The Military Land Grant along the Muslim-christian Frontier

The Christian-Muslim frontier frequently acted as a barrier that separated religions, cultures, and societies from one another. But it was a permeable barrier in that ideas, commodities, and technology often passed through it. To demonstrate the precise mechanism of that permeability can be difficult to do. As Lynn White has remarked: ‘‘No medieval text documents with explicit words the amazing openness of the medieval European mind to borrowings from alien cultures. . . .’’1 It is fair to say that the prevailing historiography has tended to concentrate on the frontier as barrier and has tended to ignore its permeability. The issues I am exploring in this paper are the antecedents and parallels to the Muscovite pomest’e system. The question I am asking is: did the grand princes, or whoever originated the program of military land grants in Muscovy, think it up on their own or did they hav e an already existing model in mind? That is, was it an indigenous Muscovite development or was it the result of outside influence? Trying to determine 500 years after the event what was in the minds of those who did something may be futile. But, the exercise itself may be helpful in terms of gaining more understanding of Muscovite sources in relationship to those of the rest of the world. When I began this research, I thought I understood what I was about to study. I found, instead, that my former understanding of Western ‘‘feudalism’’ was not a coherent one, that my former understanding of the difference between votchina and pomest’e did not correspond to the evidence, and that the Muslim