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The Abbasid Caliphate: A History. Tayeb El-Hibri (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021). Pp. 360. $89.99 cloth, $29.99 paper, $24.00 e-book. ISBN: 9781107183247
At the outset, Tayeb El-Hibri writes that The Abbasid Caliphate: A History grew, in part, from his experiences teaching a course on the Abbasids while he was the visiting Alfred Howell Chair in the History Department at the American University of Beirut. In preparing the course, El-Hibri identified an important gap in the literature on the Abbasid caliphate, the lack of a general survey of Abbasid history that begins with the rise of the dynasty in 750 and ends with its collapse in 1258. Previous surveys have taken a longer purview that places the Abbasids within a larger narrative of the caliphate as a political institution that transcends any single dynasty, or taken a narrower approach, focusing on the “Golden Age” of the Abbasids and ending their story in 861 (the assassination of al-Mutawakkil and the onset of the “Anarchy at Samarra”), 945 (the capture of Baghdad by the Buyids), or 1055 (the capture of Baghdad by the Seljuks). By writing a survey of Abbasid history that fully incorporates the 11th through the 13th centuries, El-Hibri provides an important innovation that emphasizes the continuity of Abbasid power and influence through these later centuries, a period for which many historians have written the caliphs off as ineffectual and impotent puppets and prisoners of more powerful dynasties. In contrast to his predecessors, El-Hibri dedicates one third of the book to these last three centuries of the Abbasid dynasty, focusing on the achievements of the Abbasid caliphs during the period of Buyid and Seljuk domination.
The Abbasid Caliphate is organized chronologically and provides a thorough survey of the major political, religious, economic, intellectual, social, and cultural trends of the 8th through 13th centuries, centering the narrative on Baghdad and the Abbasid dynasty. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the caliphate as an institution in Islamic history, perceptions of the caliphate both within the Islamic world and outside it, and a survey of the sources and major works of modern historiography. El-Hibri gives special attention to material culture here as well, discussing art, architecture, archaeology, and numismatics alongside textual sources and the more traditional historical...