Postgraduate Course: The Umayyad Empire: the Islamic World in its Late Antique Context (IMES11041)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The Prophet Muhammad began preaching the message of Islam in the remote highlands of west Arabia shortly after 600 AD. By 750 AD, his successors ruled the largest empire in history thus far - stretching from Spain and the Atlantic Ocean in the West to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean in the East.
This course seeks to examine this pivotal 150 years in its wider historical context and in new the light of new evidence and new perspectives. It situates the 'formation of Islam' in the imperial world of 6th-and 7th-century Rome and Sasanian Iran. It also seeks to understand how and why the vast early Muslim Empire, ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, took the shape it did - both in terms of its political structures and its ideology. This is the period before Sunni and Shi'i Islam took their classical form: how and why these sectarian positions eventually developed as they did is rooted in these early centuries of Islamic history.
The course is taught in English, and will engage directly with many primary texts in translation, as well as the art, architecture and material culture of Rome, Iran and the Arab-Islamic world.
This course is jointly taught with undergraduate students. |
| Course description |
Not entered
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Explain, evaluate and critique scholarship on the broad West Eurasian context for the rise of Islam in the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries CE.
- Explain, evaluate and critique current debates about monotheism, ethnic identity and 'state formation' in late antiquity, with particular reference to the early Islamic world.
- Explain, evaluate and critique a wide range of primary evidence, literary and documentary (in translation), as well as archaeological, for this period as well as current debates about its interpretation.
- Express arguments about all of the above in effective academic prose.
- Express arguments about 1- 3 in effective oral presentations.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Special Arrangements |
PG Version of IMES10079 |
| Keywords | TUE |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Marie Legendre
Tel: (01316)51 7112
Email: Marie.Legendre@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Monique Brough
Tel: (0131 6)50 3618
Email: Monique.Brough@ed.ac.uk |
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