Courses

This course provides an introduction to the history of the premodern Middle East and Islamic civilization. Rather than putting religion at the center, however, we will examine evidence for a variety of interacting forces that played a role in long-term historical change, including the region's physical environment, human ecology, politics, economics, technology, and social and cultural practices, in addition to Islamic beliefs and rituals. In so doing, we will attempt to understand the shared features that have distinguished Middle Eastern and Islamic societies. The course begins with a focus on the region's environment and the ways in which farmers, pastoralists, and city-dwellers adapted, along with the emergence of agrarian empires in Antiquity. With this background, we turn to the appearance of Islam, the Arab conquests, and the formation of an Islamic empire. The remainder of the course explores the evolution of Islamic civilization in the wake of the breakup of the early Islamic empire, including a focus on institutions that survived until the early modern period, and others which can be found in different forms today. Alongside lecture, we will read and discuss samples from key historical texts, which will illustrate some of the challenges of reconstructing early Islamic history and the debates surrounding the emergence and formation of Islamic civilization.