Witnesses to a World Crisis
Historians and histories of the Middle East in the seventh century
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19981759 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James Howard-Johnston (0009-0003-3700-4208, corresponding author), J D HOWARD-JOHNSTON |
| Year | 2010 |
| Pages | 573 |
| Publication date | 2010-06-10 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | Witnesses to a world crisis (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208593.001.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W2499462332 |
| Open Library | OL25156025M |
| ISBN | 9780199208593 |
| GOOGLE_BOOK_ID | GQup_FGN7qsC |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 61 |
The principal witnesses to the rise of Islam are examined, first contemporary and near‐contemporary non‐Muslims, then later writers with access to good sources of information, and finally the canonical Islamic accounts. As information is extracted from each successive witness, the extraordinary history of the seventh century in the Middle East—the human equivalent of the Big Bang—is gradually pieced together. Key events are securely dated for the first time—the surrender of Jerusalem (late in 634 or early 635), the decisive defeat of Persian forces at Qadisiyya (6 January 638), the assassination of ‘Ali (658), and the death of Husayn at Karbala (661). Others are observed clearly for the first time—three years of widespread fighting and bloodshed after the death of ‘Ali (658–61), the plot hatched at Damascus in 668 to assassinate the Byzantine Emperor Constans II (carried out in Syracuse on 15 July 669), Byzantium's Trafalgar fought off the coast of Lycia in 674, and the subsequent dangerous Christian insurgency in the Middle East. The final three chapters gather together all the testimonies into a continuous narrative, and seek out explanations for Muslim success. Muhammad's controversial decision to replace the Holy City, Jerusalem, with the pagan cult centre of Mecca as the focus of Muslim worship, and to incorporate the annual pagan pilgrimage into the new religion, is identified as a key moment in world history, in that it married the dynamism of the new faith with the organizational capability of a powerful city‐state
Political science · Byzantine Studies and History · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · 622-661 · 661-750 · Geschiedschrijving · Historiography · Islam · Islamic empire · Middle east · To 1500 · to 622 · World
The Excerpta Constantiniana and the Byzantine Appropriation of the Past
Reading in the Byzantine Empire and Beyond
Cultural Encounters on Byzantium's Northern Frontier, c. AD 500–700
The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium
Sophronios, patriarch of Jerusalem
Yarmuk, battle of
Sebeos of Armenia
Collapse of a Eurasian Hybrid
The Stateless Nomads of Central Eurasia
The Languages of Christianity on the Silk Roads and the Transmission of Mediterranean Culture into Central Asia
Sasanian Iran and Its Northeastern Frontier
Sasanian Iran and the Projection of Power in Late Antique Eurasia
Central Asia in the Late Roman Mental Map, Second to Sixth Centuries
Trade and Exchanges along the Silk and Steppe Routes in Late Antique Eurasia
Followers and Leaders in Northeastern Eurasia, ca. Seventh to Tenth Centuries
Patterns of Roman Diplomacy with Iran and the Steppe Peoples
Warfare in the Roman World
Memoirs as Manifesto
Constantinople’s Belated Hegemony
The Relations between China and the Steppe
“Charismatic” Goods
Ethnicity and Empire in the Western Eurasian Steppes
Aspects of Elite Representation among the Sixth- and Seventh-Century Türks
The Circulation of Astrological Lore and Its Political Use Between the Roman East, Sasanian Iran, Central Asia, India, and the Türks
Byzantium’s Eurasian Policy in the Age of the Türk Empire
Ancient Rome
Narrative and Space in Christian Chronography
Sogdian Merchants and Sogdian Culture on the Silk Road
How the Steppes Became Byzantine
Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity
Infrastructures of Legitimacy in Inner Asia
Michael Psellos
Legal Thought
Epilogue
The Qur’an and Communal Memory
The Origin and Evolution of Early Christian and Byzantine Universal Historiography
The Roman Context of Early Islam
Censorship in the Study of Early Islam
Two Remarks on the Nature of the Breviarium of Patriarch Nikephoros of Constantinople and its Final Chapters
Sicily in a Mediterranean context
Religious statecraft
Gnesioi filoi
Rus and Khazars
Religious statecraft
Patricia Crone and the “secular tradition” of early Islamic historiography
The Christian Reception of the Xwadāy-Nāmag
A wonderful city of palms and dates’
Oman and late Sasanian imperialism
From Qumran to Qur’ān
Biblical History and the end of Times
The Otherness of Non-Christians in the Early Middle Ages
The reception of Plutarch in George Pisides’ panegyrical poems
The First Plague Pandemic in the Byzantine Empire – Toward a New Dynamic Consensus
John of Nikiu and Prokopios of Caesarea on the Wars of Justinian I against the Persians at the South Caucasus
The End of the Roman Empire
Der Koran in seinem religions- und weltgeschichtlichen Kontext
Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity
Thinking With Byzantium
The “Warrior of the Lords”
Muhammad and Justinian
Why was the Dome of the Rock built? A new perspective on a long-discussed question
| Unique citing works | 61 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,07 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2025 (15) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 61 |