This book presents a history of the Umayyad Empire, the only period in which an Arabian ruling elite and its tribal armies ruled a world empire. Marsham presents a number of arguments which, taken together, offer a new perspective on the Umayyads.
The Ritual of Accession in Early Islam provides a history of the ceremony of the oath of allegiance to the caliph from the time of the Prophet Muhammad until the fragmentation of the caliphate in the late ninth and tenth centuries.The study of royal rituals of accession and succession in Christian Rome, Byzantium and the early Medieval West has generated an extensive literature. This has however remained unexplored in scholarship on the Islami...
