warfare 739Further reading: Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First
Crusade and the Idea of Crusading(Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1986); Jonathan Riley-Smith,
The First Crusaders, 1095–1131(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997).
Walther von der Vogelweide(ca. 1170–ca. 1230)
German lyric, poet, knight
Born about 1170, probably in lower AUSTRIAor the Tyrol
Walter began his poetic career at the court of VIENNA,
where he met and was taught by Reinmar van Hagen the
Elder (d. ca. 1205), famous poet-musician. Walther
became a roving minstrel, whose verse was loaded with
sarcastic political comments. Leopold VI the Glorious
(1176–1230) and Frederick I the Catholic (1194–98)
patronized him for a while, but the hostility of a later
archduke obliged him to travel to the other German
courts. At Mainz he composed a magnificent poem for
the coronation of Philip of SWABIA(1178–1208). In 1204
he was a guest of the landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia
(d. 1217) where he met WOLFRAM VONESCHENBACH.In
the struggle between the candidate of Brunswick to the
imperial throne, Otto IV (d. 1218), and Pope INNOCENT
III, Walther supported the imperial party. In doing so he
opposed the temporal power of popes and was critical of
the institutional church. Along the same political lines,
when the emperor FREDERICKII set out on Crusade in the
1220s, Walther composed songs in support of the venture
and was granted a fief in the diocese of Würzburg in
about 1224. Although he sang about German politics,
imperial ideas, and knightly values, he wrote and sang
best about COURTLY LOVE. He produced religious lyric and
moral-didactic poetry and composed HYMNSto the Virgin
MARYand the Trinity. He died near Würzburg in BAVARIA
in about 1230.
Further reading: Walther von der Vogelweide,
Selected Poems,ed. Margaret Fitzgerald Richey, 3d ed. by
Hugh Sacker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965); Franz Bäuml,
ed., From Symbol to Mimesis: The Generation of Walther
von der Vogelweide(Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1984);
George F. Jones, Walther von der Vogelweide(New York:
Twayne, 1968); Kenneth J. Northcott, “Walther von der
Vogelweide” in European Writers: The Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. Vol. 1, Prudentius to Medieval Drama, ed.
William T. H. Jackson and George Stade (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983), 287–308.
Wandering Jew, legend of The 13th-century Chris-
tian legend of the Wandering Jew was about a character
who was doomed to live until the end of time. He had
taunted or struck Jesus when he was on his way to the
Crucifixion, though he had converted to Christianity and
was living piously. The story was based on the New Testa-
ment (John 18:20–22) and on parallel narratives the
Wandering Jew was identified as perhaps the high priest’s
guard or Pontius Pilate’s doorkeeper, who was con-
demned to live and wander perpetually. The story first
appeared in 1228 in a Cistercian chronicle, in which
some pilgrims and a bishop in ARMENIAencountered a
Jew who was present at the Passion. The English monas-
tic historians Roger of Wendover (d. 1236) and MATTHEW
PARIStold it. There was little attention to this story until
the 17th century. There continued to be sightings this
person in the 19th century, until the last one in Salt Lake
City supposedly in 1868.
Further reading:G. K. Anderson, The Legend of the
Wandering Jew(Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press,
1965); G. Hasan-Rokem and Alan Dundes, eds., The
Wandering Jew: Essays in the Interpretation of a Christian
Legend(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).waqf (awqaf, hubs, habuus) In Muslim legal termi-
nology waqfwas the prohibition of a third party’s claim-
ing property rights over any object, such state lands
from the time of a conquest or to a later pious or family
foundation. The object in question must be lasting and
tangibly productive. The owner had limited access to
the proceeds of the principle but no access to the princi-
ple, whatever it might be. The waqfor foundation had
always to be irrevocable, pleasing to GOD, and con-
ducive to the spread of ISLAM. Such objectives had to be
specified in the document establishing it and explicitly
used for religious foundations such as MOSQUES, HOSPI-
TALS, schools, libraries, town walls, and public foun-
tains. They could involve family foundations involving
children, grandchildren, or other relatives and be a
means to prevent the fragmentation of estates. They
were controlled by a paid administrator and were sub-
ject to review by a QADI.
See alsoMORTMAIN.
Further reading: Claude Gilliot, “Waqf,” EMA,
2.1,536; R. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A
Framework for Inquiry,rev. ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1991).warfare Warfare was important to the economic, social,
and political history of the period from 300 to 1500. Its
organization, practice, and methods underwent many
changes on land and sea. There were many technical inno-
vations in WEAPONSand fortifications. In late antiquity
and the Middle Ages, many peoples moved around the
medieval world as invading armies or hordes trying to
invade and settle in the Roman Empire, Byzantium, and
Islam. These states in turn made massive efforts to control
them militarily or incorporate them into its system of gov-
ernment. This conflict tempered by assimilation contin-
ued in the early Middle Ages and lasted through the
incursions by the VIKINGSinto Carolingian Europe in the
10th century. Internal and external warfare and violence
remained common throughout the Middle Ages.