Money, Power and Politics in Early Islamic Syria

Money, Power and Politics in Early Islamic Syria

Author: John Haldon

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1317094247

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The transformation of the eastern provinces of the Roman empire from the middle of the seventh century CE under the impact of Islam has attracted a good deal of scholarly attention in recent years, and as more archaeological material becomes available, has been subject to revision and rethinking in ways that radically affect what we know or understand about the area, about state-building and the economy and society of the early Islamic world, and about issues such as urbanisation, town-country relations, the ways in which a different religious culture impacted on the built environment, and about politics. This volume represents the fruits of a workshop held at Princeton University in May 2007 to discuss the ways in which recent work has affected our understanding of the nature of economic and exchange activity in particular, and the broader implications of these advances for the history of the region.


Envisioning Islam

Envisioning Islam

Author: Michael Philip Penn

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-07-22

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0812247221

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Uses writings of Mesopotamian Christians to challenge modern scholarly narratives of early Muslim conquests, rulers, and religious practices.


Damascus after the Muslim Conquest

Damascus after the Muslim Conquest

Author: Nancy Khalek

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-09-16

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0190453745

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Before it fell to Muslim armies in AD 635-6 Damascus had a long and prestigious history as a center of Christianity. How did this city, which became the capitol of the Islamic Empire and its people, negotiate the transition from a late antique or early Byzantine world to an Islamic culture? In Damascus after the Muslim Conquest, Nancy Khalek demonstrates that the changes that took place in Syria during this formative period of Islamic life were not simply a matter of the replacement of one civilization by another as a result of military conquest, but rather of shifting relationships and practices in a multifaceted social and cultural setting. Even as late antique forms of religion and culture persisted, the formation of Islamic identity was affected by the people who constructed, lived in, and narrated the history of their city. Khalek draws on the evidence of architecture and the testimony of pilgrims, biographers, geographers, and historians to shed light on this process of identity formation. Offering a fresh approach to the early Islamic period, she moves the study of Islamic origins beyond a focus on issues of authenticity and textual criticism, and initiates an interdisciplinary discourse on narrative, storytelling, and the interpretations of material culture.


Coins in Rhodes

Coins in Rhodes

Author: Anna-Maria Kasdagli

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2018-06-30

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 1784918423

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Presents the Byzantine and medieval coins collected by Greek archaeologists in Rhodes over a period of more than 60 years. It includes lists of excavated land plots, stray finds, an illustrated catalogue of all the Byzantine and local coins up to 1309, and a representative sample of the Hospitaller petty coins as well as all Western coins found.


Violence in Early Islam

Violence in Early Islam

Author: Marco Demichelis

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-03-25

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 0755638018

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The concept of jihad holds a prominent place in Islamic thought and history. Beyond its spiritual meanings, the term has historically been associated with the sweeping Arab-Believers conquests of the 7-8th century BCE. But given advances in our understanding of the historicity and chronology of the Qur'an and early Islamic texts, is it correct to identify jihad and Islam with violent conquest? In this book, Marco Demichelis explores the history of the concept of jihad in the early proto-Islamic centuries (7-8th). Deploying an interdisciplinary approach which combines the hermeneutical study of the famous 'Verses of the Sword' within the Qur'an itself, with historical writing by Islamic chroniclers as well as non-Islamic sources, numismatics, epigraphical and architectural evidence, the book questions the relationship between the religious concept of jihad and the conquests. The book argues that Christian Byzantine Foederati forices who previously fought against the Persians may have had a formative effect on the later emergence of more bellicose rhetoric. In so doing, it calls into question assumptions about warlike attitudes inherent within Islamic doctrine, and reveals a more nuanced and complicated history of religious violence in the pre, proto and early Islamic period.


Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem

Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem

Author: Lawrence Nees

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-09-17

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9004302077

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Through its material remains, Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem analyzes several overlooked aspects of the earliest decades of Islamic presence in Jerusalem, during the seventh century CE. Focusing on the Haram al-Sharif, also known as the Temple Mount, Lawrence Nees provides the first sustained study of the Dome of the Chain, a remarkable eleven-sided building standing beside the slightly later Dome of the Rock, and the first study of the meaning of the columns and column capitals with figures of eagles in the Dome of the Rock. He also provides a new interpretation of the earliest mosque in Jerusalem, the Haram as a whole, with the sacred Rock at its center.


In God's Path

In God's Path

Author: Robert G. Hoyland

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-10-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0199916373

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In just over a hundred years--from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750--the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time. How this collection of Arabian tribes was able to engulf so many empires, states, and armies in such a short period has perplexed historians for centuries. Most accounts of the Arab invasions have been based almost solely on the early Muslim sources, which were composed centuries later to illustrate the divinely chosen status of the Arabs. Robert Hoyland's groundbreaking new history assimilates not only the rich biographical information of the early Muslim sources but also the many non-Arabic sources, contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous with the conquests. In God's Path begins with a broad picture of the Late Antique world prior to the Prophet's arrival, a world dominated by two superpowers: Byzantium and Sasanian Persia. In between these empires, emerged a distinct Arabian identity, which helped forge the inhabitants of western Arabia into a formidable fighting force. The Arabs are the principal actors in this drama yet, as Hoyland shows, the peoples along the edges of Byzantium and Persia--the Khazars, Bulgars, Avars, and Turks--all played critical roles in the remaking of the old world order. The new faith propagated by Muhammad and his successors made it possible for many of the conquered peoples to join the Arabs in creating the first Islamic Empire. Well-paced, comprehensive, and eminently readable, In God's Path presents a sweeping narrative of a transformational period in world history.


Christians and Muslims in Early Islamic Egypt

Christians and Muslims in Early Islamic Egypt

Author: Lajos Berkes

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2022-01-10

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0979975891

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This volume collects studies exploring the relationship of Christians and Muslims in everyday life in Early Islamic Egypt (642–10th c.) focusing mainly, but not exclusively on administrative and social history. The contributions concentrate on the papyrological documentation preserved in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic. By doing so, this book transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries and offers results based on a holistic view of the documentary material. The articles of this volume discuss various aspects of change and continuity from Byzantine to Islamic Egypt and offer also the (re)edition of 23 papyrus documents in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic. The authors provide a showcase of recent papyrological research on this under-studied, but dynamically evolving field. After an introduction by the editor of the volume that outlines the most important trends and developments of the period, the first two essays shed light on Egypt as part of the Caliphate. The following six articles, the bulk of the volume, deal with the interaction and involvement of the Egyptian population with the new Muslim administrative apparatus. The last three studies of the volume focus on naming practices and language change.


Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700–c.1500

Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700–c.1500

Author: Catherine Holmes

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-08-26

Total Pages: 706

ISBN-13: 1009021907

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This comparative study explores three key cultural and political spheres – the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from Central Asia to the Atlantic – roughly from the emergence of Islam to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers' interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean.