Publications
MONOGRAPHS
Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives: The First 1,000 Years (University of California Press Books, November 2016) (ISBN: 9780520292987; Hardcover, 272 pages)
In Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives, the distinguished historian of Islam Chase F. Robinson draws on the long tradition in Muslim scholarship of commemorating in writing the biographies of notable figures, but he weaves these ambitious lives together to create a rich narrative of Islamic civilization, from the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century to the era of the world conquerer Timur and the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in the fifteenth.
Beginning in Islam’s heartland, Mecca, and ranging from North Africa and Iberia in the west to Central and East Asia, Robinson not only traces the rise and fall of Islamic states through the biographies of political and military leaders who worked to secure peace or expand their power, but also discusses those who developed Islamic law, scientific thought, and literature. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of rich and diverse Islamic societies. Alongside the famous characters who colored this landscape—including Muhammad’s cousin ’Ali; the Crusader-era hero Saladin; and the poet Rumi—are less well-known figures, such as Ibn Fadlan, whose travels in Eurasia brought fascinating first-hand accounts of the Volga Vikings to the Abbasid Caliph; the eleventh-century Karima al-Marwaziyya, a woman scholar of Prophetic traditions; and Abu al-Qasim Ramisht, a twelfth-century merchant millionaire.
'Abd al-Malik (Oneworld Press, 2005) (ISBN 1-85168-361-5; 139 pp. + xv)
Reviews: International Journal of Middle East Studies 39 (2007); Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques 23 (2007); Middle Studies Association Bulletin 41 (2007); The Times Literary Supplement (July 14, 2006).
Islamic Historiography (Cambridge University Press, 2003) (ISBN 0-521-62081; 237 pp. + xxv)
Persian translation (Teheran, 2009; rev. forthcoming)
Reviews: Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 15 (2004); EurasianStudies 11 (2003); Middle East and South Asia Folklore Bulletin 20 (2004); al-Masaq 17 (2005); The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21 (2004); Choice (July, 2003); Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques 22 (2006); Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 49 (2006); Welt des Islams 47 (2007).
Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia (Cambridge University Press, 2000) (ISBN 0-521-781159; 206 pp. + xv).
Reviews: The Historian 65 (2003); American Historical Review 108 (2003); Journal of Islamic Studies 13 (2002); Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques 19 (2003); Journal of the American Oriental Society 123 (2003); Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-faith Studies 3 (2001); Le Moyen Age 3-4 (2002); Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 62 (2002); History 57 (2002); American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 20 (2003); Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 37 (2003); Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques 19 (2003); Studies in Contemporary Islam 4 (2002).
EDITED VOLUMES
The Oxford History of Historical Writing, general ed. D. Woolf, co-editor (with S. Foot) of Volume 2: Historical Writing, 600-1400 (Oxford, 2012) (ISBN 978-0-19-923642-8; 720 pp.)
The Formation of Islam, sixth to eleventh century, vol. 1 of the 6-volume New Cambridge History of Islam, general ed. M.A. Cook (Cambridge, 2010) (ISBN 978-0-521-83823-8; 852 pp. + xxxviii).
Winner of the Waldo G. Leland Prize awarded by the American Historical Association
Reviews: The Telegraph (November 10, 2011); Sehepunkte (2012).
Texts, Documents and Artefacts: Islamic Studies in Honour of D.S. Richards (E.J. Brill, 2003) (ISBN 0929-2403; 417 pp. + xiii).
Reviews: Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 38 (2004); Journal of Oriental and African Studies 14 (2005); Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15 (2005); Journal of Semitic Studies 51 (2006).
A Medieval Islamic City Reconsidered: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art (Oxford University Press, 2001) (ISBN 0-19-728024-2; 207 pp.).
Reviews: Journal of Islamic Studies 15 (2004); MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 4 (2004).
RESEARCH ARTICLES
‘Slavery in the conquest period’, International Journal of Middle East Studies (forthcoming, 2017)
‘Fowden’s first millennium’, Millennium (forthcoming, 2017)
ʿ'Al-Atṭṭāf b. Sufyān and Abbasid imperialism’, in A. Korangi, et al., eds, Essays in Islamic Philology,
History and Philosophy (Festschrift for Ahmad Mahdavi-Damghani) (Berlin, 2016), pp. 357-85.
'History and Heilsgeschichte in early Islam: Some observations on prophetic history and biography’
in B.-C.Otto, S. Rau and J. Ruepke, eds, History and Religion: Narrating a Religious Past (Berlin, 2015), pp. 119-50.
‘Crone and the end of Orientalism’, in B. Sadeghi, et al., eds, Islamic Cultures, Islamic Contexts (Leiden, 2015), pp. 597-620.
‘Introduction’ (with S. Foot), in C.F. Robinson and S. Foot, eds, The Oxford History of Historiography, Volume 2: 600 to 1400 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 1-8.
‘The early Islamic historiographical tradition’ in C.F. Robinson and S. Foot, eds, The Oxford History of Historiography, Volume 2: 600 to 1400 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 238-66.
‘The First Islamic Empire’, in J.P. Arnason and K. Raaflaub, eds, The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Oxford, 2011), pp. 229-48; reprinted in P.F. Bang and W. Scheidel, eds, The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean (Oxford, 2012).
‘The Violence of the Abbasid Revolution’, in Y. Suleiman, ed., Living Islamic History: Studies in Honour of Professor Carole Hillenbrand (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 226-51.
‘Introduction’, in C.F. Robinson, ed., The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 1: The Formation of Islam, sixth to eleventh century (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 1-15.
‘The seventh century’, in C.F. Robinson, ed., The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 1: The Formation of Islam, sixth to eleventh century (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 173-225.
‘From formative Islam to classical Islam’, in C.F. Robinson, ed., The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 1: The Formation of Islam, sixth to eleventh century (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 683-95.
‘The Ideological uses of Islam’, Past & Present 203 (2009), pp. 205-228.
‘A safe-conduct for the Abbasid caliph, `Abd Allah b. `Ali’ (with A. Marsham), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 70 (2007), pp. 247-81.
‘Early Islamic history: parallels and problems’, in H. Williamson, ed., Understanding Ancient Israel, Proceedings of the British Academy, 143 (London, 2007), pp. 87-102.
'A local historian’s debt to al-Tabari: the case of al-Azdi’s Ta’rikh al-Mawsil', Journal of the American Oriental Society, 126 (2006), pp. 1-15.
‘Neck-sealing in early Islam’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48.3 (2005), pp. 409-441.
‘al-Tabari,’ in M. Cooperson and S. Toorawa, eds, Dictionary of Literary Biography: Arabic Literary Culture, ca. 500-925 (Detroit, etc., 2005), pp. 432-443.
‘The conquest of Khuzistan: a historiographical reassessment’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 67 (2004), pp. 14-39; reprinted in F.M. Donner, ed., The Expansion of the Early Islamic State (Aldershot, 2008).
‘Reconstructing early Islam: truth and consequences’, in H. Berg, ed., Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins (Leiden, 2003), pp. 101-134.
‘Ar-Raqqa in the Syriac historical tradition’, in S. Heidemann and A. Becker, eds, Raqqa II – Die islamische Stadt (Mainz, 2003), pp. 81-85.
‘Introduction’ to C.F. Robinson, ed., A Medieval Islamic City Reconsidered: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra (Oxford, 2001), pp. 8-20.
‘Prophecy and holy men in early Islam’, in J. Howard-Johnston and P. Hayward, eds, The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1999), pp. 241-262.
‘The study of Islamic historiography: a progress report’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3.7.2 (1997), pp. 199-227.
‘Ibn al-Azraq, his Ta’rikh Mayyafariqin, and early Islam’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3.6.1 (1996), pp. 7-27.
‘Tribes and nomads in early Islamic northern Mesopotamia’, in K. Bartl and S.R. Hauser, eds, Continuity and Change in Northern Mesopotamia from the Hellenistic to the Early Islamic Period, Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient Bd. 17 (Berlin, 1996), pp. 429-452.
‘al-Mu`afa b. `Imran and the beginnings of the Tabaqat literature’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 115 (1996), pp. 114-120.
SHORTER ARTICLES AND ENTRIES
‘Civil war’, in G. Bowering, et al, eds, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (Princeton, 2012), pp. 125-8.
‘al-Azdi, Yazid b. Muhammad’, Encyclopaedia of Islam3 (2010), pp. 125-8.
‘Riddles in the sand’ (recent scholarship on the Qur’an) Times Literary Supplement (May 29, 2009), pp. 14-15; Italian translation Ecdotica 8 (2011), pp. 167-73.
‘Warner,’ Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, vol. v (2006), pp. 459-61.
‘Conquest’, Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, vol. i (2001), pp. 397-401.
‘Waraqa b. Nawfal’, Encyclopaedia of Islam2,vol. xi (2001), pp. 142f.
‘Uhud’, Encyclopaedia of Islam2, vol. x (2000), pp. 782f.
‘`Ubayd Allah b. `Umar’, Encyclopaedia of Islam2, vol. x (2000), p. 763.
‘`Ubayd Allah b. Ziyad’, Encyclopaedia of Islam2, vol. x (2000), pp. 763f.
‘Bernard Lewis’ in D.R. Woolf, ed., Making History: A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing (Garland, 1998), p. 419.
‘Marshall G.S. Hodgson’, in D.R. Woolf, ed., Making History: A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing (Garland, 1998), p. 556.
‘Shabib b. Yazid’, Encyclopaedia of Islam2, vol. ix (1995), pp. 164f.
‘Shaharidja’, Encyclopaedia of Islam2, vol. ix (1995), p. 202.
PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING (the Middle East, Islam and Higher Education)
‘The Caliph has no clothes’, The New York Times (7.16.14)
‘Trouble recruiting top faculty? Promote collaboration’, The Chronicle of Higher Education (3.24.14)
‘What humanities job crisis?’, Inside Higher Education (12.11.12)
‘Understanding Middle Eastern Reactions to ‘Innocence of Muslims’’, The Huffington Post (9.26.12)
‘Riddles in the sand’ (recent scholarship on the Qurʾān), Times Literary Supplement (29.5.2009);
Italian translation Ecdotica 8 (2011), pp. 167-73.
‘Today's Lecture: The Good Muslim’ (Higher Education policy), Times Higher Education Supplement (13.7.2007)
BOOK REVIEWS
‘Lost decades’ (review of J. Howard-Johnston, Witnesses to a World Crisis), Times Literary Supplement (May 11, 2012), pp. 16-17.
D. Powers, Muhammad is Not the Father of Any of Your Men in Journal of the American Oriental Society 131 (2011), pp. 51-52.
P. Crone, From Kavad to Ghazali in International Journal of Middle East Studies 40 (2008), pp. 512-14.
Y. D. Nevo and J. Koren, Crossroads to Islam in The Times Literary Supplement (January 28, 2005).
P. Walker, Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and its Sources in Journal of Semitic Studies 49 (2004), pp. 396-79.
Ibn Warraq (ed.), What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text and Commentary in The Times Literary Supplement (September 12, 2003).
J. Retso, The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads in The Times Literary Supplement (March 21, 2003).
P. Cobb, White Banners: Contention in Abbasid Syria in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 12 (2002), pp. 195-6.
T. el-Hibri, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography in Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 31 (2001), pp. 181-4.
M.Q. Zaman, Religion and Politics under the Early Abbasids in the Journal of Islamic Studies 11 (2000), pp. 236-38.
R. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 10 (2000), pp. 379-81.
K. Athamina/al-Baladhuri, Ansab al-ashraf in Der Islam 76 (1999), pp. 341-42.
M. Lecker, Muslims, Jews and Pagans in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 7 (1997), pp. 129-31.
B. Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam in The Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 31 (1997), pp. 97-8.
A. Palmer, The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society ns. 5 (1995), pp. 97-101.
D. Morray, An Ayyubid Notable and His World in Journal of the American Oriental Society 116 (1996),pp. 322-23.
A.M. Salman, al-Mawsil fi’l-`ahdayn al-rashidi wa’l-umawi in al-`Usur al-Wusta 4 (1993), pp. 41-42.
J. W. Jandora, The March From Medina: A Revisionist Study of the Arab Conquests in International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (1992), pp. 741-3.