Astrology and History in Early Islam
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A01=Antoine Borrut
Abbasids
Astrology
Author_Antoine Borrut
Category=NHAH
Category=NHG
Category=QRP
Category=VXFA
Cultural History
Early Islam
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_mind-body-spirit
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Historical Memory
Historiography
Regimes of Historicity
Umayyads
Product details
- ISBN 9781399558259
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Feb 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Aligning Heaven and Earth in Early Islam focuses on the construction of historical knowledge during the first centuries of Islam (7th–10th centuries CE) and sheds light on the much-neglected genre of astrological histories. It contends that astrologers played a significant, albeit totally overlooked, role in the making of Islamic historiography. The volume documents a unique moment in historical writing and reveals enduring legacies of this exceptional corpus of texts and historical horoscopes. The flourishing and eventual vanishing of astrological histories reveal broader historiographical trends, most notably a shift of cultural brokers serving as arbitrators of (historical) knowledge and a change of regime of historicity. Aligning Heaven and Earth in Early Islam also reveals the forgotten legacies of a moment in early Islamic historiography, when history was being written according to celestial omens and planetary conjunctions.
Antoine Borrut is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland. A specialist in early Islamic history and historiography, he is a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. He is the author of Between Memory and Power: The Syrian Space under the Late Umayyads and Early Abbasids (c. 72-193/692-809) (Leiden: Brill, 2023; originally published in French in 2011 and winner of the Islamic Republic of Iran “World book award” and of the Syrian Studies Association book award). He also edited or co-edited several volumes: Navigating Language in the Early Islamic World: Multilingualism and Language Change in the First Centuries of Islam (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024); Mers et rivages d'Islam: De l'Atlantique à la Méditerranée (Paris: Presses de La Sorbonne, 2023); Christians and Others in the Early Umayyad State (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2016); Le Proche-Orient de Justinien aux Abbassides: peuplement et dynamiques spatiales (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012); Écriture de l’histoire et processus de canonisation dans les premiers siècles de l’Islam Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée (REMMM) 129 (Aix-en-Provence: 2011); and Umayyad Legacies: Medieval Memories from Syria to Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
