Ebook: Religious Exemption in Pre-Modern Eurasia, c. 300-1300 CE

Claims to exemption from state demands on religious grounds were both common and important across Eurasia between the age of ancient empires and the onset of the Black Death. Yet although aspects of the topic have often been studied within particular geographical and cultural historiographical frameworks, the issue as a whole has hardly if at all been considered at the Eurasian scale. This is perhaps especially surprising given that such claims to exemption were located precisely at the intersection of religion and the state, two central themes for historical enquiry. This special issue of 'Medieval Worlds' is intended to provide a preliminary but panoramic view of the subject, drawing on the collaborative expertise of fourteen historians based in nine different countries.