This book deals with the ways empires affect smaller communities and vice versa. It raises the question how these different types of community were integrated into larger imperial structures, and how tensions between local and central interests affected the development of the post-Roman West, Byzantium and the early Islamic world.

Rutger Kramer is Assistant Professor of Medieval History at Radboud University, The Netherlands.
Walter Pohl is Professor of History at the University of Vienna, Austria.

• 1. Introduction: Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World (Walter Pohl and Rutger Kramer)


• 2. The Emergence of New Polities in the Break-Up of the Abbasid Caliphate (Hugh Kennedy)


• 3. The Emergence of New Polities in the Break-Up of the Western Roman Empire (Walter Pohl)


• 4. Comparative Perspectives: Differences between the Dissolution of the Western Roman Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate (Walter Pohl and Hugh Kennedy)


• 5. Fragmentation and Integration: A Response to the Contributions by Hugh Kennedy and Walter Pohl (Peter Webb)


• 6. Historicizing Resilience: The Paradox of the Medieval East Roman State; Collapse, Adaptation, and Survival (John Haldon)


• 7. Processions, Power, and Community Identity: East and West (Leslie Brubaker and Chris Wickham)


• 8. Death of a Patriarch: The Murder of Yuhanna ibn Jami (966) and the Question of 'Melkite' Identity in Early Islamic Palestine (Daniel Reynolds)


• 9. Diversity and Convergence: The Accommodation of Ethnic and Legal Pluralism in the Carolingian Empire (Stefan Esders and Helmut Reimitz)


• 10. Franks, Romans, and Countrymen: Carolingian Interests, Local Identities, and the Conquest of Aquitaine (Rutger Kramer)


• 11. From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: Yemeni Arab Identity in Abbasid Iraq (including Appendix: translations of selected poems) (Peter Webb)


• 12. Loyal and Knowledgeable Supporters: Integrating Egyptian Elites in Early Islamic Egypt (Petra Sijpesteijn)


• 13. Concluding Thoughts: Empires and Communities (Chris Wickham)