Rethinking Conquest: Studies on the Late Antique Near East from Byzantium to Islam

Rethinking Conquest: Studies on the Late Antique Near East from Byzantium to Islam

 Edited by: Mehmetcan Akpınar and Federico Montinaro

 In collaboration with: Theresia Raum

 

The momentous political and social changes that affected the Near East following the death of the prophet Muhammad have traditionally been framed as ‘conquests’. But what did ‘conquest’ mean, if anything, to contemporary and later medieval observers in the Byzantine and Islamicate worlds, beyond the told and retold stories of battles and sieges? What should it or can it mean for today’s historian and area scholar? This volume aims, on the one hand, to record aspects of the wide-ranging conversation around the topic of ‘conquest’ that took place at a conference held in Tübingen in 2017, intersecting the trajectory of the many revisions which have affected Byzantine and Early Islamic historiography in recent decades. On the other hand, by including surveys that deal with interdisciplinary, general and theoretical issues and studies that engage in greater detail with the literary and archaeological source material, the book offers readers a guide to some of the most significant problems that face the historian of every extraction when approaching the events of the seventh century CE. 

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111695426

eBook ISBN: 9783111695426

Hardcover ISBN: 9783111669410

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BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Frontmatter

Open Access

	I
Open Access Transformation of the Millennium Studies Open Access

	V
Contents Open Access

	VII
Introduction Federico Montinaro and Mehmetcan Akpınar Open Access

	1
Part I: The lay of the land
The conquests of the Arabian believers as historiographical concept and historical reality Fred M. Donner Open Access

	9
Part II: Texts and contexts
Were there strategic considerations in the seventh-century Arabian conquests? Andrew Marsham Open Access

	23
There and Back Again: Heraclius and Constantinople before the Arab conquest Theresia Raum Open Access

	47
The Arab conquest of the Roman Levant James Howard-Johnston Open Access

	63
Part III: Discourses
Das sog. Constans-Vaticinium und seine Datierung. Eschatologische Vorstellungen in der ersten Hälfte des 7. Jahrhunderts? Wolfram Brandes Open Access

	77
The influence of late antique religious polemical discourse on early Byzantine perceptions of the first Muslim victories Luise Marion Frenkel Open Access

	121
Part IV: Realia
The Muslim conquest of southern Jordan and historical memory Robert Schick Open Access

	149
Coinage in Syria before and after the Arab conquest. The results and significance of new research Marcus Phillips Open Access

	171
Part V: Reflections
Argumentum Ex Silentio. Religiöse Überzeugungsstrategie in der iberischen Chronik Continuatio Byzantia-Arabica Kamil Cyprian Choda Open Access

	203