Slave Soldiers and Islam_ The Genesis of a Military System - Daniel Pipes

Introduction

xxvii

toEastAsia,theterm"Islamdom"heredoes

notincludeIslami-

cateterritorieseastof

Bengal.

Since"Arabs"presently

liveinmostoftheareas

conqueredby

the

Muslimsinthelst/7th

century,

"Arabian"

points

outthat

the

ruling

Muslimsin thefirsttwocenturiesofIslam

came

pre-

dominantly

fromArabia

ortracedtheir

origins

tothere.

"Early

Islam"refersto

thosefirsttwocenturiesfrom

Muh.

ammadto

al-Ma’mfn,

the

germinativeperiod

ofIslamicatehistory

whenso

many

customsandattitudeswereset.

Unlessanevent

is

exactly

dated,theChristian

year

whichcon-

tains

thebulkofaMuslim

year

followsasitsequivalent,

a.I. 61

began

on 1 October680,somostof

itfellin 681 c.E.

(=

hence61/681.

Transliterationfollows theLibrary

of

Congresssystem

but

modifiessomeofitsapplications(forexample,

a4.-ah.zba

rather

thanal-ah.ba).

Vernacular

plurals

areformed with an

"s":

ghulzms

ratherthan

ghilmzn.

Namesof

places

and

dynasties

are

writtenwithoutdiacritical

marks.