Early Islamic Syria

by Alan Walmsley, Richard Hodges

Overview

After more than a century of neglect, a profound revolution is occurring in the way archaeology addresses and interprets developments in the social history of early Islamic Syria-Palestine. This concise book offers an innovative assessment of social and economic developments in Syria-Palestine shortly before, and in the two centuries after, the Islamic expansion (the later sixth to the early ninth century AD), drawing on a wide range of new evidence from recent archaeological work. Alan Walmsley challenges conventional explanations for social change with the arrival of Islam, arguing for considerable cultural and economic continuity rather than devastation and unrelenting decline. Much new, and increasingly non-elite, architectural evidence and an ever-growing corpus of material culture indicate that Syria-Palestine entered a new age of social richness in the early Islamic period, even if the gains were chronologically and regionally uneven.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780715635704
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/25/2007
Series:	Debates in Archaeology
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.38(d)

About the Author

Alan Walmsley is Associate Professor, Carsten Niebuhr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has worked in the Middle East for over 25 years, directing four major field projects.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Defining Islamic archaeology in Syria-Palestine
2. After Justinian, 565-635 CE
3. Material culture and society
4. Sites and settlement processes
5. Life
6. Prospects: ongoing debates in Islamic archaeology
Brief chronology of early Islamic Arabia and
Syria-Palestine
Glossary
Bibliography
Index