Dr Philip Wood, an associate professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for his project The Islamicate Church and the World of Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, 750-850.
The
award, which supports 12 months of research, supports “outstanding individual researchers” whose work will promote public understanding and engagement with humanities and social sciences. It will encompass dedicated seminars for researchers in London, as well as outreach events for teachers of religious education.
The project investigates how the experience of Arab Muslim government changed the structures and thought of the Christian elite in the caliphate in the Middle East. In particular, Dr Wood examines how the intensification of the tax and judicial systems that occurred in the early Abbasid caliphate was mirrored in the levying of extensive church tithes (taxes payable to a religious organisation) and the development of ‘Christian’ law-making, and how these processes gradually disempowered lay elites in favour of the higher clergy, who came to speak on behalf of Christian communities before the caliph.
Dr Wood said: “Part of the significance of this research is that it does not view religions or religious communities such as Christians and Muslims as stable categories but as groups whose identity and leadership is being constantly reconstructed in response to different political and economic stimuli.”
The research draws primarily on the chronicle of Michael the Syrian, a medieval Syriac chronicle whose material has not been explored in detail by historians of the caliphate. The caliphate is often studied from the perspective of the Arab conquerors of the Middle East, but sources such as Michael show us the viewpoint of the conquered population, Dr Wood said.
Furthermore, this piece of research examines how the higher clergy altered their historical and political thought by presenting the Arab conquests as a liberation from Byzantine oppression or equating their own authority to that of the caliph as an ‘imamate’, contrasting it to the unjust practice of ‘kingship’.
The Christians of the ninth-century Levant were descendants of the population of Roman Syria. This study will also explore how Christian clerical elites stimulated a disavowal of the sympathy that Christians in the eastern Mediterranean had once felt for their Roman heritage.
Dr Philip Wood, an associate professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for his project The Islamicate Church and the World of Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, 750-850.
The
award, which supports 12 months of research, supports “outstanding individual researchers” whose work will promote public understanding and engagement with humanities and social sciences. It will encompass dedicated seminars for researchers in London, as well as outreach events for teachers of religious education.
The project investigates how the experience of Arab Muslim government changed the structures and thought of the Christian elite in the caliphate in the Middle East. In particular, Dr Wood examines how the intensification of the tax and judicial systems that occurred in the early Abbasid caliphate was mirrored in the levying of extensive church tithes (taxes payable to a religious organisation) and the development of ‘Christian’ law-making, and how these processes gradually disempowered lay elites in favour of the higher clergy, who came to speak on behalf of Christian communities before the caliph.
Dr Wood said: “Part of the significance of this research is that it does not view religions or religious communities such as Christians and Muslims as stable categories but as groups whose identity and leadership is being constantly reconstructed in response to different political and economic stimuli.”
The research draws primarily on the chronicle of Michael the Syrian, a medieval Syriac chronicle whose material has not been explored in detail by historians of the caliphate. The caliphate is often studied from the perspective of the Arab conquerors of the Middle East, but sources such as Michael show us the viewpoint of the conquered population, Dr Wood said.
Furthermore, this piece of research examines how the higher clergy altered their historical and political thought by presenting the Arab conquests as a liberation from Byzantine oppression or equating their own authority to that of the caliph as an ‘imamate’, contrasting it to the unjust practice of ‘kingship’.
The Christians of the ninth-century Levant were descendants of the population of Roman Syria. This study will also explore how Christian clerical elites stimulated a disavowal of the sympathy that Christians in the eastern Mediterranean had once felt for their Roman heritage.