The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East

Hugh Kennedy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040249505
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The essays in this volume deal with the history of the Middle East from c.550 to 1000 AD. There are three main themes: Syria in Late Antiquity and the changes and continuities with the early Islamic period; relations between Muslims and the Byzantine Empire from the 8th to the 11th centuries; and the development of government and the economy in the early caliphate. Throughout there is an emphasis on social and economic trends and the integration of written and archaeological evidence to elucidate the complex developments in this pivotal part of the world. In different ways all the papers discuss the formation of the Islamic world and the way in which the legacy of Antiquity, economic, social and cultural, affected the emergence of what we think of as this "Islamic World". These papers will be of interest to historians of Islam and Byzantium but also western mediaevalists interested in comparing processes of change at opposite ends of the Mediterranean.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• I From Polis to Madina: urban change in late Antique and early Islamic Syria
• II The last century of Byzantine Syria: a reinterpretation
• III Gerasa and Scythopolis: power and patronage in the Byzantine cities of Bilād al-Sham
• IV The impact of Muslim rule on the pattern of rural settlement in Syria
• V From Antiquity to Islam in the cities of al-Andalus and al-Mashriq
• VI The Melkite church from the Islamic conquest to the Crusades: continuity and adaptation in the Byzantine legacy
• VII Antioch: from Byzantium to Islam and back again
• VIII The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth centuries: military organisation and society in the borderlands (with Dr John Haldon)
• IX Byzantine-Arab diplomacy in the Near East from the Islamic conquests to the mid eleventh century
• X Central government and provincial élites in the early ‘Abbāsid caliphate
• XI Military pay and the economy of the early Islamic state
• XII Caliphs and their chroniclers in the middle Abbasid period (third/ninth century)
• XIII The Uqaylids of Mosul: the origins and structure of a nomad dynasty
• XIV The decline and fall of the first Muslim empire
• Index