Introduction: Transregional and Regional Elites – Connecting the Early Islamic Empire

Abstract

Our knowledge about the working of the early Islamic Empire is still rather imbalanced. The caliphate ruled an expanse from Central Asia to North Africa for about 300 years until the 940s, creating in the process a distinct civilization and culture. Research on the early Islamic Empire, and consequently our knowledge thereof, is still dominated by the perspective of the sources.Whilst unsurprising, the tendency of researchers to rely upon the viewpoint of the major historians of the Islamic Empire has led them to adopt the same geographical biases that these historians maintained. The most important of these is al-Ṭabarī (d. 923), who provides us with a monumental history of the world and the Islamic Empire until the time when its power was waning. As informative as al-Ṭabarī is, even about the far regions of the empire, his primary concern is the developments of its political and economic center, Greater Mesopotamia. This region, which comprised important metropolises such as al-Kūfa, al-Baṣra, Wāsiṭ, Baghdād, Sāmarrāʾ, and al-Mawṣil, was tightly controlled and taxed. It also served as the power base of the Sasanians, an imperial tradition on which the Islamic Empire subsequently built. Historians have often transposed the information provided by al-Ṭabarī and others regarding this economic, agricultural, and political heartland to the empire as a whole. It became the governing paradigm for the narrative of the empire. The questioning of this assumption was the starting point of the European Research Council project ‘The Early Islamic Empire at Work’, which ran from April 2014 to September 2019. In investigating how the vast and diverse Islamic Empire was governed, the project critiques the reigning ‘top-down’ conceptualization, according to which the caliph and his court constitute the center from which imperial power, politics, and indeed history were transmitted. Instead, it posited a ‘View from the Regions Toward the Center’, which, inspired by scholars of European Medieval Studies such as Peter Thorau1 and Chris Wickham,2