Dissertation Topic

It's a tad late for dissertation week, but here's the first paragraph to my latest dissertation proposal:

"The tribal organization of Arab society has long been of importance to scholars of the early Islamic period. Throughout the conquest period and after, Arabs identified themselves as members of tribes, and the sources treat tribal identity as one of people’s salient characteristics. Tribes also function as actors in relation both to the caliphate and each other. However, not only is the nature of these relationships during this period unclear, the internal organization of these tribal groupings, their structures of authority, and the extent to which they served primarily as levels of identity is, as well. To approach this question, I propose to study the social and political development of the group known as the Azd from the pre-Islamic period until the early 9th century. By examining the sources to find the varied accounts which touch upon the Azd, one can understand a society in which a man can flee a battle in Hadhramawt and find shelter with kinsmen in Basra before becoming prominent in Mosul. This investigation will shed light on how the caliphate and its agents asserted power through kinship systems in both urban and rural contexts, as well as how tribally organized people responded to the social, political and economic milieu which developed following the Islamic conquests."