Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean Narratives

This special issue gathers the papers presented at the international conference ‘Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean Narratives’, held at the Alma Mater Studiorum—Università di Bologna, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (LILEC), on 14 and 15 January 2025. The conference was convened under the EU-funded project ‘NextGenerationEU—PRIN 2022: Environmental Anomalies & Political Legitimacy in Global Eurasia, 12th–14th Century’, a research initiative resulting from an inter-university collaboration between the Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale (National PI: Antonella Guida), the Alma Mater Studiorum—Università di Bologna (Local PI: Ines Peta), and the Università della Calabria (Local PI: Luca Parisoli). The conference explored how attitudes towards environmental challenges, natural disasters and calamities were affected by contextual factors related to the socio-political scenario, ideological trajectories or religious beliefs, and, in turn, how the tragic occurrence of such events influenced ideological orientations, theological interpretations and political legitimacies. By addressing these dynamics, it sought to shed light on the complex interplay between environmental perception and authority, both divine and temporal, across pre-modern Eurasia and the Mediterranean world, with particular reference to the Persian and Arab regions.