This paper discusses the succession ceremony organized by Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn in 270/884 for his son and heir, Khumārawayh, as described by Egyptian Arabic sources, notably Sīrat Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn of al-Balawī, an underutilized text for Abbasid history. The paper considers three overlapping questions. First, how should the accounts be read, as “representational” or, alternatively, as prescriptive, thus of a piece with elements of the Mirror for Princes literature? Second, were Ṭūlūnid networks of loyalty and dependence solely reliant on material inducements or did individuals invest themselves in the Egyptian regime beyond the point of self-interest? The question goes to the problem of material vs. emotional ties of dependency. And, third, was Ibn Ṭūlūn successful in creating a lasting power base? The question goes to the extent to which his contemporaries signed on to his “project” of redefining relations with the Abbasid center.

Developments in third/ninth-century Egypt relate to the wider history of the Abbasid imperial realm in a number of ways. These had to do, in one sense or another, with the fraying of the Arab Islamic empire, governed, at this point, by the Abbasid house.1 This chapter considers one such development: the turn to control over Egypt by the Turkic–Central Asian military command in Samarra. My argument is that, at a moment in which the Abbasid state was struggling to sustain its hold over a once far-flung but now shrinking domain, it ceded authority over Egypt to those same military/political circles. Egypt, in this scenario, was a key interest of the Samarran commanders and in defense of which they devoted considerable energy and resources. It was a matter of consolidating authority over the province’s considerable public wealth, to be sure, but the sources point to apparent private interests – specifically, landholdings – on the part of the commanders as well.

Much evidence – textual, material and documentary – points to slavery in the early and medieval Islamic Middle East (c. 600-1000 CE) as a social fact, persistent and multivalent. This is especially true for the urban landscape: the presence of enslaved and freed persons would have been impossible to miss. More difficult is the reconstruction of Middle Eastern agrarian slavery. This is a survey essay with particular reference to the early Abbasid Caliphate (c. 750-950) and select questions around which debate in modern scholarship has grown. One must comb medieval Arabic texts (literary and documentary) to reconstruct patterns of early Islamic-era enslavement; the organization and dynamics of slave commerce; the demands on slave and freed labor; and the (relative) social integration of the enslaved. The Arabic/Islamic library illuminates all manner of topics, religious and secular alike. Literary references to slavery and/or enslaved persons therein are plentiful and of a great variety. One has references in works of poetry and adab, an elastic term used for a variety of Arabic prose writings. Equally numerous are references in chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and works of geography and political thought. Medieval Arabic legal and religious writings provide a considerable number of references as well.

The inhabitants of seventh-century Arabia mobilized for warfare in a manner new to that region of the Near East: the effort fell, albeit gradually, under central authority.1 Arabia had long been a highly variegated cultural zone, encompassing the Syrian Desert, southern Mesopotamia, and the Arabian Peninsula. Acting in tandem, largely nomadic tribal forces accepted the leadership of sedentary townsmen, the great number of whom belonged to the Quraysh, an influential tribe of two towns of the Hejaz region, Mecca and Medina. If Yemen and south Arabia had long known the rule of kings, and, hence, more formal military organization, only now did the central and northern stretches of the Peninsula and southern Syria experience what can thereby be considered as early state formation. The effort was driven by an equally untested set of ethical and spiritual teachings. A charismatic figure, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh (570–632), preached a strict monotheism; these teachings served as the seedbed of what would soon be known as Islam.

This introductory chapter of volume II of the Cambridge World History of Violence, which focuses on the thousand years between 500 and 1500, or what is also known as the Middle Millennium, examines .institutions and forms of violence in the geographical area including Japan and China, Central Asia, North Africa, and Europe, with two additional chapters extending coverage into Aztec and Mayan culture.The topics of this introduction are set in four contexts in which violence occurred across this broad chronology and vast territory.They are: the formation of centralized polities through war and conquest; institution building and ideological expression by these same polities; control of extensive trade networks; and the emergence and dominance of religious ecumenes.Attention is also given to the idea of how theories of violence are relevant to the specific historical circumstances discussed in the volume’s chapters. A final section on the depiction of violence, both visual and literary, demonstrates the ubiquity of societal efforts to confront meanings of violence during this longue durée.