesses the potential of identity studies to enhance our understanding of the construction and impact of historiography. This first volume in the Historiography and Identity sub-series examines the many ways in which historiographical works shaped identities in ancient and medieval societies by focusing on the historians of ancient Greece and the late Roman Empire. It presents in-depth studies about how history writing could create a sense of community, thereby shedding light on the links between authorial strategies, processes of identification, and cultural memory. The contributions explore the importance of regional, ethnic, cultural, and imperial identities to the process of history writing, embedding the works in the changing political landscape.

This collection aims to enable the reader to disentangle some of the ambiguities and confusions which have characterized the use of the term 'historiography'.

Recent research has challenged our view of the Abrahamic religious traditions as unilaterally intolerant and incapable of recognizing otherness in all its diversity and richness; but a diachronic and comparative study of how these traditions deal with otherness is yet to appear. This volume aims to contribute to such a study by presenting different treatments of otherness in medieval and early modern thought. Part I: Altruism deals with attitudes and behaviors that benefit others, regardless of its motives. We deal with the social rights and emotions as well as the moral obligations that the very existence of other human beings, whatever their characteristics, creates for a community. Part II: Religious recognition and toleration considers identity, toleration and mutual recognition created by the existence of religious or ethnic otherness in a given social, religious or political community. Part III: Evil deals with religious otherness that is considered evil and rejected such as heretics and malevolent, demonic entities. The volume will ultimately inform the reader on the nature of religious toleration (including beliefs and doctrines, even emotions) as well as of the self-definition of religious communities when encountering and defining otherness in different ways.

Karl Valentin once asked: "How can it be that only as much happens as fits into the newspaper the next day?" He focussed on the problem that information of the past has to be organised, arranged and above all: selected and put into form in order to be perceived as a whole. In this sense, the process of selection must be seen as the fundamental moment – the “Urszene” – of making History. This book shows selection as highly creative act. With the richness of early medieval material it can be demonstrated that creative selection was omnipresent and took place even in unexpected text genres. The book demonstrates the variety how premodern authors dealt with "unimportant", unpleasant or unwanted past. It provides a general overview for regions and text genres in early medieval Europe.