History and Politics in Eleventh-Century Baghdad

In the present collection of his articles George Makdisi is first of all concerned with the local history and the topography of Baghdad. This is of interest in itself, as a study of one of the principal urban centres of the medieval world, but it also has a broader significance. For Baghdad, as the seat of the Abbasid caliphate, was the focal point of much of the Islamic world at the time: the rivalries between rulers and their ministers and the conflicts between secular and religious authoritie