The Early Islamic World

'The Early Islamic World' is a Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) 'The Arab World in Transition' research network, funded by the AHRC. The network comprises UK and international scholars of late antiquity and early Islam, collaborating in order to publish an accessible, large format volume with Routledge in their series ‘Routledge Worlds’ in 2017. The primary aim of the network is to focus the work of colleagues towards an accessible publication which effectively presents to a wide audience new interpretations of the early Islamic period—repositioning early ‘Islamic History’ as a development midway within the wider processes of late antiquity West Eurasia: the crystallisation of new, monotheist, identities and the transformation of the old, classical, political, social and ethnic order—including, importantly, the formation of a new ‘Arab’ identity and Arabic written language.