The Ritual of Accession in Early Islam: Rituals of Islamic Monarchy [Hardcover]

Andrew Marsham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0748625127 | ISBN-13: 978-0748625123

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 Islamic world. This book redresses that by examining the ceremonial of accession to the caliphate in early Islam, covering the place of ritual in political practice, changes and continuities in that practice and the problem of how best to understand accounts of ritual.

It also offers a contribution to major, current debates in Islamic history: the development of Arab-Muslim identity and the formation of the 'Islamic state'.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The book impresses particularly because of the author's critical treatment of the sources and resulting historical approach. Andrew Marsham has not only filled a gap by presenting a comprehensive study of the caliphal bay'a up to the tenth century, his study is also an example of how to deconstruct a normative view of Islamic history that uncritically takes classical sacralizing Sunnite interpretations of the Muslim past for granted. -- Almut Hofert Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies The book impresses particularly because of the author's critical treatment of the sources and resulting historical approach. Andrew Marsham has not only filled a gap by presenting a comprehensive study of the caliphal bay'a up to the tenth century, his study is also an example of how to deconstruct a normative view of Islamic history that uncritically takes classical sacralizing Sunnite interpretations of the Muslim past for granted. -- Almut Hofert Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies The book impresses particularly because of the author's critical treatment of the sources and resulting historical approach. Andrew Marsham has not only filled a gap by presenting a comprehensive study of the caliphal bay'a up to the tenth century, his study is also an example of how to deconstruct a normative view of Islamic history that uncritically takes classical sacralizing Sunnite interpretations of the Muslim past for granted. The book impresses particularly because of the author's critical treatment of the sources and resulting historical approach. Andrew Marsham has not only filled a gap by presenting a comprehensive study of the caliphal bay'a up to the tenth century, his study is also an example of how to deconstruct a normative view of Islamic history that uncritically takes classical sacralizing Sunnite interpretations of the Muslim past for granted.

About the Author

Andrew Marsham is British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Manchester

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press (July 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0748625127
• ISBN-13: 978-0748625123
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,687,812 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Rituals of Islamic succession c. 600-860, November 12, 2010

By 

William Garrison Jr. (Bellevue, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ritual of Accession in Early Islam: Rituals of Islamic Monarchy (Hardcover)

"Rituals of Islamic Monarchy: Accession and Succession in the First Muslim Empire" by Andrew Marsham, hardback, 2009, English, 346 pgs. Chapter titles: (1) "Alliance and allegiance in pre-Islamic Arabia"; (2) "The verb Bayaa in the Quran: Allegiance to Muhammad"; (3) "The oath of allegiance in the `Conquest Society' (c. 628-660"; (4) "Sufyanid accession and succession"; (5) "The oath of allegiance in the early tradition and poetry c. 680-710"; (6) "The Marwanid patrimony and dynastic succession"; (7) "Marwanid rituals of accession and succession"; (8) "Writing and the Baya in the Marwanid period"; (9) "The Quranic content of the Marwanid documents"; (10) "The consolidation of Abbasid power: al-Mansur and al-Mahdi (754-785)"; (11) "The caliphates of Musa al-Hadi and Harun al-Rashid"; (12) " `Dispositive documents' for the early Abbasid succession"; "From the Civil War to Samarra (809-847)"; (14) "The Caliphate of al-Mutawakkil"; (15) The outbreak of the second ninth-century civil war (861-865)"; (16) "Abbasid documents for caliphal accession"; with maps; with genealogical tables of: the Quraysh, the Abbasid caliphs, the Marwanid caliphs, the Banu Hashim, and the first Abbasid caliphs. The author noted: "This book seeks to establish what was distinctive about this inaugural ritual in early Islamic monarchy, and how it evolved during the formation, consolidation and decline of the first Muslim empire (between c. 630 and c. 865 CE)" (p. 2). The author opined: "Civil war within the Umayyad dynasty and its armies brought about conditions in which rival claims to power could thrive."..."inheritance and bloodline...retained great importance in the evolving Islamic tradition. Eventually, the idea of the kin-group of the Prophet having a unique claim to the leadership of the Muslims became very widespread" (p. 11). Out of the hundreds of books I've read regarding Islam, this is the first I've encountered that studied the Islamic succession rituals. Lots of dynastic succession history here. The author wrote: "The pledges of allegiance to Abbasid caliphs and their wulat al-uhud are described in much more static and hierarchical terms than those to the Umayyads: the new caliph always repaired to the Iraqi capital to receive the pledge there from the court" (p. 185)...."However, whatever the precise circumstances of Abu al-Abbas' accession in 749/50 the idea of shura in the sense of the formal choice of a leader through a consultative assembly of the Muslim quickly disappeared, to be replaced by patrimonial and dynastic notions of succession with the `Prophet's family'" (p. 187). The author concluded: "[W]hen we turn to the collections of the Sunna themselves, what is perhaps most notable is their comparatively limited concern with the ritual of the baya to the calip per se; the relevant material is found under the rubrics of `vows', `gifts', `holy war' and gender taboos....was a question that generated a large number of traditions about the baya" (p. 316). This work is written in a very scholarly, academic style - tight, little if any mouthy, verbose editorialization; for the serious student.