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.


Understanding Political Islam

Understanding Political Islam

Author: François Burgat

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2019-12-20

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1526143461

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Understanding Political Islam retraces the human and intellectual development that led François Burgat to a very firm conviction: that the roots of the tensions that afflict the Western world’s relationship with the Muslim world are political rather than ideological. In his compelling account of the interactions between personal life-history and professional research trajectories, Burgat examines how the rise of political Islam has been expressed: first in the Arab world, then in its interactions with European and Western societies. An essential continuation of his work on Islamism, Burgat’s unique field research and ‘political trespassing’ marks an overdue challenge to the academic mainstream.


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.


Early Islamic Syria

Early Islamic Syria

Author: Alan Walmsley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-11-20

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1472537769

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After more than a century of neglect, a profound revolution is occurring in the way archaeology addresses and interprets developments in the social history of early Islamic Syria-Palestine. This concise book offers an innovative assessment of social and economic developments in Syria-Palestine shortly before, and in the two centuries after, the Islamic expansion (the later sixth to the early ninth century AD), drawing on a wide range of new evidence from recent archaeological work. Alan Walmsley challenges conventional explanations for social change with the arrival of Islam, arguing for considerable cultural and economic continuity rather than devastation and unrelenting decline. Much new, and increasingly non-elite, architectural evidence and an ever-growing corpus of material culture indicate that Syria-Palestine entered a new age of social richness in the early Islamic period, even if the gains were chronologically and regionally uneven.


In the Shadow of the Sword

In the Shadow of the Sword

Author: Tom Holland

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2012-05-15

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 0385531362

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The acclaimed author of Rubicon and other superb works of popular history now produces a thrillingly panoramic (and incredibly timely) account of the rise of Islam. No less significant than the collapse of the Roman Republic or the Persian invasion of Greece, the evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement. Just like the Romans, the Arabs came from nowhere to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion—except that they achieved their conquests not over the course of centuries as the Romans did but in a matter of decades. Just like the Greeks during the Persian wars, they overcame seemingly insuperable odds to emerge triumphant against the greatest empire of the day—not by standing on the defensive, however, but by hurling themselves against all who lay in their path.


Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment

Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment

Author: Ahmet T. Kuru

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-08

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1108419097

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Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.


Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam

Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam

Author: Wendy Mayer

Publisher: de Gruyter

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9783110291780

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The essays in this volume engage a variety of inter- and intra-religious conflicts, ranging from the first to eighth centuries CE. Given the political and religious tensions in the world today, this volume is well positioned to find relevance and meaning in societies still grappling with the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.


Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States

Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States

Author: Andrew Monson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-04-23

Total Pages: 603

ISBN-13: 1316300153

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Inspired by the new fiscal history, this book represents the first global survey of taxation in the premodern world. What emerges is a rich variety of institutions, including experiments with sophisticated instruments such as sovereign debt and fiduciary money, challenging the notion of a typical premodern stage of fiscal development. The studies also reveal patterns and correlations across widely dispersed societies that shed light on the basic factors driving the intensification, abatement, and innovation of fiscal regimes. Twenty scholars have contributed perspectives from a wide range of fields besides history, including anthropology, economics, political science and sociology. The volume's coverage extends beyond Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East to East Asia and the Americas, thereby transcending the Eurocentric approach of most scholarship on fiscal history.


Islam, Literature and Society in Mongol Anatolia

Islam, Literature and Society in Mongol Anatolia

Author: A. C. S. Peacock

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-10-17

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1108499368

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A new understanding of the transformation of Anatolia to a Muslim society in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries based on previously unpublished sources.