Negotiation in Conquest: wars, treaties and recollections of the rise of the caliphate

Date

Thursday 12 September 2019 – Saturday 14 September 2019

Location

Gravensteen
Pieterskerkhof 6
2311 SR Leiden

Room

0.11

The great conquests of the seventh and eight centuries brought under Arab-Muslim control an area that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian subcontinent. Military conquests on this scale are remarkable enough; the establishment of a stable empire in the centuries that followed is even more so. How did a military minority succeed in asserting and maintaining durable political dominance over the diverse and dispersed territories of their conquest domains? In short, how was the establishment of the caliphate realised in the aftermath of the conquests?

This conference explores the dynamics of negotiation in the process of conquest and the subsequent building of the caliphate. How did the terms of conquest – the accommodations and agreements made with subjected cities, regions and their representatives – and the ways in which they were re-evaluated in subsequent centuries contribute to the establishment of short and long-term caliphal rule? In other words how were relations between the different stakeholders of the caliphate shaped by the experiences and memories of the negotiated conditions of the conquest?

Read more, at this link.

Confirmed speakers