Skip to content
Lecture

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
The Early Abbasid Caliphate

Tuesday 13.01.2026

How to watch

This lecture starts on 13 January at 5:00pm (UK).

Summary

We discuss the formation of Islam and the structuring of the Islamic world; the meaning of “jihad”; and the rise of Persian Islam and the conversion of the Turkic peoples.

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

An image of Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite teaches Chinese History, Middle Eastern and Islamic history, and sometimes Jewish history, at New York University. He is author of The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Harvard, 2005); The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford, 2009); co-editor of Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Culture, and Politics (Brandeis, 2013); The Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Concept (Columbia University Press, 2017); and Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History (Hawaii University Press, 2023).