Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest

Abstract

Perhaps one would not expect a history of “Islamic rule” in the seventh andeighth centuries in what is now the Middle East to illuminate any contemporarydebate on Islam, in particular about whether there is an innate civilizationalclash between it and the (Christian) West. And yet this modeststudy manages to do that, if only tangentially and coincidentally, and if readwith some reservations.Cambridge historians are renowned for their preoccupation with elites,generally of provinces far removed from the centers of power, and hencetheir single-minded focus on the “politics of notables” of relatively minorlocalities. From such provincial concerns, however, emerge more universalclaims about, for instance, the nature of British colonial rule in India or ofIslamic rule in the Middle Ages. Chase Robinson, following this tradition,assesses – as “critic and architect” – the changing status of Christian andMuslim elites following the Muslim conquest of northern Mesopotamia.Three themes are implicit: the interrelationship of history and historiography,the effects of the Muslim conquest, and the nature of Islam. Thus, Iwill review it thematically as well. I should point out that I engage his workas a generalist, not as a historian, and that I am interested not so much in hisretelling of events as in the political meanings with which he endows them.(Re)writing History. To reconstruct a past about which there is such adearth of primary period sources is at best hazardous. For one, where documentssuch as conquest treaties exist, they have little truth-value, saysRobinson. He thus specifies that he is concerned less with their accuracythan with how they were perceived to have governed relations between localMuslims/imperial authorities, on the one hand, and Christians on the other.For another, conquest history in fact “describes post-conquest history.” Thusthe “conquest past” is a re-presentation of events from a post-conquest present,an exercise in which Christians and Muslims had an equal stake sincethe “conquest past could serve to underpin [their] authority alike.”Historians then must disentangle events from their own narration, or at leastrecognize the ways in which recording events also reframes them.Fortunately for him, says Robinson, his work was enabled by that of al-Azdi, a tenth-century Muslim historian. However, even as he admits that ...