On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, 2016 (original) (raw)
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Review of Origins of the Islamic State: Sovereignty and Power in the Middle Ages
The Origins of the Islamic State: Sovereignity and Power in the Middle Ages conference was hosted by the UCL Institute of Archaeology on the 16th–17th of February, 2017. As a part of the ‘Rethinking the Islamic State’ research initiative (links below), the conference explored the concept of the Islamic State both in the past and in the present, examining historical symbols of power, as well as their re-tellings in contemporary media. This dual focus allowed the speakers to not only outline some recent developments in the fields of Islamic history and archaeology, but also to engage with some relevant contemporary political issues. Such links between the past and the present, while often controversial, provided the overarching theme of the conference.
Revolutionizing a World: From Small States to Universalism in the Pre-Islamic Near East
2018
Mark Altaweel Andrea Squitieri R E V O LU T IO N IZ IN G A W O R L D M rk A taw el nd A nrea Sqitieri This book investigates the long-term continuity of large-scale states and empires, and its effect on the Near East’s social fabric, including the fundamental changes that occurred to major social institutions. Its geographical coverage spans, from east to west, modernday Libya and Egypt to Central Asia, and from north to south, Anatolia to southern Arabia, incorporating modern-day Oman and Yemen. Its temporal coverage spans from the late eighth century BCE to the seventh century CE during the rise of Islam and collapse of the Sasanian Empire.
2020
The concept, practice, institution and appearance of ‘the state’ have been hotly debated ever since the emergence of history as a discipline within modern scholarship. The field of medieval Islamic history, however, has remained aloof from most of these debates. Rather it tends to take for granted the particularity of dynastic trajectories within only slow-changing bureaucratic contexts. Trajectories of State Formation promotes a more critical and connected understanding of state formation in the late medieval Sultanates of Cairo and of the Timurid, Turkmen and Ottoman dynasties. Projecting seven case studies onto a broad canvas of European and West-Asian research, this volume presents a trans-dynastic reconstruction, interpretation and illustration of statist trajectories across fifteenth-century Islamic West-Asia.
Continuity of Iranian Identity in the Medieval Times
The Persians by Gene R. Garthwaite[1] addresses the history of Iran from the Achaemenians (c.550-331 BC) up to 2003. In the introduction Garthwaite specifies that the term of Persia and Persians are as much metaphorical notions that can not be easily categorized: “Generally speaking Persia/Persians is used in the United Kingdom or when referring to ancient Iran/Iranians from sixth century BC to the third century AD (p.1). Reza Shah (1926-1941) decreed in 1935 that Iran be used exclusively in official and diplomatic correspondence. Iran was the term commonly used in Iran and by Iranians except for the seventh to thirteenth centuries”. (p.1)
The Crisis of Kingship in Late Medieval Islam: Persian Emigres and the Making of Ottoman Sovereignty by Christopher Markiewicz, 2021
First Paragraph: Christopher Markiewicz’s The Crisis of Kingship in Late Medieval Islam is an impressive contribution to the history of the late medieval world. At its core, this study is about Persian scholar and chancellor Idrīs-i Bidlisī, his life story, experiences in the Aqqoyunlu and Ottoman courts, and his multiple works, particularly of his history Hesht Behisht. However, this book is a lot more than Bidlisī’s life and times. Markiewicz brilliantly weaves together various political notions and ideas that occupied the 15th-century statesmen and intellectuals, and how these notions came to be adopted by all the Muslim polities of the period.
The Modern and the Traditional; Islam, Islamic Law and European Capitulations in Late Qajar Iran
London Review of International Law, 2018
This essay focuses on the centrality of the concept of secularism, and the epistemic basis of rules drawn from the international legal structure’s Eurocentric worldview, including said secularism. I will explore the role that this basis (or bias) has had in Europe’s encounter with Qajar Persia, an encounter based on a ‘dynamic of difference’ that empowered one side, the ‘West’, and disempowered the other. My hypothesis will be that the underlying rationale of the encounter between the modern and its Islamic other, and thus an epistemic predisposition of international law, is that secularism is a driving force of modernity, of social progress, and that the encountered Islamicate world must be made to submit to it in order for it to be accepted as an equal sovereign. Societies that lack secularism are contrasted with its presence in the West, creating an absolute enmity, an irreconcilable (politico-)ontological confrontation. I will firstly discuss how the project of modernity, its underside, the colonial matrix of power, and international law are inherently interrelated in the creation of the difference of the ‘Other’. The second section explores more specifically the transformative power of the regime of capitulations and its legal imperialism in late Qajar Persia. International law reproduced the prejudiced premises of Orientalism in the Persian capitulations. ‘Legal Orientalism’ translated the biases defined by Orientalist European thinkers through new legal technologies, reinforcing international law’s position as the enforcement arm of the project of modernity/coloniality.
2021
This comparative study explores three key cultural and political spheres – the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from Central Asia to the Atlantic – roughly from the emergence of Islam to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers' interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean. This is a pdf of the introductory chapter: "Political Culture in Three Spheres: Introduction" (C. Holmes, J. Shepard, J. Van Steenbergen, B. Weiler)