Non-Muslim Provinces under Early Islam
Islamic Rule and Iranian Legitimacy in Armenia and Caucasian Albania

This book explores the Christian caliphal provinces of Armenia and Caucasian Albania as part of the larger Iranian cultural sphere.

Alison Vacca (Author)

9781107188518, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 September 2017

316 pages, 7 b/w illus.
23.9 x 16.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.54 kg

'Alison Vacca has produced an exciting, ambitious, and groundbreaking investigation that unfurls across a massive cross-cultural canvas. Deploying a bold interdisciplinary approach grounded in an impressive array of sources, this is the most important monograph on early Islamic Caucasia since Ter-Ghewondyan's Arab Emirates in Bagratid Armenia. It will immediately establish itself as a 'go to' book not only for Armenologists and Caucasiologists but also specialists of Sasanian Iran, the early Islamic world, and Byzantium.' Stephen Rapp, Jr, Professor of Eurasian History, Sam Houston State University

Eighth- and ninth-century Armenia and Caucasian Albania were largely Christian provinces of the then Islamic Caliphate. Although they formed a part of the Iranian cultural sphere, they are often omitted from studies of both Islamic and Iranian history. In this book, Alison Vacca uses Arabic and Armenian texts to explore these Christian provinces as part of the Caliphate, identifying elements of continuity from Sasanian to caliphal rule, and, more importantly, expounding on significant moments of change in the administration of the Marwanid and early Abbasid periods. Vacca examines historical narrative and the construction of a Sasanian cultural memory during the late ninth and tenth centuries to place the provinces into a broader context of Iranian rule. This book will be of benefit to historians of Islam, Iran and the Caucasus, but will also appeal to those studying themes of Iranian identity and Muslim-Christian relations in the Near East.

1. Non-Persian provinces of Iran, non-Muslim provinces of Islam: an introduction to the Umayyad and 'Abb?sid North
2. Whence the Umayyad North?: Byzantine, Sasanian and caliphal administrative geography of the North
3. Lost Greek kings and hoodwinked Khazars: Sasanian and Byzantine legacy in the construction of caliphal frontiers in the North
4. The so-called Marzb?ns and the Northern Freemen: local leadership in the North from Sasanian to caliphal rule
5. Caliphs, commanders and Catholicoi mechanisms to control the North under Byzantine, Sasanian and caliphal rule
6. Taxing the dead and sealing the necks of the living: Sasanian and caliphal treaties and taxation in the North
7. Collective historical amnesia: claiming Sasanian legacy and the case for a Parthian Intermezzo.

Subject Areas: Islamic studies [JFSR2], Islam [HRH], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]