This paper aims to present a general overview of the distribution of Byzantine and Early Islamic ceramics (mostly amphorae, but also some examples of fine table wares and coarse wares) on Sicily between approximately the seventh/eighth and the eleventh centuries CE. The focus will range from pottery finds found in some sites on the island, which were still part of the Byzantine Empire, to wares excavated at other sites which became part of the Emirate of Sicily. Comparison between the ceramics found in these different parts of the island will shed new light on the trade and exchange patterns of such commodities in this period.

This paper analyses the role of emotive appeals in official Umayyad and Abbasid documents that have some persuasive function. The documents all represent power hierarchies in which one party is subject to the other’s authority. Whether they are higher or lower in the social hierarchy, the authors seek to get what they want by invoking a bond beyond the mere utilitarian. Sometimes affectionate language is used, but more frequently they speak of piety and moral goodness. This paper argues that, by invoking a shared notion of pious morality and godliness, the authors seek to create an emotional bond between people in different places in the social hierarchy. This enables us to nuance our understanding of medieval Islamic governance beyond brute power and coercion, or mere economic justice. Rather, the notion of justice also involved moral goodness, goodwill, affection, loyalty, and willing compliance with one’s role, either as a patron or a protégé.

Chapter 1 builds from the example of the Arab Spring uprisings to illustrate the importance of blame for authoritarian politics and its relevance to the stability of ruling monarchies. The chapter summarizes the book’s argument about how power sharing affects attributions under autocracy and how autocrats strategically try to limit their exposure to blame by delegating decision-making powers to other political elites. It then describes why autocratic monarchs are better positioned than other autocrats to avoid blame by sharing power. The chapter also discusses the book’s contributions to scholarship on authoritarianism, including how popular politics affect regime stability, when autocrats are more or less likely to share power, why autocratic monarchies have been so stable, and how power sharing and popular politics interact in authoritarian settings. The chapter ends with an outline of the remainder of the book.

Since its founding in 1987, the political and ideological dimensions of the terror organization Hamas have been well discussed by scholars. In contrast, this innovative study takes a new approach by exploring the entire scope of Hamas’s intelligence activity against its state adversary, Israel. Using primary sources in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, the author analyzes the development of Hamas’s various methods for gathering information, its use of this information for operational needs and strategic analysis, and its counterintelligence activity against the Israeli intelligence apparatus. The Hamas Intelligence War against Israel explores how Hamas’s activity has gradually become more sophisticated as its institutions have become more established and the nature of the conflict has changed. As the first full-length study to analyze the intelligence efforts of a violent non-state actor, this book sheds new light on the activities and operations of Hamas, and opens new avenues for intelligence research in the wider field.

This chapter discusses the role of Christian churchmen in the credit business and, more broadly, in creating ties of indebtedness in the early Islamic empire. With the help of a multilingual corpus of papyri from the Umayyad and the Abbasid periods, it wishes to contribute to a broader conversation about historical expressions of indebtedness in the premodern Middle East, sustained by anthropological literature on the “debt–credit nexus.” It points to the versatility and multilingualism of early Islamicate documents about debt and to their relation to a wide range of activities, going beyond impoverishment due to high taxation.

Urban structure and interpersonal networks are frequently linked. This chapter draws on the very fine-grained information on the Islamic garrison town of Kufa during the seventh century to exemplarily reconstruct the urban structure and material environment of the quarter of Kinda. Due to the focus of the extant narratives, the discussion is centered on periods of civil strife in which Kufa and the quarter of Kinda were involved. By combining information on the spatial configuration of the quarter of Kinda with narratives describing the involvement of Kindī multipliers in the social history of Kufa, this contribution suggests a reconstruction of the different types of social, urban, and economic capital available to interpersonal multipliers across the first three generations of Islam.

Since its founding in 1987, the political and ideological dimensions of the terror organization Hamas have been well discussed by scholars. In contrast, this innovative study takes a new approach by exploring the entire scope of Hamas’s intelligence activity against its state adversary, Israel. Using primary sources in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, the author analyzes the development of Hamas’s various methods for gathering information, its use of this information for operational needs and strategic analysis, and its counterintelligence activity against the Israeli intelligence apparatus. The Hamas Intelligence War against Israel explores how Hamas’s activity has gradually become more sophisticated as its institutions have become more established and the nature of the conflict has changed. As the first full-length study to analyze the intelligence efforts of a violent non-state actor, this book sheds new light on the activities and operations of Hamas, and opens new avenues for intelligence research in the wider field.

This chapter looks at the different ways in which a free person might come to forfeit their freedom in the late antique and early Islamic Middle East. Although frowned upon and theoretically illegal, free persons might opt, due to extreme poverty or privation, to sell themselves or their family, offering their labor in return for basic sustenance. Otherwise, loss of free status might occur due to a debt default, which, if the sale of a debtor’s assets realized insufficient credit, could see them being forced to work to pay off what they owed. This solution was common in the fouth–eighth centuries, but by the ninth century it was increasingly deemed unacceptable. This chapter considers what led to this shift in legal thinking, the degree to which Islamic law continued late antique practice and the nature of this continuity.