Umayyad and Abbasid History

This paper is an abject lesson in how communal memory can be formed hundreds of years after the fact through substituting knowledge with organized religion. A curious visitor read back the content of the dedicatory inscription inside the Dome of the Rock and took a transcript in Arabic – only that it happens in unexpected ways during a time far from any suspicion of a monumental fraud.

The primary evidence in this presentation demonstrates that mosaics and inscriptions are creations during the Ottoman era. The Templum Domini from the Crusades was replaced by Saladin. It also shows that architects of olden times achieved what modern architects long deemed impossible: they completely replaced the inner drum from the ground up to the cupola.

The 2025 update shifts Anastasius' testimony from the 690s to the 670s AD and aligns his observations from 30 years earlier with Umar's mosque project.

This course examines the interconnected medieval worlds of Europe, Africa, and Eurasia from the death of Muhammad to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. Content extends from the emergence of Islam to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. After a survey of late antiquity, Unit One of the semester, “The Shattering of Mediterranean Unity?” (632-1031), concentrates on the rise of Islam and the development of three distinct civilizations in the Mediterranean Basin: the Latin West, Byzantium, and the Caliphates. Unit Two, “Recovery and Revival” (1031-1227), examines the struggle between church and state, crusading and holy violence, the rise of towns and states, and trends in late medieval religion. Particular attention is given to women, religious minorities, and other marginalized groups. Unit Three (1215-1453) explores the close of the Middle Ages as signaled by the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the 1400s.

Ce court ouvrage d’adab, écrit par Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī (m. vers 400/1010), marque une étape essentielle dans l’histoire des relations entre les pouvoirs politique et judiciaire. À travers une série de récits pseudo-historiques, l’auteur entend démontrer que le souverain, avant même d’agir en justicier, doit accepter de se soumettre au jugement des hommes. Ce bref miroir des princes d’époque būyide vient couronner une longue évolution doctrinale issue des tensions entre le sommet de l’État et la judicature : en plaçant les califes sous l’autorité judiciaire des cadis, Abū Hilāl contribue à la désacralisation de l’institution califale et à la promotion d’une magistrature indépendante.

Mathieu Tillier, chercheur à l’Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo), propose ici l’édition du texte arabe, précédée d’une introduction et accompagnée d’une traduction française.

تلخيص: يمثّل كتاب أبي هلال العسكري (المتوفّى في حوالي عام 400 ه/1010 مـ) الذي بين أيدينا مرحلة هامّة في تاريخ العلاقات بين السلطات السياسية والقضائية. فإنّ المؤلّف يبيّن عبر تسلسل من الأخبار أنّ السلطان العادل لا يمكنه تجسّد السلطة القضائية إلّا بعد أن خضع لأحكام قضاته. فهذا الكتاب، المؤلَّف في العصر البويهي والمنتمي إلى جنس آداب الملوك، يتوّج تطوّراً نظريّاً هامّاً نجم عن توتّر العلاقات بين القضاة والدولة العبّاسية. فمن خلال وصفه للعديد من الخلفاء المستسلمين لأحكام القضاة، يسهم أبو هلال في إزالة هالة القدسيّة عن الخلافة والدفاع عن مؤسّسة قضائيّة مستقلّة.

قام ماتيو تيليه، وهو باحث في المعهد الفرنسي للشرق الأدنى، بتقديم الكتاب وتحقيقه قبل ترجمته إلى الفرنسية.

This short adab treatise by Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī (d. c. 400/1010) marks an important turning point in the relationship between political power and the judiciary in Islam. Written in the Būyid period as a concise mirror for princes, the work sanctions a doctrinal evolution that is the outcome of long-standing tension between the judiciary and the highest levels of the state. Using a series of pseudo-historical narratives, Abū Hilāl suggests that rulers should be prepared to submit to the adjudication of ordinary men. By presenting caliphs as being under the judicial authority of qāḍī-s, the author contributes to the de-sacralisation of the caliphate and to the promotion of an independent judiciary.

Mathieu Tillier, researcher at the Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo), presents a critical edition of the text with an introduction and a translation into French.

Mit über 100 000 Münztypen stellt der faszinierende Orient
das größte und zugleich anspruchsvollste Sammelgebiet
für den Durchschnittssammler dar. Das Lesen
mittelalterlicher Münzlegenden aus dem Orient bedarf einer
Einarbeitung, zu welcher dieser Beitrag motivieren soll. Grundkenntnisse
in den orientalischen Sprachen sind dabei fürs erste
noch nicht notwendig, einige Grundkenntnisse reichen aus, um
für den Anfang die wichtigsten Typen auseinanderhalten zu
können. Da die Entzifferung des Datums für eine Einordnung
der frühen islamischen Münzen am wichtigsten ist, wollen wir
als leichten Einstieg damit beginnen. Interesse lohnt sich, denn
in kaum einem anderen Sammelgebiet gibt es so viele unbekannte
Münzen und solch günstige Raritäten, welche eine Wertsteigerung
versprechen. Da die Sammlerschaft noch überschaubar
ist, kommen die meisten Sammler leicht und günstig an die
wichtigsten Typen und gelegentlich auch Raritäten.

The museum presents archaeological artifacts, architectural elements, and stucco decoration, providing a range of information to visitors about the site’s rich history and aspects of daily life in the Umayyad Palace and the adjacent agricultural estate. In addition, a series of 16 new site interpretation panels were also produced, covering the history of exploration, material culture, including ceramics, glass and coins. The reorganization of the museum was carried out within the framework of cooperation between the Palestinian Department of Antiquities, the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago in partnership with Al-Nasher Advertising Company and Medmack consulting Group and funded by Compete project.

http://reichert-verlag.de/autor/r/ritter_markus/9783895006791_der_umayyadische_palast_des_8_jahrhunderts_in_hirbat_al_minya_am_see_von_tiberias-detail

The book provides an archaeological and art historical study of the architecture and the architectural decoration of the remarkable palatial residence in Khirbat al-Minya at Lake Tiberias in northern Palestine, modern Israel. It constitutes the first monograph publication of finds from German excavations at the site in 1932–39 and their archaeological record, and it contributes to the discussion on Umayyad art and its relation to Early Byzantine and Late Antique art in the Bilad ash-Sham.

«برای علاقه‌مندان خواندن این کتاب در ایران: لطفاً با کتابفروشی فروغ با آدرس ایمیل آورده شده تماس بگیرید»

آرمین لنگرودی ـ کتاب "چگونه مسلمان شدیم؟" مبتنی بر پژوهش‌های جدیدی است که نظری کاملا متفاوت با نظر اسلام شناسان سنتی دارد؛ تاریخ طبری و سیره‌های ابن‌اسحاق و ابن‌هشام و احادیث، مبنای تاریخ نویسی سنتی اسلام هستند. پژوهش‌های جدید از یک‌طرف بریافته‌های تازه باستان‌شناسی تکیه‌دارند مانند سکه‌شناسی، سنگ‌نوشته‌ها و کتیبه‌ها و از طرفی با مطابقت‌‌دادن روایات اسلامی با منابع یونانی، سریانی و پارسی میانه صورت می‌گیرند. تاریخ سنتی اسلامی ـ همانطوری که در این کتاب خواهیم دید ـ به گونه‌ای، یک نگارش "پسا-زمانی" و بر همین مبنا خیال‌پردازانه و اُسطوره‌نگارانه بود. این وقایع‌نگاری، در گُذرِ اَدوار، به طور سیستماتیک، برنامه‌مَند و مُستمر به نفع حاکمان، مذهب، امامان و روحانیت مسلمان تغییر داده شده و بازسازی گردیده‌است. در این روشِ نگارشی، چیره‌گیِ داستانسرایی ایرانی نقش اولیه و بزرگی ایفا کرده، به طوری که ما در مواقعی، تفاوت بین داستانهای "شاهنامه" و "کارزار کربلا" و یا تفاوت شخصیت پهلوانانی همچون "علی" و "رستم" را نمی‌توانیم براحتی تشخیص دهیم. پیدایش اسلام همزمان است با دوران ساسانیان و جنگ‌های بی‌شمارِ آنها با امپراطوری روم شرقی (بیزانس). شکل‌گیری این مذهب می‌بایستی ضرورتاً با اتفاقات و شرایط سیاسی‌ـ‌اجتماعی این دوران، با کشمکش‌های این دو قدرت و با اعتقادات جاری مردم در آن زمان مرتبط باشد. به همین دلیل، بررسی مسائل "عقیدتی و ایدیولوژیکی" این دوران، جای گسترده‌تری را در این کتاب به خود اختصاص داده‌است. هدف نویسنده در این نوشته، نه بیانِ افسانه‌وارِ وقایع این دوران، بلکه فهم "مقبولیت و
مشروعیتی" است، که در زمان خود به این وقایع داده می‌شد. محتوای این مشروعیت، همانا توجیه مذهبی ـ عقیدتی این رُخدادها بود، که بعدها به شکل مذهب جدیدی بنام «اسلام» پدیدار گردید

Samarra's Archaeological City is the site of a powerful Islamic capital city that ruled over the provinces of the Abbasid Empire extending from Tunisia to Central Asia for a century. Located on both sides of the River Tigris 130 km north of Baghdad, the length of the site from north to south is 41.5 km; its width varying from 8 km to 4 km. It testifies to the architectural and artistic innovations that developed there and spread to the other regions of the Islamic world and beyond. The 9th-century Great Mosque and its spiral minaret are among the numerous remarkable architectural monuments of the site, 80% of which remain to be excavated.

This paper explores how the ninth-century Muslim Egyptian scholar Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam presents traditions about the origins of the 'Copts' and their historical actions in his 'Conquest of Egypt'. I argue that he exerts authorial agency in his collation in order to construct them as an inherently subservient community within Egypt, yet a community with particular divinely-ordained rights, and suggest reasons why this construction held significance for him within the context of political and social changes within ihs lifetime.

This is a presentation of beautiful Umayyad mosaics that originate from
Hisham’s palace (Qasr Hisham) in the oasis of Jericho in Palestine. These mosaics date from the first half of the eighth century, during the time of Umayyad Caliphate of the early Islamic period. Some visitors have had the privilege of seeing the mosaics revealed, but no one has experienced the impact of all these pavements since they were first excavated in the 1930s and 1940s. A few mosaics have been published in the original presentation of Hamilton and Grabar (1959), but these were only very fine aquarelle paintings taken from the originals. In 2010 the Palestinian Department of Antiquities uncovered, cleaned, and assessed the state of conservation of all these mosaics. Then a series of high quality digital photographs was prepared by a team from the Department, composed of M. Diab, I. Hamdan, N. Khatib, S. Ghazal, R. Sharaia, under the direction of H. Taha.  We are pleased to offer the present selection as an opportunity to appreciate this triumph in early Islamic art. These images speak for themselves

Sepenimggalnya khalifah Ali bin Abi Thalib, kekhalifahan Islam dipegang oleh Muawiyah bin Abu Sufyan. Seorang tokoh yang kecewa atas kebijaksanaan yang diambil oleh Ali bin Abi Thalib dalam mengambil keputusan terhadap kasus pembunuhan khalifah Ustman bin Affan. Beliau juga merupakan pendiri dinasti Umayyah. Dinasti Umayyah didirikan oleh cara yang tidak demokratis.
Dengan Berakhirnya kekuasaan khalifah Ali bin Abi Thalib tersebut mengakibatkan lahirnya kekuasan yang berpola dinasti atau kerajaan.  Bentuk pemerintahan dinasti atau kerajaan yang cenderung bersifat kekuasaan feodal dan turun temurun, hanya untuk mempertahankan kekuasaan, adanya unsur otoriter, kekuasaan mutlak, kekerasan, diplomasi yang dibumbui dengan tipu daya, dan hilangnya keteladanan Nabi untuk musyawarah dalam menentukan pemimpin merupakan gambaran umum tentang kekuasaan dinasti sesudah khulafaur rasyidin.
Dinasti Umayyah merupakan kerajaan Islam pertama yang didirikan oleh Mu’awiyah bin Abi Sufyan. Perintisan dinasti ini dilakukannya dengan cara menolak pembai’atan terhadap khalifah Ali bin Abi Thalib, kemudian ia memilih berperang dan melakukan perdamaian dengan pihak Ali dengan strategi politik yang sangat menguntungkan baginya. Jatuhnya Ali dan naiknya Mu’awiyah juga disebabkan keberhasilan pihak khawarij (kelompok yang menentang dari Ali) membunuh khalifah Ali, meskipun kemudian tampak kekuasaan dipegang oleh putranya Hasan, namun tanpa dukungan yang kuat dan kondisi politik yang kacau akhirnya kepemimpinannya pun hanya bertahan sampai beberapa bulan.
Pada akhirnya Hasan menyerahkan kepemimpinan kepada Mu’awiyah, namun dengan perjanjian bahwa pemilihan kepemimpinan sesudahnya adalah diserahkan kepada ummat Islam. Perjanjian tersebut dibuat pada tahun 661 M / 41 H dan dikenal dengan nama jama’ah karena perjanjian ini mempersatukan ummat Islam menjadi satu kepemimpinan, namun secara tidak langsung mengubah pola pemerintahan menjadi kerajaan. Meskipun begitu, munculnya Dinasti Umayyah 
memberikan babak baru dalam kemajuan peradaban Islam, hal itu dibuktikan dengan sumbangan-sumbangannya dalam perluasan wilayah, kemajuan pendidikan, kebudayaan dan lain sebagainya.

Sebagai sebuah dinasti, kekhalifahan Bani Abbasiyah yang berkuasa lebih dari lima abad, telah banyak memberikan sumbangan positif bagi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan peradaban Islam. Dari sekitar 37 orang khalifah yang pernah berkuasa, terdapat beberapa orang khalifah yang benar-benar memiliki kepedulian untuk mengembangkan ilmu pengetahuan dan peradaban Islam, serta berbagai bidang lainnya, seperti bidangbidang sosial dan budaya.

In this essay, I will assess the motif of kissing and flirting at the Kaʿba and its sanctified environs (e.g., al-Ṣafā, al-Marwa, Minā, al-Muzdalifah), specifically. I will also generally treat the employment of Islamic religious language (astaghfiru ʼllāh, ayyām ʿaẓīmat al-ḥurma), intimate spaces (miḥrāb, masjid), and symbols (al-ḥajar, al-maqām) in the articulation of (sensual) love in Umayyad Arabic ghazal poetry.  This particular motif and subject matter can be observed for comparative purposes in several early prominent poets — e.g., Abū Nuwās (d. between 198/813 and 200/815) and Ibn al-Rūmī (ca. 283/896).  For now, one is best served by approaching the problem chronologically. As a case study for examining the admixture of amorous activity and religious space, I herewith focus exclusively on the poetry of ʿUmar b. Abī Rabīʿa, the prince of the Ḥijāzī school of ghazal, as he praises, pursues, and even kisses women within the Kaʿba precinct.

[Ахмад ибн Фадлан]. Книга Ахмада ибн Фадлана / Перевод с арабского и примечания Вяч. С. Кулешова // Путешествие Ибн Фадлана: Волжский путь от Багдада до Булгара : Каталог выставки / Государственный Эрмитаж. Государственный историко-архитектурный и художественный музей-заповедник «Казанский Кремль». Научный редакторы А. И. Торгоев, И. Р. Ахмедов. М.: Издательский дом Марджани, 2016. — С. 18–47.

The present study aims to contribute to the quest for the origins of belief in the eschatological figure of the Sufyānī, a matter of hot debate since the late nineteenth century. To this end, three different bodies of evidence are produced and analysed: reports indicating that the Sufyānī was, indeed, thought of as a redemptive personality in some Syrian quarters, traditions on him in the Muslim endtimes literature that contain an ex eventu pronouncement, and reports concerning the propaganda activities of the first Sufyānī claimant, Abū Muḥammad Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yazīd ‘al-Sufyānī’, in the historical record. Making use of hitherto unavailable sources and looking afresh at the rest, it is argued that the myth of the Sufyānī emerged during the counterrevolutionary revolt of Abū Muḥammad al-Sufyānī in 132 AH, with vague residues of it traceable to his earlier military activities, against the Umayyad caliph Yazīd III, in 126 AH.

Dirhams or medieval Islamic silver coins offer a unique and indispensable primary source for the study of many fundamental issues pertaining to Afro-Eurasian history during the Middle Ages that cannot be studied using any other evidence. When found in hoards, or deposits of five or more dirhams, they are especially useful, since historical numismatists can study the profiles of the contents of the hoards to discern numerous questions. Thus, the 1656 hoards, containing almost half a million dirhams, recorded to date show that close to three quarters of them were deposited not in the Muslim world, but in northern Europe from c .800 to c .1100 and that they were brought there mostly via Russia. This finding brings many questions that need answering in the future. One of the key conclusions of the present study is that this silver gravitated to silver-scarce northern Europe and was exchanged for items in great demand in the 'House of Islam' -furs and slaves.

900 that presents a bold thesis on the role of long-distance slave-trading in the formation of the medieval economy. McCormick argued that something significant happened in the middle of the eighth century as Italian merchants began exporting other Europeans south and eastward to the 'Abbasid Caliphate. Each of the four papers presents a very different reaction to the ideas that McCormick pioneered. The first two papers look at aspects of slavery and the slave trade before the proposed shift; Noel Lenski examines the importance of slavery in seventh-century Spain while Thomas MacMaster looks at the evidence for the exportation of slaves from Italy itself in the centuries before McCormick's proposed shift. If these first two papers examine the evidence for a shift in the slave trade, the second half of the session will look at some of the results of that shift. In the third paper, Matthew Gordon looks at Islamic evidence (such as it is) for the 'voracious appetite' for slaves within the Abbasid Caliphate asserted by McCormick while, in the fourth paper, Matthew Delvaux will discuss evidence for the 'return' on the slave trade with the Islamic world seen in the archaeology of Northern Europe. These four papers will present a series of responses to one of the more important recent ideas in early medieval social and economic history and each approaches the question from a very different angle. It is hoped that these papers will both expand knowledge and suggest some of the directions that McCormick's work has suggested. McCormick argues that the Mediterranean economy emerged from a period of relative fallow in the post-Roman period to rebuild itself through commercial exchange focused in no small part on the slave trade in the Carolingian period. The hunger for slaves in the eastern Mediterranean drove a burgeoning market in long-distance trade that McCormick has shown to be well documented in hagiographic and documentary sources. This picture has won a degree of confirmation from numismatic evidence from eastern Europe which confirms the importance of the long-distance trade in slaves via the Vistula/Dniester/Black Sea nexus as well. This paper proposes to provide further context to this picture by emphasizing the ongoing importance of slavery in the post Roman period in the western Mediterranean, and particularly in Visigothic territories in southern Gaul and Spain (fifth through eighth centuries CE). The scanty source record for the period has been greatly enhanced by

The period from the reign of the Christian Emperor Heraclius (610-641 C.E.) to the rise of Islam is a unique and largely neglected historical era that witnessed rapidly changing interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Many Jews believed this time of declining Christian dominance and the ministry of Muhammad (ca. 610-632 C.E.) marked a new age of history. During the seventh century C.E., Jewish communities combined apocalyptic beliefs with mysticism to explain Islamic rule. Most of these apocalypses contain visions attributed to Jewish mystics that view the Arab conquest as one of the signs of the end of days. They show that the Jewish community of Palestine used a variety of mystical traditions, apocalyptic calculations, and messianic beliefs to explain this turbulent period when Christian rule in the country collapsed. Christians likewise used similar traditions to account for the appearance and dominance of Islam throughout the Middle East. This paper examines a few Jewish and Christian texts that document this historical period, which are among the oldest literary witnesses to Muhammad and the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 C.E.). They are not only interesting for the light they shed on ancient Jewish views of Islam, but they also document a unique form of Judeo-messianism as well as Judaism’s early relationship with the Muslim community in Palestine.

Pre-Print, to be published in: Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger/Falko Daim (eds.), Sasanian Elements in Byzantine, Caucasian and Islamic Art and Culture, forthcoming Mainz 2018.

Imperial formations have been identified as “regimes of entanglements”, in which “certain structural and habitual circumstances (…) allow for the establishment of long term linkages” between individuals and places due to the mobility of people, object and ideas (Mulsow – Rübke 2013, p. 17; cited after Schuppert 2014 [in German]). These regimes have an enduring impact on the routes and modes of mobility across larger distances even after the fragmentation or collapse of an empire.
This paper will present the Sasanian Empire as such a “regime of entanglement”, also for the first centuries after the integration of its territories in the Early Islamic Empire. The focus will be on three “edges”– the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf – which were located at the peripheries of the (post)Sasanian World, but central for processes of exchange with neighbouring people and cultures. As will be demonstrated, the movements and migrations between and across these edges provide also the background for the mobility of objects and elements of Sasanian art and culture across entire Afro-Eurasia and the first Millennium CE.

Eighth- and ninth-century Armenia and Caucasian Albania were largely Christian provinces of the then Islamic Caliphate. Although they formed a part of the Iranian cultural sphere, they are often omitted from studies of both Islamic and Iranian history. In this book, Alison Vacca uses Arabic and Armenian texts to explore these Christian provinces as part of the Caliphate, identifying elements of continuity from Sasanian to caliphal rule, and, more importantly, expounding on significant moments of change in the administration of the Marwanid and early Abbasid periods. Vacca examines historical narrative and the construction of a Sasanian cultural memory during the late ninth and tenth centuries to place the provinces into a broader context of Iranian rule. This book will be of benefit to historians of Islam, Iran and the Caucasus, but will also appeal to those studying themes of Iranian identity and Muslim-Christian relations in the Near East.

Within some of the earliest textual and material evidence for the history of Islam, pilgrimage appears as an important ritual of devotion, identity, and community. Yet modern scholarship has given little attention to early Muslims' sensory experiences of pilgrimage sites and what they physically encountered while there. This article examines the importance of smell within Islamic pilgrimage practices of the first/seventh and second/eighth centuries. Drawing upon literary and material evidence, I reconstruct several olfactory components of pilgrimage in this period, including intensive usage of perfume and incense at pilgrimage destinations such as the Kaʿba and the Dome of the Rock, as well as pilgrims' collection and ingestion of scented materials from these locations. I then argue that the prominence of pleasing aromas at these sacred spaces is connecting to early Islamic ideas about the proximity of paradise to these pilgrimage sites.

Ortaçağ iktisadi hayatında toprak, devlet maliyesinin, toplumun yiyecek tüketimin ve genel olarak ekonominin temelidir. Toprak ve vergiye ilişkin alınan politikalar, devlet maliyesini derinden etkilediği kadar, toplumsal hayat üzerinde de sarsıcı tesirler bırakmaktadır. Abbasilerin gerileme sürecine girdiği IX. Asrın ikinci yarısında Ahmed ibn Müdebbir et-Türki” adlı bir maliye katibinin, başta Irak merkez olmak üzere Şam, Ürdün, Cezire ve Mısır’da bir dizi toprak ve vergi reformu yaptığı dikkat çekmektedir. Bu reformlar aynı zamanda geniş çaplı tepkilere yol açar. Tıpkı Osmanlılardaki tahrir çalışmaları gibi, bu reform (ta’dil) çalışması sırasında bölgedeki üretim şekilleri ve çeşitleri, gelir düzeyi, nüfus yapısı, hazineye irad edilen toplam gelir miktarı ve bu vergi icmallerindeki dalgalanmalar, yeni konulan vergi çeşitleri vs. gibi ekonomik ve mali hayatın pek çok yönüne ışık tutan bilgiler ortaya çıkmaktadır. Ayrıca İbn Müdebbir Tolunoğlu Ahmed Mısır’a atandığı zaman Mısır’da bu reform çalışmalarını yapıyordu. Mali gücü elinde tutan İbn Müdebbir Mısır’dan çıkarılmadan Tolunoğlu devleti müstakilleşememiştir. Bütün bu gelişmeleri İbn Müdebbir’in biyoğrafisini temel alarak bir devrin iktisadi sürecini inceleyeceğiz.