Introduction to the Journal of Abbasid Studies ( JAS)

Journal of Abbasid Studies 1 (2014) 1-3

brill.com/jas

Monique Bernards Institute for Advanced Arabic and Islamic Studies, Antwerp, Belgium [email protected]

It is with much pleasure that I open the first issue of the Journal of Abbasid Studies with a short editorial which allows me to say something about the field of Abbasid Studies, about the why and wherefore of the Journal and about how it came to be. Abbasid Studies is a term intended to comprise the study of all aspects of the Abbasid dynasty. It is meant as a loose catch-all phrase, not a heuristic or a diagnostic. It offers a focal point for thinking about the past, rather than a lens for reading the past. The idea of Abbasid Studies has become much more than just the political history to which some of the founding fathers of the field — scholars such as Van Vloten and Wellhausen, to name but two — were devoted. Recent work focuses on intellectual, cultural, literary, religious and economic aspects as well as political history. The Journal of Abbasid Studies espouses a multidisciplinary approach so as to reflect the changes that have occurred in the field of Abbasid Studies over the last decades. The Abbasid dynasty came to power in 132 AH/750 AD and for about one hundred years (up to the middle of the third/ninth century) it ruled a strong, centralized and thriving empire. Some history books tell us that the Abbasid dynasty lasted from 132/750 to 656/1258 when their capital Baghdad was con- quered by the Mongols; other history books argue that the Abbasids continued as a “shadow” dynasty in Egypt, one which afforded its Mamluk rulers legiti- macy until the early tenth/sixteenth century. To be sure, the Abbasid caliphate continued to exist, even after the last Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, al-Mustaʿṣim, was wrapped up in a carpet by the Mongols and crushed to death by an ele- phant. The Journal of Abbasid Studies, however, ends its chronological cover- age around the middle of the fifth/eleventh century when the Turkish Seljuk dynasty became the dominant force in the region. But the dominance of the Seljuks sounds the death knoll for the Abbasids and marks the terminus at which the notion of Abbasid Studies (admittedly already a very capacious if not capricious term) loses much of its coherence.

Succinctly stated, then, the Journal of Abbasid Studies begins with the emer- gence of this new dynasty in Islam and ends around 440/1050 just after the establishment of Seljuk rule; geographically, the outer regions, like al-Andalus or Sicily or Transoxania are included but only in relation to the Abbasids. The Journal covers what is generally known as the Classical Age of Islam. A Journal of Abbasid Studies has become indispensable to the wider study of pre-modern Islam and Arab-Islamic civilization. There is no journal that devotes its pages solely to the Abbasids and Islam’s “golden age” despite their indisputable centrality for the larger field of Islamic Studies. But indispensable? Yes. It is during the Abbasid era that Islamic law, the collective memory of the earliest Muslim community, literature, language and philosophy and sci- ence too, for instance, emerged and developed, thus making the period foun- dational for both the Islamic religion and Arab-Islamic civilization. What’s more, the study of the Abbasid era is at present making rapid and enormous advances. A venue was called for.

Many of the congratulatory and encouraging responses received after announc- ing the establishment of the Journal of Abbasid Studies noted that such an enterprise was long overdue. Indeed, one hears echoes of the words of the director and editor of the very first issue of the Occasional Papers of the School of Abbasid Studies published in 1986, the late David Jackson: “A journal which collects papers on Abbasid topics would fill what is felt to be a gap in the range of journals in general, by focusing on the Abbasid studies which are the raison d’être of the School.” These Occasional Papers came to be a stable and constant series in several different guises. The complete first series was published in-house at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, from 1986 to 1992, funded first by the University’s Research Publication Fund and Research Committee in Arts and Divinity, then by the Honeyman Foundation Trust. After the School’s reboot in 2000, the second series was published between 2004 and 2013, first by Peeters Publishers in Leuven, Belgium and then as a special issue of Oriens and, finally, with the Gibb Memorial Trust and Oxbow Books at Oxford, England. And then Kathy van Vliet, an acquisition editor at Brill Publishers, Leiden, the Netherlands, attended the 2012 biennial Conference of the School of Abbasid Studies at Exeter University, England. Her enthusiasm about the qual- ity of the papers, the critical and far-reaching discussions and the productive, creative and stimulating atmosphere encouraged her to invite the School’s directors to consider the possibility of instituting a journal. This the directors

Journal of Abbasid Studies 1 (2014) 1-3