Dr Andrew Marsham
- Dr Andrew Marsham
- Lecturer in Islamic History
- Islamic and Middle Eastern StudiesUniversity of Edinburgh
- Room 2/10
- 19 George Square
- Edinburgh
- EH8 9LD
- Tel: +44 (0)131 650 9872
- Email:
- andrew.marsham@ed.ac.uk
While studying for a BA in History at Oxford, my attention was caught by ‘late antiquity’—the centuries between Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when the Roman Empire collapsed and monotheist religion became dominant in both Europe and the Middle East. This led me to stay on at Oxford for an MPhil in Classical and Medieval Islamic History, at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, and to travel in Egypt and Syria.
After further language study abroad, I returned to Oxford to work on a DPhil in Islamic History, and continued to travel in the Middle East. While completing my DPhil, I taught at the University of Sheffield, and then held research fellowships at the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester, before coming to Edinburgh’s department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in 2008.
Affiliated research centres and programmes
- Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World
- Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Research interests
I am interested in the pre-classical history of the Islamic world (Islam, as it were, before ‘Sunnism’ and ‘Shiism’), and in developing perspectives on Islamic history that take full account of the late antique context in which Islam took shape.
I am particularly interested in bringing ideas from the social sciences to bear on understanding historical change in the Middle East, especially changes in political culture.
Specific topics of current interest to me include the development of ideas about sacral kingship and monarchy in the Islamic world, rebellion and state responses to it, and the religious and political uses of historical memory.
Current research activities
- A monograph, The Umayyad Empire for the Edinburgh University Press series, ‘The Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires’
Summary of research interests
- Late antique and Islamic history of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, c.400-c.1300
- Islamic political culture, c.600-c.1300
- Early and medieval Arabic historiography
- Comparative history of medieval Islam, Byzantium and the Latin West
Teaching
Undergraduate teaching
- Islamic History: From the Origins of Islam to the Age of Suleiman the Magnificent, and its two sub-sections (which may be taken individually), Islamic History A: The Formation of the Islamic World and Islamic History B: From the Crusades to the 'Gunpowder Empires'
- Early Arabic Historical Texts
- Medieval Islamic Political Thought
- The First Muslim Empire: The Islamic World before ‘Sunnism’ and ‘Shi‘ism’
Postgraduate teaching
- Contribution to the core courses for the MScs in Arab World Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, First Millennium Studies and Late Antique and Byzantine Studies
- Political Thought and Culture in the Formative Era of Islam
- The Umayyad Empire: the Islamic World in its Late Antique Context
Selected publications
Andrew Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy: accession and succession in the first Muslim empire. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2009.
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Full publications
A full list of publications is available in PDF format.
This article was published on Feb 18, 2013