Rituals of Islamic Monarchy is a history of the oath of allegiance by which the caliph was recognised at his accession. It begins in pre-Islamic Arabia and traces the development of a formal ceremonial of Islamic monarchy in Syria and Iraq during the 7th-9th centuries CE. It examines how the caliphs sought to proclaim their status as the representatives of God's covenant on earth through syntheses of Roman and Iranian royal ritual and customs and practices brought from pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia. It engages with current debates about the reliability of the Islamic tradition for early Islamic history and identifies key turning-points in the formation of classical Islamic political culture. An early chapter discusses the importance of the Qur'an as a historical source for the time of the Prophet Muhammad. For the caliphal period, close readings of the sources for specific rituals alternate with the examination of later copies of documents used at these accession rituals.This study of the invention and re-invention of a central institution of early Islamic political culture is the first such account of Islamic accession ceremonial and will appeal to both specialists in early Islamic history and non-specialists alike. ; A history of the ceremony of the oath of allegiance to the caliph from the time of the Prophet Muhammad until the fragmentation of the caliphate in the late 9th and 10th centuries.Blurb by author:Rituals of Islamic Monarchy is the first full-length study of the rituals by which the caliphs were made rulers of the early Muslim empire. It is an original contribution to scholarship on early Islam and the Middle East, which gives important insights into the formation of classical Islamic culture and civilisation. It clearly sets out the particular evidential problems of early Islamic history and identifies strategies for overcoming them. It also engages with the problem of how Islamic history relates to the history of the pre-Islamic Middle East, arguing for the importance of the pre-Islamic, Arabian context of early Islam, as well as a wider perspective that takes in the legacy of the pre-Islamic empires of Rome and Iran. ; Introduction; Section I: Rituals of Rulership in Arabia and the Conquest Polity (c.570-692); 1. Ritual and Authority in the Late Antique Near East; 2. The Bay'a: the Expression of Loyalty in the First Century of Islam.; 3. Authority and Succession in the 'Conquest Polity' (622-661); 4. Near Eastern Kingship: The Sufyanid and Zubayrid Caliphates (661-692); Section II: The Marwanid State (692-749); 5. The Wilayat al-'ahd: Dynastic Succession in Early Islam; 6. State Ceremonial: the Bay'a in the Early Marwanid Period; 7. Revolutionary Bay'as: Loyalty at the End of the Marwanid Caliphate and During the Abbasid Revolution; Section III: The Early Abbasid Caliphate (749-817); 8. Succession in the Early Abbasid Period; 9. Documents and the Bay'a from al-Wal?d II to al-Mu'tazz (743-870); 10. Al-Mansur and the Succession of al-Mahdi: 136/754-160/776; 11. Succession and Civil War; 12. Al-Ma'mün and al-Rida; Section IV: The Rise of the Turks (817-870); 13. Al-Mu'tasim and al-Wathiq; 14. Al-Mutawakkil and the Third Century Civil War; Conclusion and Comparisons.