Briser la mosaïque : : les tribus chrétiennes de Madaba, Jordanie, XIXe-XXe siècle / / Géraldine Chatelard.

• Superior document: Moyen-Orient
• VerfasserIn: Chatelard, G.
• Place / Publishing House: Paris : : CNRS Éditions,, 2004.
• Year of Publication: 2004
• Language: French
• Series: Moyen-Orient (Series)
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (400 pages) :; illustrations, maps; digital, PDF file(s).
• Notes: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Minority and community are concepts dominating the analysis of Christians in the Arab world which lead to conceive of the societies of the South-East of the Mediterranean as mosaics. According to this commonplace, religious and ethnic groups live side by side with limited interactions and immutable identities with a strong potential for conflict. But are denominational identities inherently conflicting? And are Christians in the Arab world really a sociological minority? In the long term, what are the modalities of their exchanges and transactions, of their cooperation and communication with Muslims? What historical bodies and dynamics regulate these interactions and modify the rules of the game? In Madaba, a high Christian place in Jordan, the only mosaics worthy of interest are from the Byzantine period. For more than a century, the agglomeration is the framework, open to the world, of this social, religious and political history of Christian Arab families. Combining historical and ethnographic approaches and materials, this work questions the nature and maintenance of the social bond between Christians and Muslims, and the modifications of identity boundaries between confessional groups (Christians of various persuasions) or religious. No static mosaic, but episodes of a moving fresco where the community is not necessarily the enemy of the city.