Late Antique Responses To The Arab Conquests

Late Antique Responses to the Arab Conquests is a showcase of new discoveries in an exciting and rapidly developing field: the study of the transition from Late Antiquity to Early Islam. The Arab conquests are shown to have changed both the Arabian conquerors and the conquered.

This book offers a number of innovative studies on the three main communities of the East Mediterranean lands--Muslims, Jews and Christians--in the aftermath of the seventh-century Arab conquests. It focuses principally on how the Christian majority were affected by and adapted to their loss of political power in such arenas as language use, identity construction, church building, pilgrimage, and the role of women. Attention is also paid to how the Muslim community defined itself, administered justice, and regulated relations with non-Muslims. This book will be important for anyone interested in the ways in which the cultures and traditions of the late antique Mediterranean world were transformed in the course of the seventh to tenth centuries by the establishment of the new Muslim political elite and the gradual emergence of an Islamic Empire.

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 afield 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 of time is a question that has perplexed historians for centuries. Most recent popular accounts have been based almost solely on the early Muslim sources, which were composed centuries later for the purpose of demonstrating that God had chosen the Arabs as his vehicle for spreading Islam throughout the world. In this ground-breaking new history, distinguished Middle East expert Robert G. Hoyland assimilates not only the rich biographical and geographical information of the early Muslim sources but also the many non-Arabic sources, contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous with the conquests. The story of the conquests traditionally begins with the revelation of Islam to Muhammad. In God's Path, however, begins with a broad picture of the Late Antique world prior to the Prophet's arrival, a world dominated by the two superpowers of Byzantium and Sasanian Persia, "the two eyes of the world." In between these empires, in western (Saudi) Arabia, emerged a distinct Arab identity, which helped weld its members 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--also played important 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 and accessible, In God's Path presents a pioneering new narrative of one the great transformational periods in all of history.

This book offers a radical perspective on what are conventionally called the Islamic Conquests of the seventh century. Placing these earthshattering events firmly in the context of Late Antiquity, it argues that many of the men remembered as the fanatical agents of Muḥammad probably did not know who the prophet was and had, in fact, previously fought for Rome or Persia. The book applies to the study of the collapse of the Roman Near East techniques taken from the historiography of the fall of the Roman West. Through a comparative analysis of medieval Arabic and European sources combined with insights from frontier studies, it argues that the two falls of Rome involved processes far more similar than traditionally thought. It presents a fresh approach to the century that witnessed the end of the ancient world, appealing to students of Roman and medieval history, Islamic Studies, and advanced scholars alike.

A sweeping historical account of the Later Roman Empire incorporating the latest scholarly research In the newly revised 3rd edition of A History of the Later Roman Empire, 284-700, distinguished historians Geoffrey Greatrex and Stephen Mitchell deliver a thoroughly up-to-date discussion of the Later Roman Empire. It includes tables of information, numerous illustrations, maps, and chronological overviews. As the only single volume covering Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period, the book is designed as a comprehensive historical handbook covering the entire span between the Roman Empire to the Islamic conquests. The third edition is a significant expansion of the second edition—published in 2015—and includes two new chapters covering the seventh century. The rest of the work has been updated and revised, providing readers with a sweeping historical survey of the struggles, triumphs, and disasters of the Roman Empire, from the accession of the emperor Diocletian in AD 284 to the closing years of the seventh century. It also offers: A thorough description of the massive political and military transformations in Rome’s western and eastern empires Comprehensive explorations of the latest research on the Later Roman Empire Practical discussions of the tumultuous period ushered in by the Arab conquests Extensive updates, revisions, and corrections of the second edition Perfect for undergraduate and postgraduate students of ancient, medieval, early European, and Near Eastern history, A History of the Later Roman Empire, 284-700 will also benefit lay readers with an interest in the relevant historical period and students taking a survey course involving the late Roman Empire.

Winner of the 2021 Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society Book Prize Of the available sources for Islamic history between the seventh and eighth centuries CE, few are of greater importance than al-Baladhuri's Kitab Futuh al-buldan (The Book of the Conquest of Lands). Written in Arabic by a ninth-century Muslim scholar working at the court of the 'Abbasid caliphs, the Futuh's content covers many important matters at the beginning of Islamic history. It informs its audience of the major events of the early Islamic conquests, the settlement of Muslims in the conquered territories and their experiences therein, and the origins and development of the early Islamic state. Questions over the text's construction, purpose, and reception, however, have largely been ignored in current scholarship. This is despite both the text's important historical material and its crucial early date of creation. It has become commonplace for researchers to turn to the Futuh for information on a specific location or topic, but to ignore the grander – and, in many ways, more straightforward – questions over the text's creation and limitations. This book looks to correct these gaps in knowledge by investigating the context, form, construction, content, and early reception history of al-Baladhuri's text.

This book contains papers in English, French and Italian

This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, now covering the period 395-700 AD, provides both a detailed introduction to late antiquity and a direct challenge to conventional views of the end of the Roman empire. Leading scholar Averil Cameron focuses on the changes and continuities in Mediterranean society as a whole before the Arab conquests. Two new chapters survey the situation in the east after the death of Justinian and cover the Byzantine wars with Persia, religious developments in the eastern Mediterranean during the life of Muhammad, the reign of Heraclius, the Arab conquests and the establishment of the Umayyad caliphate. Using the latest in-depth archaeological evidence, this all-round historical and thematic study of the west and the eastern empire has become the standard work on the period. The new edition takes account of recent research on topics such as the barbarian ‘invasions’, periodization, and questions of decline or continuity, as well as the current interest in church councils, orthodoxy and heresy and the separation of the miaphysite church in the sixth-century east. It contains a new introductory survey of recent scholarship on the fourth century AD, and has a full bibliography and extensive notes with suggestions for further reading. The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity 395-700 AD continues to be the benchmark for publications on the history of Late Antiquity and is indispensible to anyone studying the period.