Professor Andrew Marsham
- Professor of Classical Arabic Studies
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About
Andrew Marsham studied History at Oxford, where he became interested in the early history of Islam. He went on to postgraduate study at Oxford in Arabic and Islamic History, and Arabic study in Egypt and Syria, before teaching and researching in Sheffield, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Cambridge.
Research
Research interests
- Early and mediaeval Islamic history
- Transregional history
- Arabic historiography
- Middle Eastern history
- Umayyad Caliphate
- Abbasid Caliphate
- Comparative history
- Medieval History
Andrew Marsham's research concerns the formation of the first Islamic political structures and their wider late antique and medieval contexts. His most recent book, The Umayyad Empire (Edinburgh, 2024), is a new study of the formation in Late Antiquity of the first Islamic empire, under the leadership of the Umayyad branch of the Prophet Muhammad's tribe. His first monograph, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy (Edinburgh, 2009), is the only full-length study of the pledges of allegiance given to the rulers of the early Islamic empire. He has also written on the execution of rebels, on history writing in Arabic, and on the comparative history of medieval political culture. He co-edited Power, Patronage, and Memory in Early Islam (Oxford, 2018) with Professor Alain George and edited The Umayyad World (Routledge, 2021).
Recent and selected publications
- The Umayyad Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2024).
- Wealth and the Image of the Umayyads in the Sermons Attributed to Abū Hamza (d. 748). In Hannah-Lena Hagemann (ed.) & Alasdair Grant (ed.) (ed.) Between Rebels and Rulers in the Early Islamicate World: Power, Contention and Identity (2024) pp. 265–89 (2024).
- Kinship, Dynasty, and the Umayyads. In Maaike van Berkel (ed.) & Letizia Osti (ed.) The Historian of Islam at Work: Essays in Honour of Hugh N. Kennedy pp. 12-45 (2022).
- Bede, Ibn Isḥāq, and the idols: narratives of conversion at late antique edges. In Phil Booth and Mary Whitby (ed.) Mélanges James Howard-Johnston. Travaux et Mémoires 26. pp. 315-339 (2022).
- The Umayyad World. Ed. Routledge (2021).
- The Caliphate. In Peter Fibiger Bang (ed.) & Walter Scheidel (ed.) The Oxford History of World Empire. Volume II: The History of Empires (2021).
- Power, Patronage, and Memory in Early Islam. Ed., with Alain George. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2018).
- Public Execution in the Umayyad Period: Early Islamic Punitive Practice and Its Late Antique Context. Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11:4 pp. 101-136 (2011).
- Rituals of Islamic Monarchy: Accession and Succession in the First Muslim Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2009).
Teaching and supervision
Andrew Marsham welcomes inquiries about MPhil and PhD supervision relating to all aspects of early and medieval Middle Eastern and Islamic history.