The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century

1 The matrix of the Muslim world: the Near East in the early seventh century  2 The birth of the Islamic state  3 Conquest and division in the time of the Rashidun caliphs  4 The Umayyad caliphate  5 The early 'Abbasid caliphate  6 The middle 'Abbasid caliphate  7 The early Islamic economy  8 The structure of politics in the Muslim commonwealth  9 The Buyid confederation  10 The Kurds  11 The Hamdanids  12 Bedouin political movements and dynasties  13 The Eastern Iranian world in the tenth and early eleventh centuries  14 Early Islamic Egypt and the Fatimid empire  Postscript: the coming of the Seljuks