The Door of the Caliph: Studies in Medieval History and Culture

Drawing on a painstaking and insightful reading of the literary sources and the material evidence, Elsa Cardoso takes on the first academic approach to the concept of "court" in Umayyad Cordoba. A fresh and novel book that opens new avenues for historical knowledge.
Alejandro García Sanjuán (University of Huelva, Spain)
 
Elsa Cardoso offers us a renewed vision of the representation of power in the Umayyad Caliphate, through the study of the multiple manifestations of ceremonial and an innovative approach to the concept of the court, based on textual and material sources.
Antonio Vallejo Triano (Director of the Archaeological Complex of Madinat al-Zahra’, Cordoba, Spain)

1. Introduction / 2. Sources and State of the Art / 3. Concepts / 4. A Ceremonial Common Language in the Mediterranean: Rituals of Court in a Comparative Perspective / 5. Conclusion / Images

Elsa Cardoso is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East (ILC) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Lisbon in 2020. From April 2021 to March 2022, she was a postdoctoral fellow of the German DFG Center RomanIslam at the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on the history of Islam and the history of al-Andalus. She has worked and published on the court, diplomacy and ceremonial of the Umayyads of Cordoba, considering a comparative perspective within the Mediterranean. She is also developing her research on the historiography of al-Andalus, as well as on the history of the Gharb al-Andalus.