Brian Ulrich

Medieval Arabic sources contain multiple references to Kāzimah, a settlement area on Kuwait Bay in the early Islamic period to which modern Kuwaitis look for a pre-modern heritage. The two most celebrated, involving a tryst between a pre-Islamic poet and a Lakhmid princess and the Battle of Dhāt al-Salāsil during the Islamic conquests, are almost certainly not factual accounts.  Geographical sources from the third/ninth century, however, provide an interesting portrayal of the area during its most developed phase and its relationships with other areas. In addition, accounts rooted in tribal tradition allow educated guesses as to population movements in the area from the eve of Islam until the third/ninth century. These indicate long-term patterns of both northward migration from Arabia into Mesopotamia and a process of settlement some time after the rise of Islam.

For at least forty years, the conventional wisdom on eastern Arabia during the Sasanian period has been that it was a time of prosperity due to settlement, investment by state authorities, and a commercial flowering in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea.  Recent reassessments of archaeological evidence, however, show significant signs of economic decline relative to the heights of the Parthian and early Islamic periods. In addition, new understandings of agrarian empires highlight their internal variability, understandings which seem readily applicable to the Sasanian case. Work on the Sasanian Empire specifically has also improved our knowledge of its social, economic, and political structure. This paper reconsiders the written sources for this period in the context of these developments, arguing that the evidence, while attesting to periodic involvement of the Sasanians in eastern Arabia, is unsuitable for making relative economic arguments. It also argues that, given the administrative diversity of large agrarian empires, scholars should be cautious about making generalizations about Sasanian developmental policies for all areas under their influence.

The migration of the Azd tribes from western Arabia to Uman has occupied a central place in the history of the pre-Islamic Persian Gulf. This paper takes a tradition critical approach in examining the narratives of these migrations independently of each other. The author argues that Amr Muzayqiya and Mālik b. Fahm were not originally part of the same complex, and that whereas the former clearly dates from the early Islamic period, the latter may go back to pre-Islamic Arabia. There is, however, no good evidence with which to fix a date for any migration into Uman recalled in the Mālik b. Fahm stories.

The Persian Gulf today is home to multiple cosmopolitan urban hubs of globalization. This did not start with the discovery of oil. This book tells of the Gulf from the rise of Islam until the coming of the Portuguese, when port cities such as Siraf, Sohar, and Hormuz were entrepots for trading pearls, horses, spices, and other products across much of Asia and eastern Africa. Indeed, products traded there became a key part of the material culture of medieval Islamic civilization, and the Gulf region itself was a crucial membrane between the Middle East and the world of the broader Indian Ocean. The book also highlights the longterm presence of communities of South Asian and African an cestry, as well as patterns of religious change among Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Muslims that belie the image of a region long polarized between Arabs and Persians and Sunnis and Shi'ites.

Spring, 2009. Arab blogs have caught the attention of Middle East watchers. Much of the attention dedicated to them, however, has dealt with their political importance, whether as a mobilizing tool for activists or as an alternative source of news reporting. Blogging is also interesting, however, as a new and perhaps significant departure in the history of media in the