New book:
Crucifixion and Death as Spectacle: Umayyad Crucifixion in Its Late Antique Context - Sean Anthony
https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_4800QS1VA.HTMWhat historical continuity, if any, existed between the practice of crucifixion in the early Islamic polity and crucifixion as practiced by the Byzantines in the Late Roman empire and by the Sasanids in Persia? Crucifixion and Death as Spectacle explores how the first caliphal dynasty of early Islam, the Umayyads, employed crucifixion in its sundry forms to punish brigands and heretics and to humiliate rebels and enemies, and how, while doing so, the Umayyads drew upon a late antique legacy of punitive practices associated with crucifixion in the Late Roman and Sasanid Persian worlds. Like their Roman and Persian predecessors, the Umayyads wielded crucifixion, and thus the symbolism of violence against the body, to attest to their impunity as caliphs and the legitimacy of their rule. Yet, as this study also argues, this is only one side of the story. Dissidents and political rivals mobilized stories of crucified rebels and martyrs, as told and memorialized by Christians and Muslims alike, against the Umayyads in order to contest and subvert the sublimation of crucifixion as an indubitable symbol of the caliphs' use of legitimate violence, and succeeded in propagating alternative religious and political ideologies of their own.
http://newbooksinislamicstudies.com/2014/05/12/sean-anthony-crucifixion-and-death-as-spectacle-american-oriental-society-2014/Crucifixion is one of the most widely envisioned symbols in history. So much so, that for a contemporary reader the notion almost immediately plants an image of Jesus on the cross. Sean Anthony, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Oregon, argues that an assumption of uniformity in the role of crucifixion hinders our understanding of it, which is especially true when looking at crucifixion as a cross-cultural category during the Late Antique period. In Crucifixion and Death as Spectacle: Umayyad Crucifixion in Its Late Antique Context (American Oriental Society, 2014), crucifixion is examined in the early Muslim context but placed within broader social and political tactics of late antiquity. Extreme death techniques, especially in the disciplining of religious deviants, were most often public spectacles of ritualized violence used to legitimize political leaders. Umayyad leadership used crucifixion as a ideological tool to reinforce their own political legitimacy. Anthony demonstrates how this all plays out in the cases of Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr and Zayd ibn ‘Ali. The study of crucifixion also enables us to examine the rich ways that Muslims remembered and accounted for their own personal histories. In our conversation we discussed the relationship between early Islam and late antique societies, crucifixion in the Zoroastrian setting, the treatment of the dead Muslim body, crucifixion in the Qur’an and Hadith, the public/private spheres of the body, deciphering historical sources, religious deviance, and the ironic fate of the conquered Ummayads.
Listen to Sean Anthony talking about the book:
http://files.newbooksnetwork.com/islamicstudies/030islamicstudiesanthony.mp3More on punishment under the Umayyads:
The Domestic Origins of Imprisonment: An Inquiry into an Early Islamic Institution - Sean Anthony
http://www.academia.edu/302111/_The_Domestic_Origins_of_Imprisonment_An_Inquiry_into_an_Early_Islamic_Institution_Journal_of_the_American_Oriental_Society_129.4_2009_571-596The Meccan Prison of Abdallah B. Al-Zubayr and the Imprisonment of Muhammad B. Al-Hanafiya - Sean Anthony
http://www.academia.edu/228916/THE_MECCAN_PRISON_OF_ʿABDALLĀH_B._AL-ZUBAYR_AND_THE_IMPRISONMENT_OF_MUḤAMMAD_B._AL-ḤANAFĪYA
Topic: Qur'anic studies today