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List of illustrations -- List of tables -- List of contributors -- Notes on transliteration, place names, dates, editions, and translations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: The ties that bound the societies of the Islamic empire / Edmund Hayes and Petra Sijpesteijn -- Ties of unfreedom in late antiquity and early Islam: debt, dependency and the origins of Islamic law / Robert Hoyland -- The local clergy and "ties of indebtedness" in Abbasid Egypt: Some reflections on studying credit and debt in early Islamicate societies / Cecilia Palombo -- 'Return to God and the brotherhood of good and excellent people': Bringing the prodigal son back home in Ayyubid Egypt / Oded Zinger -- Aloneness as connector in Arabic papyrus letters of request / Petra Sijpesteijn -- Swearing Abū al-Jaysh into office: The loyalties of Ṭūlūnid Egypt / Matthew Gordon -- Messengers in Byzantine and early Muslim Egypt - small cogs, but systemically relevant. With some remarks on the dossier of Menas, stratiōtēs / Stefanie Schmidt -- The epistolary imamate: Circular letters in the administration of the Shi'i community / Edmund Hayes -- Early Arabic decrees on papyrus from the Abbasid period / Naïm Vantieghem -- A state letter from a Marwanid caliph to his governor of Iraq: A historiographical investigation into Khālid b. 'Abd Allāh alQasrī's downfall / Noëmie Lucas -- Between the Arabs and the Turks: Household, conversion and power dynamics in early Islamic Bactria / Said Reza Huseini -- Emotion in early Islamic social hierarchies: Affection, threats, and appeals to piety in official documents from the Umayyad and Abbasid Periods / Karen Bauer -- Local elites during two periods of civil strife: Al-Ash'ath b. Qays, Muḥammad b. al-Ash'ath, and the quarter of Kinda in seventh-century Kufa / Georg Leube -- Rulers, Ḥanābila, and Shi'is: the unravelling social cohesion of fourth/tenth-century Baghdad / Nimrod Hurvitz -- Resistance to and acceptance of the Fatimids in North Africa: A Shi'i dynasty in negotiation with both adherents and enemies / Paul E. Walker -- Boundaries that bind? Pagan and Christian Arabs between Syriac and Islamic strategies of distinction (late first century AH) / Simon Pierre -- "Peace be upon you": Arabic Greetings in Greek and Coptic letters written by Christians in early Islamic Egypt / Lajos Berkes -- Tied to two empires: The material evidence of the Islamic conquest of Sicily / Joanita Vroom -- Index.

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The success of Islamic imperialism in the period from the conquests to the Ayyubid dynasty has traditionally been explained as purely the result of military might. This book, however, adopts a bottom-up approach which puts social relationships and local power dynamics at the centre of the Islamic empire's cohesion. Its chapters draw on sources in diverse languages: not just Arabic, but also Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Hebrew, and Bactrian, showing how different linguistic communities intersected and contributed to a connected yet diverse empire. They highlight how not just literary and historical texts, but also physical documents and archaeological evidence should be incorporated into writing histories of the late antique and early medieval Middle East. Social institutions and relationships explored include oaths; petitions, decrees, and begging letters; and financial frameworks such as debt and taxation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.