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Ethnography, Migration, History of Political Thought, History of Iran, Diaspora, Syria, and 27 morePatristics and Late Antiquity, Early Islamic History, Late Antique Hagiography, Anthropology, Islamic Studies, Late Antiquity, Near Eastern Studies, Syriac Studies, Syriac Christianity, History of Elites, Sasanian History, Late Antique and Medieval Historiography, Early Islam, Immigration, Medieval Central Asia and Iran, Ecclesiastical History, Kalam (Islamic Theology), Postcolonial Studies, Medieval Islamic History, Muslim Minorities, Samaritan Studies, Samanids, Abbasid History, Buyids (Islamic History), Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Hadith Studies, and Greek Literature edit
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This article argues that the Chronicle of Seert preserves an ʿAbbāsidera re-imagination of the correspondence between the Prophet Muh ammad and the Christians of the Arabian Peninsula. These narratives were responses to Muslim efforts... more
This article argues that the Chronicle of Seert preserves an ʿAbbāsidera re-imagination of the correspondence between the Prophet Muh ammad and the Christians of the Arabian Peninsula. These narratives were responses to Muslim efforts to produce consistent rules for non-Muslims in the caliphate with regard to tax levels and political rights. They draw on knowledge of the Qurʾān and the Sīra to assert better rights for Christians that were rooted in alleged historical precedents.
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A cosmopolitan environment offers challenges for cultural groups that seek to reproduce themselves in the next generation. British Pakistanis have not seen the kind of breakdown in marriage boundaries that characterizes other postwar... more
A cosmopolitan environment offers challenges for cultural groups that seek to reproduce themselves in the next generation. British Pakistanis have not seen the kind of breakdown in marriage boundaries that characterizes other postwar migrants to Britain. The article examines how this pattern is linked to commitments to transnational marriage, which promise a source of future remittances to Pakistan. However, the need to maintain these links has exaggerated the importance of religious and moral display for British Pakistanis, and these have wider effects in the policing of social contact with outsiders and the negative portrayal of the sexual morality of non-Pakistanis.
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This paper argues that the history and archaeology of Muslims in Europe has been caught between the urge to exclude Muslims from nationalist historiographies and the wish to generate apologetic histories that celebrate a Muslim past. I... more
This paper argues that the history and archaeology of Muslims in Europe has been caught between the urge to exclude Muslims from nationalist historiographies and the wish to generate apologetic histories that celebrate a Muslim past. I advocate Marshall Hodgson's coinage of the Islamicate as a way of distinguishing between textual traditions that are being put into practice and the dissemination of ideas and practices within the networks of Arabic-speakers or inhabitants of the.caliphate and their trading partners.
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This paper1 describes the reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak on social media in Iran, Syria and Pakistan. In particular, we focus on issues of the place of religion in society, on international relations and on trust between society and... more
This paper1 describes the reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak on social media in Iran, Syria and Pakistan. In particular, we focus on issues of the place of religion in society, on international relations and on trust between society and government, where these issues have been invoked in the discussion of the epidemic. We conclude with timelines for the early phases of the epidemic in the three countries.
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This draft paper summarises recent scholarship on the Jafnids and the Nasrids, the client kings through which the Romans, Persians and Himyarites sought to dominate the inhabitants of Arabia. It seeks to situate the the development of the... more
This draft paper summarises recent scholarship on the Jafnids and the Nasrids, the client kings through which the Romans, Persians and Himyarites sought to dominate the inhabitants of Arabia. It seeks to situate the the development of the empire of Medina into the context of the influence of the great powers onto the peninsula. The paper was presented in the 2015 Nangeroni workshop and is scheduled to be published in an edited volume by Guillaume Dye. Comments are very welcome.
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This paper is part of collection edited by Guillaume Dye that arises from the Nangeroni workshop on early Islam held in 2015. It responds to attempts to situate parts of the Quran into contexts that are more or less informed by... more
This paper is part of collection edited by Guillaume Dye that arises from the Nangeroni workshop on early Islam held in 2015. It responds to attempts to situate parts of the Quran into contexts that are more or less informed by Christianity by assessing the evidence of hagiographies written by different Christian confessions. Draft document: Please do not cite without permission, comments welcome.
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Wilfred Cantwell Smith commented that, alone of modern world religions, Islam is conscious of the world being divided into many religions from the outset. He argues that Islam launched itself into a world that already had religious... more
Wilfred Cantwell Smith commented that, alone of modern world religions, Islam is conscious of the world being divided into many religions from the outset. He argues that Islam launched itself into a world that already had religious traditions, but did so with a developed self-consciousness that allowed it to be conceived of as a closed system. In this sense, he argued, it was quite unlike a movement like Manichaeism, which emphasized its continuity with and inheritance from other traditions. 1 Islam was, moreover, also different from Christianity, in that the Gospels have little sense of Christianity as a distinct religion: following Jesus is a new form of discipleship, but it is unclear how this relates to older forms of communal membership or scripture. 'Muhammad seems to know what he was speaking of when he spoke of Islam, but it is hazy thinking to speak of Guru Nanak or Jesus or Lao Tzu as founders of religions.' 2 Cantwell Smith was writing some seventy years ago and we might wish to issue several caveats over his statements. We would now be much more wary of speaking of a single Islam, or to equate it so straightforwardly with Muhammad's 'revelation'. We might instead separate the thought-world of the Qur'an from the traditions that grew from it (or claimed to grow from it) in Kufa, Basra and Damascus, and then in Baghdad and a host of other centres of scholarship. 3 Fred Donner (2010) has recently proposed that Muhammad presided over a much more heterogenous community than has 1 Cantwell Smith 1964: 81-86, 93-94.
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A major survival from the Roman Near East that endured within the ca-liphate was the episcopal and monastic networks making up the different Christian denominations. This article draws on the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian to illustrate... more
A major survival from the Roman Near East that endured within the ca-liphate was the episcopal and monastic networks making up the different Christian denominations. This article draws on the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian to illustrate how the caliphate became an increasingly hostile environment for Christian landed lay elites, incentivizing powerful families to take roles in the state's administration or within the church. Using examples from the Jacobite church, I argue that the state became increasingly involved in church gover-nance, by publicly endorsing the patriarch and his ability to raise revenues from Christians, and by supporting him with state troops against rival clerics.
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In an educational environment where interest in Arabic and Islam is growing, I ask the place of revisionist/critical approaches to early Islam in Higher Education. This paper uses 15 semi-structured interviews with Lecturers in early... more
In an educational environment where interest in Arabic and Islam is growing, I ask the place of revisionist/critical approaches to early Islam in Higher Education. This paper uses 15 semi-structured interviews with Lecturers in early Islam to investigate how they treat controversial subject matter in the classroom. The paper examines how the different approaches taken by lecturers are linked to different kinds of academic training, and asks what kinds of approach are suited to different student demographics. It concludes by suggesting how critical ways of teaching this subject are linked to new approaches in interfaith engagement, which acknowledge the political context for the development of Scriptures.
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We advocate the use of the terms 'Persian Arabs' rather than Lakhmids or Nasrids to describe this group of Persian allies (as opposed to their kings). We situate their history against the struggle between Rome and Persia; the growth of... more
We advocate the use of the terms 'Persian Arabs' rather than Lakhmids or Nasrids to describe this group of Persian allies (as opposed to their kings). We situate their history against the struggle between Rome and Persia; the growth of Christianity and the dissemination of influence in the Arab peninsula.
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This article analyses the reception of the story of Constantine in Iraqi Christian circles in the ninth and tenth centuries. It situates the use of the story against the broader historiographic context in which the history of the Roman... more
This article analyses the reception of the story of Constantine in Iraqi Christian circles in the ninth and tenth centuries. It situates the use of the story against the broader historiographic context in which the history of the Roman church was imported wholesale into Iraq in the sixth century to buttress its identity as an orthodox church. It argues that the legacy of Eusebius was respected but not followed in its details. Instead, the memory of Constantine and his family was dominated by pseudo-histories composed in Syriac in Edessa in the fifth and sixth centuries. Within an Islamicate environment, Constantine was remembered chiefly for his role in establishing a Nicene orthodoxy, which was shared by all major Christian confessions in the caliphate, and for his role in the cult of the True Cross, a strong symbol that continued to divide Christians and Muslims.
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This paper was presented at the IOE in 2015 and will be submitted for the Proceedings. Comments are very welcome. It considers the challenges of teaching the seventh century to Muslim students and the advantages of the close reading of... more
This paper was presented at the IOE in 2015 and will be submitted for the Proceedings. Comments are very welcome.
It considers the challenges of teaching the seventh century to Muslim students and the advantages of the close reading of historical sources, especially the Sira, the biography of Muhammad.
It considers the challenges of teaching the seventh century to Muslim students and the advantages of the close reading of historical sources, especially the Sira, the biography of Muhammad.
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Survey of historical writing by and about Syriac-speaking peoples. It aims to lay equal stress on West Syrian and East Syrian contributions. And it emphasises the fact that both groups wrote as subjects of larger imperial systems (Roman,... more
Survey of historical writing by and about Syriac-speaking peoples. It aims to lay equal stress on West Syrian and East Syrian contributions. And it emphasises the fact that both groups wrote as subjects of larger imperial systems (Roman, Persian, Arab), of which they were just a part.
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This article examines how Christians who had been deprived of the direct sponsorship of the state articulated their claims for political and religious freedom. I examine four cases from the fifth and sixth century in the Eastern Roman... more
This article examines how Christians who had been deprived of the direct sponsorship of the state articulated their claims for political and religious freedom. I examine four cases from the fifth and sixth century in the Eastern Roman Empire and Sasanian Iran. Here I argue that Scriptural models provided an important reservoir of political ideas that could be used to undermine state authority, whether to underscore the conditional nature of Roman claims to authority or to deny an equality of religious freedom to non-‐‑ Christian co-‐‑ citizens.
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This article sets out the layers of the (c.10/11) Chronicle of Seert. I argue that there were bursts of activity by historians in the Church of the East in c.410, c.480 and c.530, and then consistently from the mid-sixth century. While... more
This article sets out the layers of the (c.10/11) Chronicle of Seert. I argue that there were bursts of activity by historians in the Church of the East in c.410, c.480 and c.530, and then consistently from the mid-sixth century. While early phases produced a core narrative centred around the catholicoi, from the late sixth century historians sought to juxtapose the deeds of catholicoi with those of scholars, Roman churchmen, Persian shahs, Roman emperors and monastic founders. I gather the scanty evidence for individual historians such as Bar Sahde and Daniel Bar Maryam. I conclude by classifying different sections of the Chronicle according to source type. This is the pre-print version.
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Pre-print version.
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Reflections on the position of the Alawites at the beginning of the Syrian war.
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This short piece places ISIS's acts of destruction into the context of Salafist attitudes to the pre-Islamic past