Table of Contents

Contents: Preface; From Polis to Madina: urban change in late Antique and early Islamic Syria; The last century of Byzantine Syria: a reinterpretation; Gerasa and Scythopolis: power and patronage in the Byzantine cities of Bilad al-Sham; The impact of Muslim rule on the pattern of rural settlement in Syria; From Antiquity to Islam in the cities of al-Andalus and al-Mashriq; The Melkite church from the Islamic conquest to the Crusades: continuity and adaptation in the Byzantine legacy; Antioch: from Byzantium to Islam and back again; The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the 8th and 9th centuries: military organisation and society in the borderlands; Byzantine-Arab diplomacy in the Near East from the Islamic conquests to the mid 11th century; Central government and provincial élites in the early 'Abbasid caliphate; Military pay and the economy of the early Islamic state; Caliphs and their chroniclers in the middle Abbasid period (3rd/9th century); The Uqaylids of Mosul: the origins and structure of a nomad dynasty; The decline and fall of the first Muslim empire; Index.