Historian of Islam at Work

Maaike van Berkel is Professor of Medieval History at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Her research focuses on administration, communication, and court and urban history in the medieval Middle East.Letizia Osti is Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Milan. She has published on classical Arabic prose and narrative techniques in biographical collections, historiography, literature, and intersections thereof.

• List of Figures and TablesNotes on ContributorsTabula GratulatoriaA Lifelong Passion for Islamic HistoryMaaike van Berkel and Letizia OstiBibliography of Hugh N. KennedyPart 1 Caliphate and Power1 A Ḥimyarite Restorationist ProphecyMichael Cook2 Kinship, Dynasty and the UmayyadsAndrew Marsham3 He Reigned as Caliph; Then He Died: The Reigns of Caliphs VersifiedGeert Jan van Gelder4 Versifying History in Abbasid Iraq: The Universal History in Verse of ʿAlī b. al-JahmHarry Munt5 How to Found an Islamic State: The Idrisids and the Rivals to the Caliphate in the Far Islamic WestCorisande Fenwick6 Rethinking “the Mamlūk State” with Ibn Khaldūn: “Mamlūkization” and ʿaṣabiyya in the Sultanate of CairoJo Van Steenbergen7 Ibn Khaldūn and the Ḥafṣid CaliphateAllen FromherzPart 2 Economy and Society8 A Three-Centered System: Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo in the Age of the AyyubidsR. Stephen Humphreys9 Informal and Formal Trading Associations in Egypt and Ifrīqiya, 850–1150Chris Wickham10 Good Governance in Theory and Practice: Comparing Abū Yūsuf’s Kitāb al-Kharāj with PapyriPetra M. Sijpesteijn11 A Matter of Trust: On Some Principles of Governance in the Letters of Qurra b. SharīkArietta Papacostantinou12 Calculating the Population of SamarraAlastair Northedge13 Flour for the Caliph: Watermills in the “Land behind Mosul”Cristina Tonghini14 Bedouin, Bandits and Caliphal Disappearance: A Reappraisal of the Qarāmiṭa and Their Success in ArabiaPeter Webb15 Zinā and muḥṣanāt in the QuranRichard A. KimberPart 3 Abbasids16 Muslim Nostalgia: Longing for the Abbasid Past in the Mamluk EraRobert Irwin17 The al-Mustanṣiriyya madrasa in Baghdad and Its Founder, al-MustanṣirCarole Hillenbrand18 Hārūn al-Rashīd in Premodern Arabic Literary Imaginary: Ideology of Monogamy, Harem Politics, and Court IntriguesWen-Chin Ouyang19 Representation of the Barmakids in Bodleian Manuscript Ouseley 217 and Other MonographsPejman Firoozbakhsh and Arezou Azad20 Eutychius of Alexandria Vindicated: Muslim Sources and Christian Arabic Historiography in the Early Islamic EmpireRobert Hoyland21 Bureaucrats on the Move: Messengers in Fourth/Tenth-Century IraqMaaike van Berkel, Nadia Maria El Cheikh and Letizia Osti22 Al-Ṭabarī’s Unacknowledged Debt to Ibn Abī Ṭāhir ṬayfūrSarah Bowen Savant23 Heraqleh: A New InterpretationAndrew PetersenPart 4 Frontiers and the Others24 The Interface between Byzantium and the Ilkhanids in Fourteenth-Century Book PaintingRobert Hillenbrand25 Exploring Europe through Medieval Islamic Folk LiteratureNiall Christie26 The Lordship and Bishopric of Banyas in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1126–1164)Alan V. Murray27 Fortresses and Frontiers: Castles and Northern Syria in the Sultanate of CairoAngus D. Stewart28 The Sasanian Fort of PānkānBalázs Major29 Negotiating the North: Armenian Perspectives on the Conquest EraTim Greenwood30 New Palaeoenvironmental Evidence on the Possible Impact on Agriculture of Early Arab-Islamic Raiding Activity on CreteJohn F. HaldonIndex