Visiting Speaker Event with Professor Andrew Marsham
Perspectives on the Umayyad Empire
Professor Andrew Marsham: Professor of Classical Arabic Studies, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge
| An Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies seminar | |
|---|---|
| Date | 11 February 2026 |
| Time | 14:15 to 18:30 |
| Place | Online If you join us on Zoom, registration is required. Register please on this link:https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/mdvrgHS4Sq6MNpJ7eKzrWQ |
| Organizer | IAIS |
Event details
Abstract
Andrew Marsham is a historian of Late Antiquity and Early Islam and Professor of Classical Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge. His most recent book is The Umayyad Empire (Edinburgh, 2024). Other publications include The Umayyad World (Routledge, 2021), Power, Patronage and Memory in Early Islam (Oxford, 2018, with Alain George), and Rituals of Islamic Monarchy (Edinburgh, 2009). Andrew studied Modern History at Oxford, before an MPhil and DPhil in Oriental Studies, studying Arabic in Oxford, Egypt, and Syria. He has previously worked in the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, and Edinburgh.
The tumultuous era of Umayyad rule in the 7th- and 8th-century Mediterranean and Middle East was a crucial formative moment for the religious and cultural traditions of Islam and for Arab ethnic identity. In this talk, Andrew Marsham reflects on three perspectives on the Umayyad era that he gained from researching and writing his recent book: first, the importance that the Late Antique Little Ice Age and the Justinianic Plague had as contexts for the formation and development of the new empire; second the distinctive combinations of settled and pastoralist resources which were brought together in the formation of the new imperial elite; and third, the distinctive consequences that this combination had for the evolution of Islamic and Arab identities in the Umayyad era.
Location:
Online
