The Idea of Empire in the Early Islamic World - HIS00161M

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Module summary

The world of late antiquity, into which Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula emerged in the seventh century, is often said to have been one of universal empires. The Middle East and Mediterranean world of late antiquity were dominated by two empires, the Roman (Byzantine) and the Iranian (Sasanian), whose rivalry had an enormous impact even on those regions beyond their borders. Over the seventh and early eighth centuries, Muslim armies conquered the entire Iranian empire and much of the Roman empire, creating their own polity, under the rule of caliphs, that stretched from the shores of the Atlantic to the mountain ranges of Central Asia.

In this module, we will start by examining how early Muslims’ ideas about the nature of their empire engaged with and challenged earlier ideas of Roman and Iranian imperialism as the caliphs were establishing and consolidating their empire. We will then look at how those ideas of political rule and authority changed as the (mostly) unified caliphal empire began to break apart from the ninth century. Along the way, we will also consider the debates among non-Muslim communities concerning the legitimacy of the Muslim empire within which they lived as well as the developing attitudes of Muslim scholars towards the nature and characteristics of the ideal Muslim ruler and the kind of polity over which that ruler should reign.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 1 2026-27

Module aims

The aims of this module are to:

• Develop skills of source analysis and interpretation
• Assess a range of source material and relevant secondary works; and
• Develop students’ powers of evidence-based historical argument, both orally and in writing.
  

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

• Demonstrate a knowledge of a specialist historiographical literature;
• Present findings in an analytical framework derived from a specialist field;
• Solve a well-defined historiographical problem using insights drawn from secondary and, where appropriate, primary sources.
• Set out written findings using a professional scholarly apparatus.
  

Module content

Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing (RAW) weeks during which there are no seminars, and during which students research and write a formative essay, consulting with the module tutor. Students prepare for eight seminars in all.

Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

1. Empire and late antiquity
2. Empire and worldly authority in the Qur’an
3. The Umayyad caliphate as an Islamic empire
4. The Abbasid caliphate: a cosmopolitan empire?
5. Between Constantinople and Baghdad: non-Muslims and the idea of empire
6. An empire breaking apart? Tulunids and Samanids
7. An empire broken apart? Fatimids and Seljuqs
8. Early Islamic political theology and thought
   

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

Students submit a 2,000-word formative essay in week 9.
A 4,000-word summative essay will be due in the assessment period.

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Module feedback

Students will typically receive written feedback on their formative essay within 10 working days of submission.

Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oralfeedbackto the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss thefeedbackon their formative essay during their tutor’s student hours—especially during week 11, before, that is, they finalise their plans for the Summative Essay.

For more information, see theStatement on Feedback.

For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see theStatement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

For reading during the module, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:

• Amira K. Bennison. The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009.)
• Jo van Steenbergen. A History of the Islamic World, 600-1800: Empire, Dynastic Formations, and Heterogeneities in Pre-Modern Islamic West-Asia. (London: Routledge, 2021.)
• Patricia Crone. Medieval Islamic Political Thought.(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.)