Author

Hugh Kennedy

About Hugh Kennedy

Hugh Nigel Kennedy (born 1947) is a British historian of the early Islamic Middle East. He studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where his doctoral thesis concerned the political elite of the early Abbasid caliphate, and taught at the University of St Andrews from 1972, becoming Professor of Middle Eastern History, before moving in 2007 to SOAS, University of London, as Professor of Arabic. His books include The Early Abbasid Caliphate (1981), The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (1986), The Armies of the Caliphs (2001), The Great Arab Conquests (2007) and Caliphate: The History of an Idea (2016).

On this site

When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty

Hugh Kennedy

2005 · Postwar Contemporary · History

Hugh Kennedy's When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World is a narrative history of the Abbasid caliphate at the height of its power, from the revolution that brought the dynasty to the throne in 750 to the anarchy of the later ninth century at Samarra, after which effective power slipped away from the caliphs. It was first published in Britain in 2004 as The Court of the Caliphs and in the United States in 2005 under its present title.

low medical relevancePower / PoliticsColonialism EmpireArt / Creation
The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In

Hugh Kennedy

2007 · Postwar Contemporary · History

Hugh Kennedy's book narrates the conquests by which Muslim Arab armies, within about a century of the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632, came to rule lands from Spain and Morocco to Central Asia and the Indus valley. It opens with a chapter on the sources, chiefly Arabic histories such as those of al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari, written down some two centuries after the events, and on how to use their mix of genealogy, heroic tale and administrative memory.

low medical relevanceWar ViolenceFaith / ReligionPower / Politics