Download or read book Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest written by Chase F. Robinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-12-21 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of early Islamic historical tradition has flourished with the emergence of an innovative scholarship no longer dependent on more traditional narratival approaches. Chase Robinson's book, first published in 2000, takes full account of the research available and interweaves history and historiography to interpret the political, social and economic transformations in the Mesopotamian region after the Islamic conquests. Using Arabic and Syriac sources to elaborate his argument, the author focuses on the Muslim and Christian élites, demonstrating that the immediate effects of the conquests were in fact modest ones. Significant social change took place only at the end of the seventh century with the imposition of Marwanid rule. Even then, the author argues, social power was diffused in the hands of local élites. This is a sophisticated study in a burgeoning field in Islamic studies.
Download or read book Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives written by Chase F. Robinson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious thinkers, political leaders, lawmakers, writers, and philosophers have shaped the 1,400-year-long development of the world's second-largest religion. But who were these people? What do we know of their lives and the ways in which they influenced their societies? In Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives, the distinguished historian of Islam Chase F. Robinson draws on the long tradition in Muslim scholarship of commemorating in writing the biographies of notable figures, but he weaves these ambitious lives together to create a rich narrative of Islamic civilization, from the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century to the era of the world conquerer Timur and the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in the fifteenth. Beginning in Islam’s heartland, Mecca, and ranging from North Africa and Iberia in the west to Central and East Asia, Robinson not only traces the rise and fall of Islamic states through the biographies of political and military leaders who worked to secure peace or expand their power, but also discusses those who developed Islamic law, scientific thought, and literature. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of rich and diverse Islamic societies. Alongside the famous characters who colored this landscape—including Muhammad’s cousin ’Ali; the Crusader-era hero Saladin; and the poet Rumi—are less well-known figures, such as Ibn Fadlan, whose travels in Eurasia brought fascinating first-hand accounts of the Volga Vikings to the Abbasid Caliph; the eleventh-century Karima al-Marwaziyya, a woman scholar of Prophetic traditions; and Abu al-Qasim Ramisht, a twelfth-century merchant millionaire. An illuminating read for anyone interested in learning more about this often-misunderstood civilization, this book creates a vivid picture of life in all arenas of the pre-modern Muslim world.
Download or read book Abd al Malik written by Chase F. Robinson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Abd al-Malik, who came to promience during the second civil war of early Islam, ruled the Islamic empire from 692 until 705. Not only did he successfully suppress rebellion within the Muslim world and expand its frontiers, but in many respects he founded the empire itself. By about 700, the forms of a new realm which stretched from North Africa in the west to Iran in the east had taken clear shape with 'Abd al-Malik at its head. This book covers the beginnings and rise to power of this immensely influential caliph, as well as his religious policies and innovations, (including the Dome of the Rock, the oldest surviving monumental building erected by the Muslims), his fiscal, administrative and military reforms, and finally, his legacy for later Muslims.
Download or read book In God s Path written by Robert G. Hoyland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Islamic Historiography written by Chase F. Robinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-12-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chase Robinson's book is a timely introduction to Islamic historiography, from its origins in the seventh and eighth centuries to the fifteenth century. It covers the rise of the tradition, the historians' principal genres, assumptions and methods, and stresses the social and political functions of historical writing. It is an authoritative guide for students with little or no background in Islamic history or Arabic.
Download or read book The Great Islamic Conquests AD 632 750 written by David Nicolle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few centuries in world history have had such a profound and long-lasting impact as the first hundred years of Islamic history. In this book, David Nicolle examines the extensive Islamic conquests between AD 632 and 750. These years saw the religion and culture of Islam erupt from the Arabian Peninsula and spread across an area far larger than that of the Roman Empire. The effects of this rapid expansion were to shape European affairs for centuries to come. This book examines the social and military history of the period, describing how and why the Islamic expansion was so successful.
Download or read book Transregional and Regional Elites Connecting the Early Islamic Empire written by Hannah-Lena Hagemann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-02-10 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transregional and regional elites of various backgrounds were essential for the integration of diverse regions into the early Islamic Empire, from Central Asia to North Africa. This volume is an important contribution to the conceptualization of the largest empire of Late Antiquity. While previous studies used Iraq as the paradigm for the entire empire, this volume looks at diverse regions instead. After a theoretical introduction to the concept of ‘elites’ in an early Islamic context, the papers focus on elite structures and networks within selected regions of the Empire (Transoxiana, Khurāsān, Armenia, Fārs, Iraq, al-Jazīra, Syria, Egypt, and Ifrīqiya). The papers analyze elite groups across social, religious, geographical, and professional boundaries. Although each region appears unique at first glance, based on their heterogeneous surviving sources, its physical geography, and its indigenous population and elites, the studies show that they shared certain patterns of governance and interaction, and that this was an important factor for the success of the largest empire of Late Antiquity.
Download or read book The New Cambridge History of Islam Volume 1 The Formation of the Islamic World Sixth to Eleventh Centuries written by Chase F. Robinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume One of The New Cambridge History of Islam, which surveys the political and cultural history of Islam from its Late Antique origins until the eleventh century, brings together contributions from leading scholars in the field. The book is divided into four parts. The first provides an overview of the physical and political geography of the Late Antique Middle East. The second charts the rise of Islam and the emergence of the Islamic political order under the Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphs of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, followed by the dissolution of the empire in the tenth and eleventh. 'Regionalism', the overlapping histories of the empire's provinces, is the focus of Part Three, while Part Four provides a cutting-edge discussion of the sources and controversies of early Islamic history, including a survey of numismatics, archaeology and material culture.
Download or read book The Great Arab Conquests written by Hugh Kennedy and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2007 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The success of the Muslim conquests was the product of a unique set of circumstances and the preaching of a simple new monotheistic faith. There were many features of Islam that would have made it approachable to Christians and Jews. It had a Prophet, a Holy Book, established forms of prayer, dietary and family laws. Abraham and Jesus were both great prophets in the Muslim tradition. From the very beginning Islam established itself as a new faith, but it was one that claimed to perfect rather than destroy the older monotheistic ones. It had none of the strangeness of, say, Buddhism. These similarities, this common tradition, must have aided and encouraged conversion. In the final analysis, the success of the Muslim conquest was a result of the unstable and impoverished nature of the whole post-Roman world into which they came, the hardiness and self-reliance of the Bedouin warriors and the inspiration and open quality of the new religion of Islam. Book jacket.
Download or read book The Last Muslim Conquest written by Gábor Ágoston and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Last Muslim Conquest chronicles the emergence of the Ottoman dynasty and its conquests in Europe, offering a new synthesis of the Ottoman impact on early modern Europe. In telling the story of conquest and imperial rivalry, the book introduces myriad characters, from sultans, kings, popes, generals, and admirals, to lesser-known but equally colorful viziers, frontier governors, envoys, interpreters, spies, and pirates. The narrative brings to light the characteristics of Ottoman strategy and statecraft, challenging long-held views. Historian Gâabor âAgoston rejects the "clash of civilizations" narrative by demonstrating the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional character of the empire and its entanglements in European politics. He examines the varied methods of Ottoman conquest, including dynastic marriages, religious accommodation, and the incorporation of the conquered people into the Ottoman military and administration. But âAgoston also rebuffs more recent distortions of Ottoman history that have turned Ottoman sultans into Renaissance princes and blurred the cultural fault lines between Islam and Christendom. He argues that while the Ottomans were an integral part of Europe and, in many ways, a "European" empire, theirs was a polity principally shaped by Turco-Iranian and Islamic models. He also demonstrates how religion - both Ottoman holy wars and Christian crusades - remained paramount for legitimating policies and mobilizing one's supporters for conquest and defense. Chapters on military capabilities, frontier management, lawfare, and diplomacy offer a new explanation of the gradual shift in power between the Ottomans and their European rivals, reframing the old story of Ottoman decline"--
Download or read book Islamic Historiography written by Chase F. Robinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Muslims of the classical Islamic period understand their past? What value did they attach to history? How did they write history? How did historiography fare relative to other kinds of Arabic literature? These and other questions are answered in Chase F. Robinson's Islamic Historiography, an introduction to the principal genres, issues, and problems of Islamic historical writing in Arabic, that stresses the social and political functions of historical writing in the Islamic world. Beginning with the origins of the tradition in the eighth and ninth centuries and covering its development until the beginning of the sixteenth century, this is an authoritative and yet accessible guide through a complex and forbidding field, which is intended for readers with little or no background in Islamic history or Arabic.
Download or read book The Great Islamic Conquests AD 632 750 written by David Nicolle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-20 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few centuries in world history have had such a profound and long-lasting impact as the first hundred years of Islamic history. In this book, David Nicolle examines the extensive Islamic conquests between AD 632 and 750. These years saw the religion and culture of Islam erupt from the Arabian Peninsula and spread across an area far larger than that of the Roman Empire. The effects of this rapid expansion were to shape European affairs for centuries to come. This book examines the social and military history of the period, describing how and why the Islamic expansion was so successful.
Download or read book Islamic Empires written by Justin Marozzi and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Outstanding, illuminating, compelling ... a riveting read' Peter Frankopan, Sunday Times Islamic civilization was once the envy of the world. From a succession of glittering, cosmopolitan capitals, Islamic empires lorded it over the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and swathes of the Indian subcontinent. For centuries the caliphate was both ascendant on the battlefield and triumphant in the battle of ideas, its cities unrivalled powerhouses of artistic grandeur, commercial power, spiritual sanctity and forward-looking thinking. Islamic Empires is a history of this rich and diverse civilization told through its greatest cities over fifteen centuries, from the beginnings of Islam in Mecca in the seventh century to the astonishing rise of Doha in the twenty-first. It dwells on the most remarkable dynasties ever to lead the Muslim world - the Abbasids of Baghdad, the Umayyads of Damascus and Cordoba, the Merinids of Fez, the Ottomans of Istanbul, the Mughals of India and the Safavids of Isfahan - and some of the most charismatic leaders in Muslim history, from Saladin in Cairo and mighty Tamerlane of Samarkand to the poet-prince Babur in his mountain kingdom of Kabul and the irrepressible Maktoum dynasty of Dubai. It focuses on these fifteen cities at some of the defining moments in Islamic history: from the Prophet Mohammed receiving his divine revelations in Mecca and the First Crusade of 1099 to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the phenomenal creation of the merchant republic of Beirut in the nineteenth century.
Download or read book Iraq After the Muslim Conquest written by Michael G. Morony and published by . This book was released on with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributing to our understanding of the nature of historical continuity and change, this title compares conditions in late Sasanian and early Islamic Iraq in the seventh century AD, and depicts both the emergence of a local form of Islamic society and the interaction of Muslim conquerors from Arabia with the native population.
Download or read book Transregional and Regional Elites written by Hannah-Lena Hagemann and published by de Gruyter. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To integrate the regions of the early Islamic Empire from Central Asia to North Africa, transregional and regional elites of various backgrounds were essential. This volume is an important contribution to the conceptualization of the largest empire of Late Antiquity. After a theoretical introduction to the concept of 'elites' in an early Islamic context, the papers focus on elite structures and networks within selected regions of the Empire (Transoxiana, Khurāsān, Armenia, Fārs, Iraq, al-Jazīra, Syria, Egypt, and Ifrīqiya). They analyze elite groups across social, religious, geographical, and professional boundaries. Some papers take up contemporary terminology and its application within the sources. While previous studies used Iraq as the paradigm for the entire empire, this volume looks at diverse regions instead. While each region seems to be different based on its heterogeneous surviving sources, its physical geography, and its indigenous population and elites, the comparative approach highlights certain common patterns of governance and interaction across the Empire in its first three centuries.
Download or read book Non Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire written by Milka Levy-Rubin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Muslim conquest of the East in the seventh century entailed the subjugation of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and others. Although much has been written about the status of non-Muslims in the Islamic empire, no previous works have examined how the rules applying to minorities were formulated. Milka Levy-Rubin's remarkable book traces the emergence of these regulations from the first surrender agreements in the immediate aftermath of conquest to the formation of the canonic document called the Pact of 'Umar, which was formalized under the early 'Abbasids, in the first half of the ninth century. What the study reveals is that the conquered peoples themselves played a major role in the creation of these policies, and that these were based on long-standing traditions, customs, and institutions from earlier pre-Islamic cultures that originated in the worlds of both the conquerors and the conquered. In its connections to Roman, Byzantine, and Sasanian traditions, the book will appeal to historians of Europe as well as Arabia and Persia.
Download or read book Founding Gods Inventing Nations written by William F. McCants and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the dawn of writing in Sumer to the sunset of the Islamic empire, Founding Gods, Inventing Nations traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. Investigating a vast range of primary sources, some of which are translated here for the first time, and focusing on the dynamic influence of the Greek, Roman, and Arab conquests of the Near East, William McCants looks at the ways the conquerors and those they conquered reshaped their myths of civilization's origins in response to the social and political consequences of empire. The Greek and Roman conquests brought with them a learned culture that competed with that of native elites. The conquering Arabs, in contrast, had no learned culture, which led to three hundred years of Muslim competition over the cultural orientation of Islam, a contest reflected in the culture myths of that time. What we know today as Islamic culture is the product of this contest, whose protagonists drew heavily on the lore of non-Arab and pagan antiquity. McCants argues that authors in all three periods did not write about civilization's origins solely out of pure antiquarian interest--they also sought to address the social and political tensions of the day. The strategies they employed and the postcolonial dilemmas they confronted provide invaluable context for understanding how authors today use myth and history to locate themselves in the confusing aftermath of empire.
