Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Notes on Transliteration, Place Names, Dates, Editions, and Translations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Ties that Bound the Societies of the Islamic Empire
- Part I Personal ties
- Part II Institutions
- 6 Messengers in Byzantine and Early Muslim Egypt: Small Cogs, but Systemically Relevant. With Some Remarks on the Dossier of Menas, Stratiōtēs
- 7 The Epistolary Imamate: Circular Letters in the Administration of the Shiʿi Community
- 8 Early Arabic Decrees on Papyrus from the Abbasid Period
- 9 A State Letter from a Marwanid Caliph to his Governor of Iraq: A Historiographical Investigation into Khālid b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī’s Downfall
- 10 Between the Arabs and the Turks: Household, Conversion and Power Dynamics in Early Islamic Bactria
- 11 Emotion in Early Islamic Social Hierarchies: Affection, Threats, and Appeals to Piety in Official Documents from the Umayyad and Abbasid Periods
- Part III Communities
- Index
9 - A State Letter from a Marwanid Caliph to his Governor of Iraq: A Historiographical Investigation into Khālid b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī’s Downfall
from Part II - Institutions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Notes on Transliteration, Place Names, Dates, Editions, and Translations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Ties that Bound the Societies of the Islamic Empire
- Part I Personal ties
- Part II Institutions
- 6 Messengers in Byzantine and Early Muslim Egypt: Small Cogs, but Systemically Relevant. With Some Remarks on the Dossier of Menas, Stratiōtēs
- 7 The Epistolary Imamate: Circular Letters in the Administration of the Shiʿi Community
- 8 Early Arabic Decrees on Papyrus from the Abbasid Period
- 9 A State Letter from a Marwanid Caliph to his Governor of Iraq: A Historiographical Investigation into Khālid b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī’s Downfall
- 10 Between the Arabs and the Turks: Household, Conversion and Power Dynamics in Early Islamic Bactria
- 11 Emotion in Early Islamic Social Hierarchies: Affection, Threats, and Appeals to Piety in Official Documents from the Umayyad and Abbasid Periods
- Part III Communities
- Index
Summary
Governor of the Marwanid period in Iraq for fourteen years, Khālid b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī was dismissed from his office in 120/738. The narratives of his downfall – the reasons for his dismissal as well as his killing — are found in the Abbasid historiography about him. Next to these narratives, a letter that the caliph Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik addressed to him in 119/736–37 can be found in two different sources. This contribution offers a study of this letter and its transmission. It investigates the relationship between the letter and the most developed narratives about Khālid. Unpacking these relationships allows us to look beyond them and provide insights into Khālid’s removal. Finally, this paper looks at this correspondence as an expression of the writing of power and explores how it helps us better understand the ties that bind a caliph and his subordinate.
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- Mechanisms of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire , pp. 258 - 296Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
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This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/
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