The Rhetoric of Caliphal Legitimacy. On the Use of alqāb by the Umayyad Rulers in the East

Abstract

Abstract The Umayyad caliphs of Damascus have been remembered in Arabic historiography by their respective given name (ism). While epithets (alqāb) are widely documented from the ʿAbbāsid period onward for rulers, emirs, viziers, and courtiers, and have been treated in some detail in research, no comparable studies exist for the Umayyads. This paper discusses the style and validity of epithets ascribed to Umayyad caliphs drawing on a wide array of sources, including historiographical works and panegyric as well as material evidence. It is argued that an interpretation of alqāb in the sense of individual throne names, which only became the norm under the ʿAbbāsids, distorts our perspective of the process of augmenting the ruler’s name with honorific epithets, which can already be observed in the Umayyad period. This expansion of the ruler’s titulature, it is argued, mirrors a broader process of sacralizing caliphal power to legitimize the claim to authority in the face of competing factions within the nascent Islamic empire.