Regional and Transregional Elites: Connecting the Early Islamic Empire

Abstract

The conference was hosted by the ERC Advanced Grant Project, “The Early Islamic Empire at Work – The View from the Regions Toward the Center,” under the direction of Stefan Heidemann. It has now entered its second phase, looking at the conceptualization and functioning of transregional and regional elites. The project is the first systematic attempt to explain the operation of the empire from a regional perspective, that is, by adopting the view from the provinces. It studies how elites, in the provinces and the caliphal center alike, contributed to the organization and management of the early Islamic empire.