The 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 Tables

Notes on Contributors

Tabula Gratulatoria

A Lifelong Passion for Islamic History

 Maaike van Berkel and Letizia Osti

Bibliography of Hugh N. Kennedy

Part 1 Caliphate and Power



1 A Ḥimyarite Restorationist Prophecy

 Michael Cook



2 Kinship, Dynasty and the Umayyads

 Andrew Marsham



3 He Reigned as Caliph; Then He Died: The Reigns of Caliphs Versified

 Geert Jan van Gelder



4 Versifying History in Abbasid Iraq: The Universal History in Verse of ʿAlī b. al-Jahm

 Harry Munt



5 How to Found an Islamic State: The Idrisids and the Rivals to the Caliphate in the Far Islamic West

 Corisande Fenwick



6 Rethinking “the Mamlūk State” with Ibn Khaldūn: “Mamlūkization” and ʿaṣabiyya in the Sultanate of Cairo

 Jo Van Steenbergen



7 Ibn Khaldūn and the Ḥafṣid Caliphate

 Allen Fromherz



Part 2 Economy and Society



8 A Three-Centered System: Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo in the Age of the Ayyubids

 R. Stephen Humphreys



9 Informal and Formal Trading Associations in Egypt and Ifrīqiya, 850–1150

 Chris Wickham



10 Good Governance in Theory and Practice: Comparing Abū Yūsuf’s Kitāb al-Kharāj with Papyri

 Petra M. Sijpesteijn



11 A Matter of Trust: On Some Principles of Governance in the Letters of Qurra b. Sharīk

 Arietta Papacostantinou



12 Calculating the Population of Samarra

 Alastair Northedge



13 Flour for the Caliph: Watermills in the “Land behind Mosul”

 Cristina Tonghini



14 Bedouin, Bandits and Caliphal Disappearance: A Reappraisal of the Qarāmiṭa and Their Success in Arabia

 Peter Webb



15 Zinā and muḥṣanāt in the Quran

 Richard A. Kimber



Part 3 Abbasids



16 Muslim Nostalgia: Longing for the Abbasid Past in the Mamluk Era

 Robert Irwin



17 The al-Mustanṣiriyya madrasa in Baghdad and Its Founder, al-Mustanṣir

 Carole Hillenbrand



18 Hārūn al-Rashīd in Premodern Arabic Literary Imaginary: Ideology of Monogamy, Harem Politics, and Court Intrigues

 Wen-Chin Ouyang



19 Representation of the Barmakids in Bodleian Manuscript Ouseley 217 and Other Monographs

 Pejman Firoozbakhsh and Arezou Azad



20 Eutychius of Alexandria Vindicated: Muslim Sources and Christian Arabic Historiography in the Early Islamic Empire

 Robert Hoyland



21 Bureaucrats on the Move: Messengers in Fourth/Tenth-Century Iraq

 Maaike van Berkel, Nadia Maria El Cheikh and Letizia Osti



22 Al-Ṭabarī’s Unacknowledged Debt to Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr

 Sarah Bowen Savant



23 Heraqleh: A New Interpretation

 Andrew Petersen



Part 4 Frontiers and the Others



24 The Interface between Byzantium and the Ilkhanids in Fourteenth-Century Book Painting

 Robert Hillenbrand



25 Exploring Europe through Medieval Islamic Folk Literature

 Niall Christie



26 The Lordship and Bishopric of Banyas in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1126–1164)

 Alan V. Murray



27 Fortresses and Frontiers: Castles and Northern Syria in the Sultanate of Cairo

 Angus D. Stewart



28 The Sasanian Fort of Pānkān

 Balázs Major



29 Negotiating the North: Armenian Perspectives on the Conquest Era

 Tim Greenwood



30 New Palaeoenvironmental Evidence on the Possible Impact on Agriculture of Early Arab-Islamic Raiding Activity on Crete

 John F. Haldon



Index