Type of Credit: Elective
Credit(s)
Number of Students
The course will introduce students to the period widely known as Islamicate middle period (to use Marshall Hodgson’s terminology). The term was coined in an effort to distinguish the 10th -16th centuries in the Eastern Mediterranean, West Asia, Central Asian and the Eurasian Steppe. During those years Islam conquered a vast territory that witnessed the emergence of new civilization and the wandering of Turkic people, who became the rulers of complex societies characterized with a rich ethnic and religious mosaic.
The lectures aim on providing a broad picture of political, social and cultural (including religious) topics. Following a condensed account of the Islamic conquests (in the East) and the history of the Eurasian Steppe, we will move to study the story of the Turkic people in the Caliphate’s frontier in Central Asia as well as their history in the Abode of Islam. This chapter will also focus on their image, their role and the question of slave soldiers. The next topic will dwell upon the political ideology of the Sultanate and the relations between the Turkic army commanders and the Islamic religious establishment. These broad questions, regarding motives, changes and result will occupy us also in the sections that deal with the post-Mongol history of the extensive continent that stretches between the Mediterranean and the Indus Valley. I will try drawing a line of continuation, of rise and fall (to use Ibn Khaldun’s philosophy of history).
能力項目說明
Learning a long chapter in the history of the Islamicate world (c. 1000-1600 CE). Students would concentrate on research question regarding migration, continuum, acculturation and collapsing of powerful regimes. They will gain tools to continue studying the history of the Abode of Islam and analyzing social and political developments.
| 教學週次Course Week | 彈性補充教學週次Flexible Supplemental Instruction Week | 彈性補充教學類別Flexible Supplemental Instruction Type |
|---|---|---|
Week1 Introduction
Geographical Scenery - the Iranian Plateau and the Eurasian Steppe and the Eurasian Steppe
The Sasanian Empire (226-651)
Week2 Iran and Turan History of Eurasia – Along the Silk Road
The Uyghur kaghanate
Week3 The Emergence of the Caliphate
An Arab Prophet
The Conquest of Iran
Umayyad Caliphate
Early Clashes in the Eurasian Steppe
Week4 The Caliphs and Eurasia
Early Clashes in the Eurasian Steppe
Umayyad Caliphate
Week5 The Abbasid Caliphate and the Steppe
Samanid
Qarakhanids
Week6The Turk in the Service of the Caliphate
Salve Soldiers
Ahmad b. Tulun
Ghaznavid
Week7 The Iranian Intermezzo
The Coming of the Barbarians
The Saljuq Conquest
Manzikert 1071
Week8 The Great Saljuq Sultanate
The Turkic tribes and the Saljuq dynasty
Melik-Shah
Ideology
Week9 Muslim scholars’ Political vision
Abu Hanifa / al-Maturidi
Administrative Structure of the Sultanate
The role of the Islamic religious establishment
Madrasa
Sufism
Week10 The Rum Sultanate
The Turkification and Islamisation of Anatolia
Week11 The Turks and the Crusades
Week12 The Advance of the Mongols
The Fall of Baghdad
The Ilkhans
Week13 The Mamluk Sultanate-a
From slave soldiers to Muslin leaders
The Black Death
Week14 The Mamluk Sultanate-b
A global force with a weak navy
Timur Leng
Week15 The Rise of the Ottoman Sultanate
From Ghazi to Imperial power
The Conquest of Istanbul
Week16 Iran
A Shiʿite force
Week17 India
The Mughal Empire
Week18 Conclusion
The Islamic Powers and the primacy of the house of Osman
1. Attendance. Students must attend all class sessions. You are permitted two (2) unexcused absences. Each additional absence will count five (5) points from the point total.
2. Participation. 10 points. You are expected to offer questions and statements. These involve close listening and critical reading. I will provide you with several pieces of translated primary sources and we will discuss them in class.
3. Two Written Assignments (essays). Each essay is worth 25 points (total = 50 points). The goal of these assignments is, first, to have students learn the material of the course, and, second, develop their skills of analysis, critical thinking and written expression. The due date for each assignment is provided in the schedule below. Each of the essays will consist of a two-three (2-3) page response to an assigned question (‘prompt’). The essays are to be written in Word, using Times New Roman (12-point font or an equivalent), and double-spaced. I do not require bibliography or endnotes/footnotes.
4. One short-answer test. It worth 20 points. The test will be based primarily on the readings. It will consist of roughly one-paragraph long identifications of names, toponyms, events or major developments.
5. Concluding test. It worth 20 points. The test will be based on lectures and reading. The student is expected to write c. 700 words, answering a broad outline question. I will provide a list of those questions.
REQUIRED READINGS[1]
Andrew C.S. Peacock, The Great Seljuk Empire (2015)
David Morgan, Medieval Persia 1040–1797 (Routledge, 2016)
Carl F. Petry, The Mamluk Sultanate A History (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire (Basic Books 2007).
Stephen Frederic Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Additional Reading
Justin McCarthy, Who Are the Turks (American Forum for Global Education, 2003)
Andrew C.S. Peacock, Early Seljūq history (London: Routledge studies in the history of Iran and Turkey, 2010)
Christian Lange and Songul Mecit (eds.), The Seljuqs: politics, society and culture (Edinburgh University Press, 2011).
Edmund Herzig & Sarah Stewart (eds.), The Age of the Seljuqs (2015)
Claude Cahen, The Formation of Turkey: The Seljukid Sultanate of Rum -- Eleventh to Fourteenth Century Translated to English and edited by P.M. Holt (Harlow, England: Longman, 2001).
Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (Tauris, 2004)
Jane Hathaway, with contributions by Karl K. Barbir, The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800 (Pearson Education Limited, 2008).
Douglas A. Howard, A History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650, The Structure of Power (Palgrave, 2002)
Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (2008)
Faroqhi, Suraiya. The Ottoman Empire: A Short History (2009)