Early Islamic Monarchy in Comparative Perspective: How Different was the Caliphate?

Dr. Andrew Marsham (Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies University of Edinburgh)

June 9, 2016, 6:30 pm, Universität Hamburg, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, AS-Saal, 20146 Hamburg

The idea of sacral monarchy--the ruler as in some sense God's deputy on earth--is taken as a starting point for a comparative assessment of the public articulation of monarchy in the early medieval world. From there, we can turn to the covenantal and promissory terms in which this status was often articulated, the audiences for such articulations and the causes of innovation and change. To adapt a question once posed by Janet Nelson: "Why within the common framework of the Late Antique monotheist inheritance, did accession rituals in early medieval Byzantium, in the early medieval western kingdoms, and in the early Caliphate diverge as they did? What has this divergence to tell us about the differences not just between different types of political power but between the three societies?»

Dr. Andrew Marsham is a senior lecturer in Islamic History at the Departement of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

While studying for a BA in History at Oxford, Dr Marsham's attention was caught by ‘late antiquity’—the centuries between Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when the Roman Empire collapsed and monotheist religion became dominant in both Europe and the Middle East. This led him to stay on at Oxford for an MPhil in Classical and Medieval Islamic History, at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, and to travel in Egypt and Syria.

After further language study abroad, he returned to Oxford to work on a DPhil in Islamic History, and continued to travel in the Middle East. While completing his DPhil, he taught at the University of Sheffield, and then held research fellowships at the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester, before coming to Edinburgh’s department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in 2008.

His research interest focusses on the pre-classical history of the Islamic world (Islam, as it were, before ‘Sunnism’ and ‘Shiism’), and in developing perspectives on Islamic history that take full account of the late antique context in which Islam took shape.

He is particularly interested in bringing ideas from the social sciences to bear on understanding historical change in the Middle East, especially changes in political culture.

Specific topics of current interest to him include the development of ideas about sacral kingship and monarchy in the Islamic world, rebellion and state responses to it, and the religious and political uses of historical memory.