Based on epigraphic and other material evidence as well as more traditional literary sources and critical review of the extensive relevant scholarship, this book presents a comprehensive and innovative reconstruction of the rise of Islam as a religion and imperial polity. It reassesses the development of the imperial monotheism of the New Rome, and considers the history of the Arabs as an integral part of Late Antiquity, including Arab ethnogenesis and the emergence of what was to become Muslim monotheism, comparable with the emergence of other monotheisms from polytheistic systems. Topics discussed include the emergence and development of the Muhammadan polity and its new cultic deity and associated ritual, the constitution of the Muslim canon, and the development of early Islam as an imperial religion. Intended principally for scholars of Late Antiquity, Islamic studies and the history of religions, the book opens up many novel directions for future research.

This study is a critique of Arabic textual sources for the history of the Arabs in late antique times, during the centuries immediately preceding Muhammad and up to and including the Umayyad period. Its purpose is to consider the value and relevance of these sources for the reconstruction of the social, political, cultural and religious history of the Arabs as they were still pagans, and to reconstruct the emergence of Muhammadan and immediately post-Muhammadan religion and polity. For this religion (including the composition and canonisation of the Qur'an), the label Paleo-Islam has been coined, in order to lend historical specificity to this particular period, distinguishing it from what came before and what was to come later, all the while indicating continuities that do not, in themselves, belie the specificity attributed to this period of very rapid change. This is argued further in Aziz Al-Azmeh's The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (Cambridge University Press, 2014), to which this book is both a companion and a technical preface. Al-Azmeh illustrates his arguments through examination of orality and literacy, transmission, ancient Arabic poetry, the corpus of Arab heroic lore (ayyam), the early narrative, the Qur'an, and other literary sources. The work includes a very extensive bibliography of the works cited. This is the first book in the Gerlach Press series Theories and Paradigms of Islamic Studies.

This book offers a number of innovative studies on the three main communities of the East Mediterranean lands—Muslims, Jews and Christians—in the aftermath of the seventh-century Arab conquests. It focuses principally on how the Christian majority were affected by and adapted to their loss of political power in such arenas as language use, identity construction, church building, pilgrimage, and the role of women. Attention is also paid to how the Muslim community defined itself, administered justice, and regulated relations with non-Muslims. This book will be important for anyone interested in the ways in which the cultures and traditions of the late antique Mediterranean world were transformed in the course of the seventh to tenth centuries by the establishment of the new Muslim political elite and the gradual emergence of an Islamic Empire. --

Late Antique Responses to the Arab Conquests is a showcase of new discoveries in an exciting and rapidly developing field: the study of the transition from Late Antiquity to Early Islam. The Arab conquests are shown to have changed both the Arabian conquerors and the conquered.

An examination of the complex inter-relationships between the Roman and Sasanid Empires, and some of their Arab allies and neighbours, during the last century before the emergence of Islam. Greg Fisher stresses the importance of a Near East dominated by Rome and Iran for the formation of early concepts of Arab identity.

This work investigates available early Arabic ḥadīth and exegetical literature in order to determine the great complexity of how Arabs, Muslims and Arab-Muslims viewed themselves and members of other communities. In particular, it focuses on the relation between definitions of "Arabness" and "otherness" with Islamic ascriptions of believers and nonbelievers and endeavors to trace the changing of these views over time. Moreover, this is an in-depth analysis of a series of ḥadīths and isnāds that discusses when, where, why, and by whom traditions were circulated during the 8th and 9th centuries. I. Bedouins and Non-Arabs II. The Impact of the Arab Polity in Retrospect III. The Great Fusion IV. Ambivalent Attitudes V. Apocalyptic Insecurities VI. Summary Discussion and Concluding Notes

This book offers a number of innovative studies on the three main communities of the East Mediterranean lands--Muslims, Jews and Christians--in the aftermath of the seventh-century Arab conquests. It focuses principally on how the Christian majority were affected by and adapted to their loss of political power in such arenas as language use, identity construction, church building, pilgrimage, and the role of women. Attention is also paid to how the Muslim community defined itself, administered justice, and regulated relations with non-Muslims. This book will be important for anyone interested in the ways in which the cultures and traditions of the late antique Mediterranean world were transformed in the course of the seventh to tenth centuries by the establishment of the new Muslim political elite and the gradual emergence of an Islamic Empire.