Since the text of the first edition of this work was completed in 1985 many books and articles on various topics relevant to the history of the Umayyad dynasty of caliphs have appeared. Some of them have modified or deepened our knowledge of particular aspects of Umayyad history, and the republication of The First Dynasty of Islam offers a welcome opportunity to bring them to the attention of readers. As in the original bibliography, emphasis will be given to works in English.
As they will be referred to frequently, it is best to begin with details of two continuing series of conferences which have produced significant publications relevant to the period of the Umayyads.
First, the Late Antiquity and Early Islam (LAEI) research project initiated by Averil Cameron and Lawrence I.Conrad, joined at an early stage by Geoffrey King, has organized a number of workshops concerned with aspects of the transition from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic world. The proceedings of these workshops are being published by the Darwin Press of Princeton, New Jersey, and there is an associated series of monographs and volumes of collected articles, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, also published by Darwin.
Secondly, the University of Jordan in Amman has organized a series of conferences devoted to the history of Syria in various periods. The Umayyad period was the topic of the symposium held in 1987 and some of the papers presented there were subsequently published by M.Adnan Bakhit and Robert Schick (eds.), The Fourth International Conference on the History of Bilad al-Sham during the Umayyad Period, 2 vols., Amman 1989. Volume I contains papers in Arabic, volume II those in English.
The sources and problems concerning them, especially the Arabic Muslim literary sources upon which modern scholars depend for detailed reconstruction of the events of Umayyad history, remain at the centre of scholarly attention. Apart from the continuing work of editing, publishing and republishing Arabic works which are important for the material they contain on the period, one major development has been the completion of the English translation of the whole of the History (Ta’rikh) of al-?abari (d. 923) (39 volumes, State University of New York Press: Albany, New York State). The editor of the whole series is Ehsan Yar-Shater but each volume has been translated and annotated by an individual scholar. Publication of the volumes in fact began slightly before that of First Dynasty and the last volume to be published appeared in 1999 (the volumes have appeared in random order). Generally speaking, volumes 17 to 27 cover the period of the Umayyads but relevant material is scattered throughout the entire work. Those interested in the period but unable to read Arabic, therefore, now have access to the most important Arabic source for Umayyad history.
Another translated text relevant to Umayyad history is part of a work by the 11th–12th century Omani scholar al-?wtabi. His collection of biographies contains material pertaining to the family of Yazid b. al-Muhallab (see pp. 73–76 of the present work), some of which is not to be found in the main sources for Umayyad and Abbasid history. Martin Hinds’ An Early Islamic family from Oman:
al-?wtabi’s Account of the Muhallabids, University of Manchester.
Journal of Semitic Studies Monographs no. 17, 1991, is in fact not merely a translation but a learned commentary and reedition of a text which was considerably corrupt in its original Arabic edition.
The problem of how such sources, some of the more important of which are referred to in Appendix 1 of the present work, are to be approached and understood, however, continues to be the subject of intense discussion and debate.
In Appendix 2, which summarizes the development of scholarly views about the value of the literary sources for enabling us to reconstruct and understand events, prominence is given to the important 1973 book of Albrecht Noth, Quellenkritische Studien zu Themen, Formen und Tendenzen frühislamischer Geschichtsuberlieferung, which called into question some of the views about the sources dominant since the time of Julius Wellhausen. Happily, Noth’s work is now available in an English translation by Michael Bonner in the Late Antiquity and Early Islam studies series: The Early Arabic Historical Tradition. A Source-Critical Study (Princeton: The Darwin Press, Inc., 1994). In fact the English version is more than a translation of the original. Noth, together with Lawrence I.Conrad who collaborated with him on the text, seized the opportunity to expand and develop the original work in order to take account of the appearance of the new texts, editions and studies, as well as to bring in some new ideas. In effect, therefore, the English version has superseded the German. Unhappily Noth himself, a scholar much liked as well as respected, died in 1999.
The first workshop (1989) organized by the LAEI project was devoted to the question of the literary sources for the transition period between Late Antiquity and early Islam, and Cameron and Conrad jointly edited the resulting publication: The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East. Problems in the Literary Source Material (Princeton: The Darwin Press, Inc., 1992). As well as contributions on texts in Greek and Syriac, that volume also contains articles by Wadad Kadi, Stefan Leder and Conrad himself which discuss aspects of the Arabic Muslim sources.
Noth’s rather pessimistic conclusions about the possibility of composing detailed narrative history for the early Islamic period on the basis of the literary sources have not been accepted by all. Academic scholarship on early Islam generally could be said to be divided into two camps. On the one hand are those who—like Harald Motzki and Michael Lecker—argue that it is possible to recover from relatively late works materials which originated at a time from which no contemporary texts have survived, and to use those materials to reconstruct some elements of pre- and early Islamic history. On the other are those who stress the primarily literary character of the texts and question their value as sources of historical information about the events they are explicitly concerned with. In this latter category one might put scholars as diverse as Noth himself, John Wansbrough and Uri Rubin.
None of those just mentioned, apart from Noth, were or are really directly concerned with the history of the Umayyads as such, but one who is, and who is mentioned in Appendix 2 in connexion with his work on the Arab conquests is Fred M.Donner. He takes a point of view which is positive regarding the historical value of the sources, one critical of those he refers to as sceptics, and his detailed analysis and discussion of the problem has now also been published in the LAEI studies series: Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Arabic Historical Writing, Princeton: Darwin Press, Inc., 1998.
It is not possible to mention here all of the recent articles relevant to our understanding of the sources for and historiography of the Umayyad period. Some of them (for example, studies of al-?abari’s source Sayf ibn ?Umar by Martin Hinds and by Ella Landau- Tasseron, and the recent publication by Qasim al-Samarrai of a manuscript containing large parts of works ascribed to Sayf) are indirectly relevant for our understanding of the sources for the Umayyads even though not immediately concerned with Umayyad affairs. A statement of some of the problems, and discussion of different approaches, may be found as chapter 3 (‘Early Historical Tradition and the First Islamic Polity’) of R.Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History. A Framework for Inquiry (revised edition Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991). An even more recent discussion is that by Chase Robinson, ‘The Study of Islamic Historiography. A Progress Report’ (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1997).
Interest in the non-Arabic and non-Muslim literary sources relevant for early Islamic history, to some extent rekindled by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook’s Hagarism. The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), has led to appearance of a number of works of direct relevance to the Umayyad period. Some of the relevant Syriac texts and passages are discussed by John F.Healey and by Jean Maurice Fiey in two articles published in the English language volume which resulted from the Bilad al-Sham conference mentioned above. Sebastian Brock has translated the part relevant for the Second Civil War (see chapter 4 above) of a work by the Jacobite monk John of Phenek: ‘North Mesopotamia in the Late 7th Century. Book XV of John Bar Penkaye’s Ris Melle’ (Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 9 (1987)). Brock was involved too, together with Robert Hoyland and Andrew Palmer in a work which contains the translation, in whole or in part, of several Syriac chronicles and apocalypses: Andrew Palmer (ed.), The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 1993. Finally, Hoyland has produced in the LAEI studies series the fullest survey and discussion of the non-Muslim sources relating to the early Islamic period: Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, Princeton: Darwin Press, Inc. 1997.
The question of how far the Arabic, Syriac and Greek historical traditions concerning early Islam are interrelated is examined in Lawrence I.Conrad, ‘Theophanes and the Arabic Historical Tradition. Some Indications of Intercultural Transmission’ (Byzantinische Forschungen, 15 (1990), 1–44). The connexion between Muslim apocalyptic traditions and historical events and the possible value of the apocalyptic materials as historical sources have been explored by Wilferd Madelung, ‘Apocalyptic Prophecies in ?im? in the Umayyad Age’ (Journal of Semitic Studies, 31 (1986), 141–85), and by Michael Cook, among whose contributions on this topic reference may be made especially to ‘Eschatology and the Dating of Traditions’ (Princeton Papers in Near Eastern Studies, 1 (1992), 23–47) since it responds to Madelung’s suggestion about material relating to the struggle between the Umayyads and Ibn al-Zubayr (see chapter 4 above).
The period of the Umayyad caliphate is the first in Islamic history for which we have reasonably substantial archaeological evidence— not only buildings, but coins, inscriptions and other non-literary source material. For a wide ranging introduction to and survey of the whole field of Islamic architecture, with some material of relevance to the period covered in this book, see now Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press 1994). The same author’s ‘La Dolce Vita in Early Islamic Syria: The Evidence of Later Umayyad Palaces’ (Art History, 5 (1982), 1–35), is especially relevant here.
Among the investigations of specific sites mention may be made of the work of the German Archaeological Institute at al-Ru?afa (see p. 91 above), the fourth volume of which deals with the Umayyad Ru?afat Hisham: Dorothee Sack, Die grosse Moschee von Resafa— Rusafat Hisaam (Mainz am Rhein: Zabern 1996).
Naturally many other sites have been and continue to be the object of archaeological investigations, including al-?umayma the home of the Abbasid family in Jordan for many years, and Merv (Marw) in Khurasan where the rising which overthrew the Umayyads began. Alexander Northedge has discussed the evidence pertaining to the (no longer visible) Umayyad mosque on the site of the citadel in Amman in the proceedings of the Bilad al-Sham conference mentioned above. The work of Patricia Carlier at the place called Qa?tal in Jordan, reported in the same proceedings, is especially interesting because it has discovered a mosque with a ‘deviant’ orientation which may be added to those mentioned in Crone and Cook, Hagarism, p. 23.
For two new inscriptions from the Umayyad era and discussion of points arising from them, see Amikam Elad, ‘The Southern Golan in the Early Muslim Period. The Significance of Two Newly Discovered Milestones of ?bd al-Malik’ (Der Islam, 76 (1999)).
For coins there are various publications of Michael L.Bates, including: ‘The Arab-Byzantine Coinage of Syria: An Innovation by ?bd al-Malik’, in A Colloquium in Memory of George Carpenter Miles (New York: American Numismatic Society 1976), 16–27; ‘History, Geography and Numismatics in the First Century of Islamic Coinage’ (Revue Suisse de Numismatique, 65 (1986), 321– 63; and ‘The Coinage of Syria under the Umayyads’ in the proceedings of the Bilad al-Sham symposium. For references to the first two of those articles, I am grateful to Michael Bonner. The catalogue of Lutz Ilisch, Sylloge Numorum Arabicorum Tübingen. Palästina IVa Bilad as-Sam I, Tübingen 1993, may now also be consulted.
For weights and stamps and the evidence to be found on them pertaining to the personnel and institutions of the Umayyad administration, A.H.Morton has published A Catalogue of Early Islamic Stamps in the British Museum (London 1985), ‘A Glass Dinar Weight in the Name of ?bd al-?ziz b. Marwan’ (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 49 (1986)), and ‘?isba and Early Glass Stamps in Eighth and Early Ninth-century Egypt’ (Documents de l’Islam Medieval. Nouvelles Perspectives de Recherche, Paris: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire 1991).
Turning now to the substance of Umayyad history, in addition to the volume, cited above, on Problems in the Literary Source Material, two further volumes resulting from the LAEI workshops have been published: G.R.D.King and Averil Cameron (eds.), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East. Land and Settlement Patterns (Princeton: Darwin Press, Inc. 1994), contains papers from the second (1991) workshop; Averil Cameron (ed.), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East. States, Resources and Armies (Princeton:
Darwin Press, Inc. 1995), has those from the third (1992). Naturally, most of the detailed and specialized papers included in these volumes have some relevance to Umayyad history, but special mention must be made of Hugh Kennedy’s ‘The Financing of the Military in the Early Islamic State’ in the Resources and Armies volume. Kennedy’s book, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, London: Longman 1986, also presents an analytical account of the Umayyad caliphate in the context of a survey of the history of the Islamic Middle East from the sixth to the eleventh century.
The following studies of the reigns of individual Umayyad caliphs have been published since the appearance of the first edition of First Dynasty: Reinhard Eisener, Zwischen Faktum und Fiktion: eine Studie zum Umayyadenkalifen Sulaiman b. ?bdalmalik und seinem Bild in den Quellen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1987); ?ale? K.?amarneh, ‘Marwan b. al-?akam and the Caliphate’ (Der Islam 65 (1988), 200– 225); and Khalid Yahya Blankinship, The End of the Jihad State: The Reign of Hisham b. ?bd al-Malik and the Collapse of the Umayyads (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). In addition, the relevant articles on caliphs, governors and other prominent individuals and groups in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, publication of which has continued and which is now nearing completion, should be consulted.
The issue of how the Umayyads themselves understood the caliphal office and the effect which that had on the development of the image of the Umayyads in Muslim tradition is briefly considered at pp. 12– 13 above. That question is now discussed more fully in a work which suggests that we need to visualize the origins and early history of the caliphate in a way very different from that of the traditional Muslim accounts: Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph. Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). In that work Crone and Hinds emphasize the relatively late emergence of the Sunni understanding of the caliphate and argue that the Umayyads and their supporters understood the caliph to be God’s deputy on earth with authority not substantially different from that accorded by Shi’ite Muslims to their Imams. (Incidentally, the historical articles published by Martin Hinds are now conveniently gathered together in Jere Bacharach et al. (eds.), Studies in Early Islamic History, volume 4 of the LAEI studies series (Princeton: The Darwin Press, Inc. 1996).)
The question of the orientation of early mosques, raised not only by some archaeological work but also by some Muslim and non-Muslim literary texts, is related to the problems of the status of Jerusalem in Islam, its relationship to Mecca, and the reasons for the building of the Dome of the Rock (see pp. 60–61). Studies on Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock have been especially numerous. The bibliography of First Dynasty failed to mention the article of F.E.Peters, ‘Why did Abd-al-Malik Build the Dome of the Rock?’, Graeco-Arabica, 2 (1983), and that same question has been used as a chapter heading by Amikam Elad in his Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship (Leiden: E.J.Brill 1995) and for his contribution to Julian Raby and Jeremy Johns (eds.), Bayt al-Maqdis. ?bd al-Malik’s Jerusalem (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993). Elad has brought to light some extremely important source material, and the Raby and Johns volume contains as well several other significant contributions. A more recent and more general discussion of Jerusalem in the early Islamic period is by Oleg Grabar, The Shape of the Holy. Early Islamic Jerusalem (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
A continuing major area of debate concerns the political, economic, social and religious factors which led to the demise of the Umayyad caliphate. The polarized factionalism which split the Arab forces on which the Umayyads depended was interpreted by M.A.Shaban (see the original bibliography) as a conflict over policy, mainly regarding military expansion and the treatment of the conquered peoples. That interpretation has been criticized in detail, and Shaban’s rather cavalier attitude to the evidence illuminated, in an article by Patricia Crone which is of great importance for the interpretation of Umayyad history in general: ‘Were the Qays and the Yemen of the Umayyad Period Political Parties?’ (Der Islam, 71 (1994), 95–111). Also critical of Shaban’s interpretation and methods are Elton L.Daniel, The “Ahl al-Taqadum” and the Problem of the Constituency of the Abbasid Revolution in the Merv Oasis’ (Journal of Islamic Studies, 7 (1996), 150–79) and Saleh Said Agha, ‘The Battle of the Pass: Two Consequential Readings’ (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (forthcoming)). Daniel’s book, The Political and Social History of Khurasan under Abbasid Rule, Minneapolis 1979, ought to have been listed in the bibliography of the 1986 edition of the present work.
The extent and nature of Arab settlement in the north-eastern Iranian province of Khurasan, important for understanding the character of the revolt against the Umayyads which began there in 747, have been reexamined too by Parvaneh Pourshariati, ‘Local Histories of Khurasan and the Pattern of Arab Settlement’ (Studia Iranica, 27 (1998), 41–81), and by Saleh Said Agha, ‘The Arab Population in ?urasan during the Umayyad period—some demographic computations’ (Arabica, 46 (1999), 211–29).
Finally, aspects of the revolt which overthrew the Umayyad caliphate are examined by Jacob Lassner, Islamic Revolution and Historical Memory: An Enquiry into the Art of ?bbasid Apologetics (New Haven: Yale University Press 1986); Patricia Crone, ‘On the Meaning of the ?bbasid Call to al-Ri?a’, in C.E.Bosworth et al. (eds.), The Islamic World from Classical to Modern Times. Essays in Honor of Bernard Lewis (Princeton: The Darwin Press 1989), 95– 111; and by Moshe Sharon, Revolt: the Social and Military Aspects of the ?bbasid Revolution (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press 1990).
Naturally, the footnotes and bibliographies of the above mentioned works will serve as sources for even deeper explorations of various aspects of Umayyad history.