Download PDF | Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, c. 400-1000 CE, Edited by Walter Pohl and Rutger Kramer, Oxford University Press 2021.
467 Pages
Preface
This volume is the result of a memorable collaborative effort. The authors of the chapters met in Vienna four times to discuss topics, presentations, and drafts of papers, in order to arrive at a more differentiated picture of the relationship between late antique and early medieval empires and particular communities within their range of control. Specialists in the late antique/early medieval West, Byzantium, and the early Islamic period contributed their different perspectives on the Roman Empires in East and West and the Umayyad/ Abbasid caliphates. Rather than using a strict common grid of questions and criteria, we worked with the different angles that emerged from a divergent source base and disciplinary state of the art, and we explored differences and commonalities resulting from the various case studies. It was an intellectually stimulating venture, and we hope that readers will be able to share some of this experience.
This collaboration was made possible by a large interdisciplinary project funded by the Austrian Research Council, Fonds zur Fórderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschungin Österreich (FWF): Visions of Community: Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE) (VISCOM) F 42-G 18, a Spezialforschungsbereich (SFB) that was active from 2011 to 2019 and involved medieval history, social anthropology, Islamic studies, and Buddhist studies. It was based both at the University of Vienna and at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The working group was hosted by the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy. The editors are grateful to all institutions involved, and especially to Nicola Edelmann for her tireless efforts helping to bring this volume to fruition.
Introduction
Empires and Communities in the Post- Roman and Islamic World
Walter Pohl and Rutger Kramer
Fuss are not an underresearched topic. Recently, in fact, there has been a veritable surge in comparative and conceptual studies, not least of premodern empires.! The distant past can tell us much about the fates of empires that may still be relevant today, and contemporary historians as well as the general public are mostly aware of that. Tracing the general development of an empire, we can discern an imperial dynamic that follows the momentum of expansion, relies on the structures and achievements of the formative period for a while, and tends to be caught in a downward spiral at some point. Yet single cases differ so much that any general model is bound to falter under closer scrutiny.
There is, in fact, little consensus about what exactly constitutes an empire, and it has become standard in publications about empires to note the profusion of definitions. Some refer to size—for instance Peter Turchin, who suggested it refers to states “greater than a million square kilometers: Apart from that, many scholars offer more or less extensive lists of qualitative criteria? Some of these criteria reflect the imperial dynamic, for instance, the imposition of some kind of unity through “an imperial project which allows moving broad populations "from coercion through co-optation to cooperation and identification" Some catalogs of criteria practically exclude most premodern empires (did any of them successfully impose a monopoly of violence?). Others allow including a rather broad range of ancient and medieval polities. The definition given by Burbank and Cooper is quite adequate for empires in the pre-modern era: “Empires are large political units, expansionist or with a memory of power extended over space, polities that maintain distinction and hierarchy as they incorporate new people” In any case, it is important to note that there is no qualitative difference between empires and large states but rather a continuum, as Chris Wickham notes in his conclusion to the present volume.
The main interests of most comparative studies have been synthesized in four key questions by Haldon and Goldstone in their introduction to The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: "How did they come into being? How did they survive? What was the structure of military/political and ideological power relations that facilitated this (or not)? And what was their economic basis in respect of the production, distribution and consumption of wealth and also of the expansion of the base upon which wealth could be generated?”® Other scholars would certainly add the problem of the fall of empires as a fifth question." The present book mainly addresses the third question. We would like to highlight two aspects of that issue here.
One aspect is the connection between “military/political power" on the one hand and *ideological power" on the other. How are these linked? There is no doubt that political, military, and economic aspects of power relations carry great explicatory weight if we want to understand the workings of premodern empires. "Ideology" is a shorthand term often used to explain how an empire wins the loyalty and shapes the cognition of the people, a necessary condition to maintain its rule.* The concept of ideology has the advantage of including the impact of ideas in its definition. In this sense, the current scholarly opinion may be summed up as: if it does not work, it is not ideology?
However, all this presupposes that "ideology" is a conscious and coherent construct; this surely makes sense for many modern political ideologies, but it somehow limits the range of the concept for the study of the distant past. For instance, it seems safe to say that the Roman Empire propagated an explicit, well-designed, and highly visible imperial ideology. Yet this ideology of empire was set in a much wider context of attitudes, values, creeds, and convictions concerning what could be said and done and what was true and false. For many purposes, it may therefore be more appropriate to speak of discourses (in a Foucauldian sense) informed by cultural resources, which an empire could only modulate and control to a limited extent.'? Ideological constructs such as identity politics, othering, and the propagation of certain allegiances over others only worked on the basis of such wider discourses.
Most chapters of this book choose an integral or even holistic approach to this conceptual challenge, in which interests and identities, power and ideology, discourses and practices are treated as deeply entangled phenomena. Many of the source texts we have worked with were biased in their accounts of the workings of empire and its relations with particular communities. There is a wide range here, between the exceptional documentary evidence preserved in the papyri used by Petra Sijpesteijn and the mock partisan poems analyzed by Peter Webb in their chapters. Yet all of these texts “happened” in the real world, as an integral part of social practices. They were shaped by the social dynamic of their environment and left their mark on it.
The second important point is the relational element in the third question posed by Haldon and Goldstone: an empire is based on “power relations? Much research on empires concentrates on the agency of empires (or their eventual loss of it). In his classic 1986 book, Michael Doyle already conceived of empires in terms of power relations between imperial centers and peripheries and argued that in the long term, there was a dynamic in which the core area could hardly avoid empowering its peripheries until it would eventually lose its hold on them." Such power relations are a central theme of this book. However, we do not frame them in a center-periphery model. Empires need to relate with groups and communities across their territory, cater to their interests to some extent, and channel their activities into their own web of power. Their rule depends on acceptance and cooperation as much as on force and imposition.
This book deals with the ways empires affect smaller communities—for instance, ethnic groups, religious communities, local or peripheral populations— and how their activities reflect back on the imperial superstructure. This enterprise is set in the conceptual frame of the "Visions of Community" project (see the preface). It raises the question of how these different types of community were integrated into the larger edifice of empire and in which contexts the dialectic between empires and particular communities could cause disruption. How did religious discourses or practices reinforce (or subvert) imperial pretenses? How were constructions of identity affected in the process?
The time frame is roughly between the fifth and tenth centuries CE, a period with a particular dynamic of empires in Europe and the Middle East. While successive parts of the Roman Empire eroded, its Byzantine core areas (“the Empire that would not die,” as John Haldon put it)? showed a surprising resilience. Islamic expansion led to a succession of caliphates in a wide area previously dominated by the Roman and Sasanian Empires. The Franks, meanwhile, attempted to recreate a Western Roman Empire, albeit with limited success. The period is thus exceptionally well suited for studying the various expansive and erosive dynamics of empires and their interaction with smaller communities.
How were Egyptians accommodated under Islamic rule, Yemenis included in an Arab identity, Aquitanians integrated into the Carolingian Empire, Christians in the caliphate?? Why did the dissolution of Western Rome lead to the emergence of ethnically denominated kingdoms, while the breakup of the Abbasid caliphate produced mostly dynastic realms?!* How did the Byzantine elites preserve their empire in the seventh century, and how did the Franks go about constructing theirs in the ninth? How did processions in early medieval Rome and Constantinople promote social integration in both a local and a broader framework?" In a sense, this book is not so much about empires as about the different sub- and post-imperial realities that emerge in them. The focus is on the social worlds of groups of people that have to come to terms with empires, and vice versa. Under what conditions do empires manage to integrate particular communities that are closer to the hearts and minds of their members? And when do they lose control?
In this book, these questions are addressed from a comparative perspective, by looking at three areas: the Latin West, Byzantium, and the early Islamic world. The volume does not aim at an overall model but at mid-range comparison that does not take the West (and its notions of empire) as a conceptual benchmark. It is the work of an international research group uniting some of the best scholars in their respective fields, who came together in yearly meetings between 2013 and 2017 to develop the research questions and discuss successive drafts of the papers. Such an enterprise does not lead to a homogeneous block of papers carefully trimmed to fit a common grid. We believe that in this case they should not, either. This is a volume intended to open debates rather than give a conclusive overview about an issue. Still, the chapters reverberate with the discussions we had in those years, and it is possible to detect a common spirit in them. Although the authors come from different disciplines and have chosen different "plots" for their chapters—from case studies of single events to problem-oriented syntheses of large issues—they share an approach that is close to the sources but open to larger, current, and new issues in the historical disciplines.
Some of the broader issues in global medieval studies deserve a brief discussion here, not least because they are far from consensual in the field at large. A first issue is the “Global Middle Ages?” In its title, the 2019 meeting of the Medieval Academy of America proclaimed "Ihe Global Turn in Medieval Studies" Medieval history has been late to open up to the prospects of global history.!® Now this has become a wide and fast-expanding field and has raised rather diverging expectations.” It has enormous potential to open up rather selfcontained fields of research, not least in European history, and transcend “methodological nationalism"? There are, however, several reasons why working in this field may be controversial. Research on relations between Europe and the Islamic world is particularly delicate in the present political situation. More general, as scholars trained in Europe or the United States, we have acquired a particular form of historical consciousness and of perception of the Other. Postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and similar paradigmatic approaches have offered ways in which researchers can position themselves as they approach the histories of Asia or Africa and adapt their language and preconceptions accordingly.
We have chosen a rather soft approach to these challenges. We are aware of the paradox of overcoming Eurocentrism as scholars working in Europe or the United States and remain critical of the social and political context in which we pursue our research. Yet, in order to effectively communicate with one another and across disciplines, we cannot step outside the research settings in which we operate. We hope for the transformative power of good research accompanied by a thorough reflection of its goals, assumptions, and methods and conducted within a community that openly discusses its approaches and results with a healthy dose of scholarly self-awareness.
Second, this has important methodological implications. The study of foreign "cultures" has been linked, since the Enlightenment period, to implicit judgments on their “backwardness” by European standards of “progress” and “civilization?” As research since Edward Said has shown, “orientalism” is not limited to negative views of non-Europeans. Even positive perceptions and prejudices may serve to essentialize Afro-Asian societies as seemingly static, ahistorical units unfit for European-style progress.” It has been argued that comparison as a scholarly method inescapably reifies non-European “cultures” as objects of Western perceptions. Instead of comparison, connectivity and hybridity should be in our focus to write a “histoire croisée,” an entangled history of the world.” To an extent, the present volume offers approaches to an entangled history of imperial and postimperial situations between Aachen and Fustat, Constantinople and Shiraz, but it also addresses issues of comparison.
Of course, we have to take fuzziness and flux, complexity and hybridity into account in research about empires, communities, and identities. Yet acknowledging the fluidity and hybridity of past communities does not mean that they were all essentially subject to the same historical processes everywhere or that their differences did not matter. In particular, that should not make it impossible to engage in wide-range comparison. Differences mattered, between individuals as between macro-regions and their societies, and it should be possible to focus on them in research—of course, considering that they could change over time and rarely followed the boundaries drawn on historical maps.
The methodological road maps that we can follow to avoid reifying units of comparison are still in the making.” It is clear that we should not depart from a fixed notion of "the" West and "the" Islamic world, which we could then confidently reaffirm by accommodating all sorts of differences detected in our research in this bipolar scheme. Neither do we take our cue from grand narratives such as “The Great Divergence” or “The Axial Age, which risk leading to self-perpetuating, circular debates. In this volume, we start with precisely defined phenomena in particular macro-regions and explore lines of comparison that are compatible with the source base and the historical context on all sides of the equation. This overall frame of comparison may sometimes be "the Roman Empire" and the "caliphate" if the focus is, for instance, on imperial strategies or dynamics.
Yet on such an inclusive level, internal differences and hybridity within these units tend to come in the way of significant results of the overall comparison. Mid-range comparison works best if it addresses comparable structures or situations that are accessible through comparable sources. In our discussions, we first strove for a much closer comparison between several case studies of integrating Egypt and Syrian Christians into the caliphate, Yemenis into an Arab identity, Jews into the Fätimid state (a contribution that unfortunately did not arrive in time), barbarians into the post-Roman world, and Aquitaine and the eastern duchies into the Carolingian Empire, and of keeping Anatolia integrated within Byzantium. Yet in following the traces of the integration of a particular community into an empire or what remains of it, what productive questions are largely follows the availability of adequate sources. For instance, Egypt is unique in the period for its rich and partly unexplored textual record in papyri, on which Petra Sijpesteijn can base her account of the vicissitudes of integration into an Islamic empire.
A similarly differentiated history of the fates of local elites in a new empire could not have been written about any other region ofthe period. Therefore, it seemed more promising to avoid referring to a more elaborate grid of comparative questions and get a richer and more varied picture of the different case studies instead by going back to the sources first, and worry about comparability second. The chapters by Pohl and Kennedy, organized around a more narrowly defined axis of comparison—the role of ethnicity in the emergence of post-imperial powers in the late Roman West and in the tenth-century Abbasid caliphate— provide an example of direct comparison, with its great potential and its limits. We sought to round off the comparison with a joint conclusion and a response by Peter Webb.
A third controversial issue in the field of the "Global Middle Ages" is language. The terminology generally used in historical studies on communities and states poses a particular challenge, not least because we often use terms that are current in everyday language or carry specific (and sometimes harmful) political connotations. Problems arise because of their political and ideological overtones but also because, due to their public use, they are hard to define, and their meanings are often opaque or contradictory. They also tend to project modern ideas (for instance, about the state) into the past. Among these loaded terms, "ethnicity" and "identity" are both heavily used in contemporary identity politics.^ “Ethnicity” is often understood as a biological given into which one is born, whereas most recent research has brought out its constructed and negotiable character.”
Some scholars tend to exaggerate its fluidity and malleability, while others advocate avoiding both badly defined terms and, even better, the entire field of unpleasantly atavistic affiliations. Remarkably, both “identity” and “ethnicity” have only spread in the mid-twentieth century, in order to replace even more loaded terms such as “race, “tribe,” or “Volk?” Replacing them by yet other words or, worse, returning to the old ones, would not change much in the tormented character of the social field, which makes it so important an issue to study. "Religion" is almost as problematic, mainly because it tends to project a Christian model of what religion means onto other belief systems that are often much more restricted to cultic practices or to ideas of salvation or liberation from worldly concerns.” And it may project Enlightenment ideas about the separation of religious and lay spheres into the past. Similar, if so far slightly less controversial, debates have concerned “culture, “the state, and, of course, community"? Finally, “Middle Ages”/“medieval” has been challenged, both as a meaningful category for the history of Europe,? and even more so, for Asia or Africa.’ The problem of periodization has three aspects.
First, the modern European notion of “medieval” still carries overtones of a teleology of progress, so that in popular use, it marks outdated, irrational, or atavistic behavior. Yet that is hardly what medievalists think about the period. Second, it may imply an inner coherence of the period (“an age of faith" or similar) that can be misleading. It may inadvertently de-emphasize other aspects of society. For instance, choosing "religion" as the phenomenon that defines "the medieval" risks losing sight of economic connections that spanned the globe, whereas an overemphasis on preColumbian exchange networks may, conversely, lead to an almost mechanistic vision of the Silk Route economy without taking into account the complexities of the communities linked to it.
And third, overall global periodization will be necessarily fuzzy, at least at the edges, in most regions. Still, these problems of misconception are not unavoidable. There is some pragmatic use in a ^weak" periodization with flexible boundaries according to region and the topic of research. Catherine Holmes and Naomi Standen have recently argued strongly for a pragmatic use of the concept and suggested looking at the period on its own terms—not as a necessary contrast or prequel to modernity but as an "Age of Experiment" and of intensification, "characterized by networks, mobility, mediation, interaction,’ and diversity!
Readers will realize that we have not avoided loaded terms and concepts in this book. Loaded terms and fraught concepts are usually an indicator that the subject matter continues to be relevant today, and there is no easy way out ofthat. Convincing alternatives are rarely suggested. To replace the concept of "identity" by seven different, more specific terms, as suggested by Brubaker and Cooper, is not very practical, either.? Conversely, avoiding the entire field of study (because communities are only "culturally constructed" anyway) is no solution: why should we want to ignore all "imagined communities" because they are not “really" real, when it has been made abundantly clear that communities become “real” by virtue of being *imagined"?? We have to be aware that these terms may be misunderstood, and we have to be careful not to smuggle in unwarranted assumptions by using them. It can be very productive to look for more precise, "low-threshold" terms to be used instead of the broader ones or try to frame the question differently by choosing a different conceptual angle, but that does not always work well. There may be many “wrong” ways to speak as a scholar about controversial fields, but there are no unquestionably “right” ways that anyone can prescribe.
The chronological range addressed in this volume is rich in controversial debates. In Europe and the Middle East, it is marked by several developments that have had an impact on the modern order of these regions: the Christianization of Europe; the rise of a plurality of post-Roman peoples and states in the West; the different development of Western and Orthodox Christendom; the spread of Islam; and the Arabization of much of the Middle East and Northern Africa. These processes have rarely been studied in conjunction, although they are all inextricably linked. Debates about the "transformation of the Roman world" or about the rise and decline of the caliphate have mostly been conducted within their respective fields. That has been particularly inadequate in the case of the Western Roman Empire, because its dissolution was often regarded as "the" Fall of Rome, without paying much attention to the continuing fortunes of the eastern half of the empire, inhabited by mostly Greek-speaking “Rhomaioi.
Only recently has a wider perspective on the fundamental changes that marked the end of Roman domination over most of the Mediterranean gained ground, not least by the work of some of the authors of the present volume.” The comparative perspective offered in this volume allows us to identify some of the elements that drove these transformations.
This volume looks at several scenarios in which integration or disintegration of empires was at stake. Its contributions have many aspects in common with others or invite comparison between them. For instance, the chapters on the dissolution of the Western Empire and of the Abbasid caliphate embark on a direct comparison of two processes that show surprising parallels but also characteristically different outcomes: Hugh Kennedy (chapter 2, “The Emergence of New Polities in the Breakup of the Abbasid Caliphate”) and Walter Pohl (chapter 3, “The Emergence of New Polities in the Breakup of the Western Roman Empire”) compare the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire and of the Abbasid Caliphate. Kennedy presents a general overview of the role of ethnic groups and tribes in the early Islamic world. The sources of the period are very much concerned with tribal identities and genealogies and with ethnic differences. Yet, in spite of the literary styling and the significance of tribes in internal politics, none of them carved out a lasting tribal dominion. In the second part of the chapter, Kennedy addresses the more straightforwardly ethnic groups within the caliphate, principally Armenians, Kurds, and Iranians. Of these, only the Armenians developed strong potentials for identification, which were closely connected to their country, their brand of Christian religion, and their language and script. At the other end of the spectrum, no strong common identity of the Kurds emerged in the premodern period, although there were some successful Kurdish dynasties and rulers (such as Saladin, whose empire was never considered Kurdish). From among the multitude of possible identifications available to the populations in the early Islamic world (religious, tribal, linguistic, cultural, or urban), ethnicity thus did not have a specific impact on the constitution of states.
The chapter by Pohl explores the manifold meanings of ethnicity in the postRoman West. The Romans, who regarded themselves as a populus defined by law, categorized the surrounding gentes by descent. These distinctions remained but were modified by the impact of Christianity in each of the new kingdoms. The new religion endorsed ethnic identities of the new peoples who ruled over former imperial provinces and gave new meanings to the “ethnic” law codes and the political prerogatives of new barbarian warrior elites. Historiography endowed these peoples with political agency. The sense of common origin of these rather composite groups was flexible enough for them to form loose aggregates of ethnic, political, territorial, and religious identities that could provide some stability of identification. A joint conclusion by Pohl and Kennedy identifies ten elements in which differences between the roles of ethnicity in the process of imperial devolution become visible, in the context of partly striking parallels. The result of the comparison is a complex web of similarities and differences, in which rather different outcomes are the result not of any deep-seated alterity between the two societies but of varieties in the combination of mostly quite similar conditions. Adding to the complexity of the issue, finally, is the commentary by Peter Webb (chapter 5, “Fragmentation and Integration: A Response"), in which the contemporary frameworks for expressing notions of unity and diversity are brought to the fore.
John Haldon (chapter 6, "Historicizing Resilience: The Paradox of the Medieval East Roman State— Collapse, Adaptation, and Survival’) introduces the concept of "resilience" and offers various ways in which this can be used to understand sociopolitical frameworks within which empires and communities move through history. Haldon does this by applying C. S. Hollings Theory of Adaptive Change to the idea of the "collapse" ofthe Byzantine Empire in the face ofthe rise of the caliphate. By showing the persistence of institutions and the adaptability of the identities of the people living in frontier zones and contextualizing them in a larger—and quite unyielding—ecosystem, Haldon argues for a more holistic approach to questions of collapse, conquest, and continuity. Whether or not a political institution collapsed or was brought to its knees by outside forces is invariably the result of a dynamic interplay of a great number of phenomena and not simply the result of military contingency, after all.
Leslie Brubaker and Chris Wickham (chapter 7, “Processions, Power, and Community Identity: East and West") look at the different ways in which processions (liturgical, triumphal, or otherwise) strengthened the social cohesion among participants and onlookers alike. Processions are an important phenomenon in this regard. As they are happening, they become flashpoints for imperial or religious authority, highly public events that serve to remind everybody involved of the social and hierarchical makeup of society. At the same time, their prescriptions and descriptions—everything from panegyrics exalting the organization to the routes to be followed within and around a city—latch on to long tradition and emphasize that any given procession is, in fact, part of a much longer process. In the right hands, processions may anchor a community to an even larger social whole by means of the persons, institutions, and buildings involved. Conversely, their highly public nature also makes them exponents for social change, whether at the hands of the authorities themselves or of those who find themselves on the outside looking in. Comparing the uses and development of this phenomenon in both the Eastern and Western Mediterranean, this chapter sheds a refreshing light on the many practices of community in the (post-) Roman world, at times uniform but also highly diversified by necessity.
Daniel Reynolds (chapter 8, “Death of a Patriarch: The Murder of Yühannä ibn Jami [1966] and the Question of 'Melkite Identity in Early Islamic Palestine") latches on to the observations made by Brubaker and Wickham and applies them to a singular, highly public event set in the volatile world of tenth-century Jerusalem. The murder of the Melkite patriarch during the urban Eastern liturgy of 966, as well as the way it was subsequently described, not only becomes a case study for the treatment of the Christian community in Palestine but also analyzes the way different identities could be politicized to serve the needs of local powerbrokers dealing with an overarching empire.
Stefan Esders and Helmut Reimitz (chapter 9, "Diversity and Convergence: The Accommodation of Ethnic and Legal Pluralism in the Carolingian Empire") apply a similar concept to the rise of the Carolingian Empire and how the new ruling dynasty dealt with the reality of Frankish and other identities within its realm. Charlemagne and his legal advisers reinforced a legal pluralism that had grown out of the Roman Empire and had been further developed under the Merovingian predecessors of the Carolingian rulers. In this process, the legitimization of acts of legislation depended less and less on centralized authority or office-holders. They were mainly based on agreements between rulers and groups through which authority was acknowledged in exchange for the confirmation or grants of rights and privileges for specific groups and individuals. The accommodation of this kind of legal pluralism was already framed in ethnic terms in the course of the seventh century under the Merovingian kings. The interdependence of claims of ethnic identity and legal status, however, came to be intensified in the context of the Carolingian rise to power in the eighth century. But the increasing politicization of ethnic traditions and communities and their legal rights and claims also worked against the political integration of Carolingian rule. The elites of Alamans, Bavarians, Thuringians, Lombards, and others now also emphasized their own customs and rights vis-à-vis the new Frankish kings. The imperial framework allowed for accommodating all these different claims along with the variety of Frankish ones in a Christian-imperial framework. Esders and Reimitz note an interesting paradox: whereas the Carolingians used an imagined Frankish identity upon which to build their empire, the very expedient of highlighting this ethnic identity catalyzed the fragmentation of the empire as a whole; as the core was strengthened, more peripheral communities used those same mechanisms to find a voice of their own.
A specific case study that brings together these themes of resilience and adaptation, empire, and ethnicity, Rutger Kramers chapter 10 ( Franks, Romans, and Countrymen: Imperial Interests, Local Identities, and the Carolingian Conquest of Aquitaine") zooms in on the various mechanisms employed to integrate the semi-independent polity of Aquitaine into the emerging Carolingian realm —and to deal with their significance in the sources composed in retrospect. Basing his examination around the “official” absorption of the duchy in 767/8, Kramer looks at the various modes of identification not only employed by Aquitanians, but also visible within Carolingian chronicles, capitularies, and hagiographical narratives as they tried to make sense of this region, which was rich in Roman history but had a population keenly aware of its Visigothic and Basque roots as well.
Peter Webb (chapter 11, “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: Yemeni Arab Identity in Abbasid Iraq") looks at various expressions of identity and identification within a community that encompassed various groups vying for power and influence. Even if they were only loosely connected to whatever being Yemeni in South Arabia might mean, a Yemeni ("Southerner") faction in the centers of Abbasid power launched a hefty polemic against Northern Arabs. Analyzing the multivalent uses of the designation of an identity as being “Yemeni; especially in poetry composed around the Abbasid court, Webb shows that it was precisely the rich history attached to this name that made it a flexible tool in the hands of skilled authors commenting on the world around them. Polemical strategies of identification could be employed in seriously vying for political influence but also for courtly entertainment. Webb shows that in a society where everybody was aware of the layers of meaning underlying such markers of identification, no single definition encompasses any of them, and no source should be taken for granted.
Petra Sijpesteijn (chapter 12, “Loyaland Knowledgeable Supporters: Integrating Egyptian Elites in Early Islamic Egypt") takes the volume full circle by showing different ways in which the imposition of an imperial political structure—especially one for which “religion” is a major constituent ofthe court's self-understanding— affects the makeup of more localized communities with histories predating the arrival of the new authorities. In so doing, she highlights another aspect of the issue underpinning this volume, namely, the way central authorities conceived of the reality of a multitude of communities under their sway—and how the way these communities themselves chose to work with or against the newcomers affected ideas about the empires as they were being built. Sijpesteijn argues that the new regime initially relied on the services of the local elites without seriously affecting social roles and identities. Therefore, these elites were slow to be fully integrated into the Muslim and Arab community, while Arabs became more "Egyptian" in their outlook. Interests and identities were linked in a process that left many options open to those who could afford to choose them.
As also highlighted in the conclusion by Chris Wickham (chapter 13, “Concluding Thoughts: Empires and Communities"), several common themes emerge from these chapters. They all address questions of what holds communities together and what explains their resilience against outward pressure or foreign rule. They highlight the ways in which empires engage with the plurality of populations under their sway and can thrive on their inner multiplicity. They also show that imperial hegemony is always precarious and based on a swift handling of political, economic, and cultural resources. Some of the chapters expose the centrifugal dynamics that threaten imperial cohesion and analyze strategies to maintain control. The theme of identity plays a role throughout the volume, whether as a strategy for identification of groups exposed to imperial domination, as a dialectic of inclusion and exclusion, or as a form of cultural capital created by an imperial project. Many contributions give pride of place to the role of Christianity and Islam within the deeply entangled aggregates of politics and religion that the powerful belief in a revealed and ultimate truth created. The volume shares an integrated approach, balancing basic socioeconomic insights with an awareness of the forces of discourse and cultural patterns. It shows how in different historical scenarios, similar processes could lead to different results. It does not aim for a wholesale comparison of “East” and “West,” of Islamic and Christian societies but for a deeper understanding of the way communities emerge—and fade away again.
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