Table of Contents

1 The matrix of the Muslim world: the Near East in the early seventh century 2 The birth of the Islamic state 3 Conquest and division in the time of the Rāshidūn caliphs 4 The Umayyad caliphate 5 The early ‘Abbasid caliphate 6 The middle ‘Abbasid caliphate 7 The early Islamic economy 8 The structure of politics in the Muslim commonwealth 9 The Buyid confederation 10 The Kurds 11 The Hamdanids 12 Bedouin political movements and dynasties 13 The Eastern Iranian world in the tenth and early eleventh centuries 14 Early Islamic Egypt and the Fatimid empire Postscript: the coming of the Seljuks

About the Author

Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London. His previous publications include The Armies of the Caliphs. Military and Society in the Early Islamic State (2001), The Great Arab Conquests. How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In (2007) and (as editor) Warfare and Poetry in the Middle East (2013).