Alison Vacca is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A recipient of the Fulbright Islamic Civilization Initiative award and the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fund fellowship, her research focuses on intercultural transmission of historical texts, the use of Arabic sources to tell Armenian history, the relationship between the South Caucasus and Central Asia, and inter-communal conflict between Muslims and Christians under early Islamic rule.

• 1. Non-Persian provinces of Iran, non-Muslim provinces of Islam: an introduction to the Umayyad and 'Abbāsid North; 2. Whence the Umayyad North?: Byzantine, Sasanian and caliphal administrative geography of the North; 3. Lost Greek kings and hoodwinked Khazars: Sasanian and Byzantine legacy in the construction of caliphal frontiers in the North; 4. The so-called Marzbāns and the Northern Freemen: local leadership in the North from Sasanian to caliphal rule; 5. Caliphs, commanders and Catholicoi mechanisms to control the North under Byzantine, Sasanian and caliphal rule; 6. Taxing the dead and sealing the necks of the living: Sasanian and caliphal treaties and taxation in the North; 7. Collective historical amnesia: claiming Sasanian legacy and the case for a Parthian Intermezzo.

'In the super-complex literature on the history of Armenia and the Caucasus, Vacca's work is both the best general introduction and a significant contribution to on-going debates.' Hugh Kennedy, Journal of Islamic Studies