Kennedy, Hugh 1947-

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KENNEDY, Hugh 1947-

PERSONAL: Born October 22, 1947, in Hythe, England; son of David (a doctor) and Janet (a doctor; maiden name, Atkins) Kennedy; married; wife's name, Hilary (a psychologist), July 4, 1970; children: Susannah, Katharine, Alice, James. Education: Pembroke College, Cambridge, B.A., 1969, Ph.D., 1977.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Medieval History, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland.

CAREER: University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, lecturer in medieval history, 1972—.

WRITINGS:

The Early Abbasid Caliphate: A Political History, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1981.

The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, Longman (New York, NY), 1986.

(Translator) Al-Mansure and Al-Mahdi, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1990.

Everything Looks Impressive (novel), Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (New York), 1993.

Crusader Castles, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Original Color (novel), Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 1996.

Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus, Longman (New York, NY), 1996.

The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State, Routledge (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor) The Historiography of Islamic Egypt, c. 950-1800, Brill (Boston, MA), 2001.

Mongols, Huns and Vikings: Nomads at War, Cassell (London, England), 2002.

Court of the Caliphs, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (London, England), 2004.

(Editor, with Isabel Alfonso and Julio Escalona) Building Legitimacy: Political Discourses and Forms of Legitimacy in Medieval Societies, Cassell (London, England), 2004.

Also co-translator of The History of al-Tabari. Contributor of articles and reviews to learned journals. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates has been translated into Hebrew.

SIDELIGHTS: Hugh Kennedy is a historian whose focus is primarily the history of Islamic nations. He explores various aspects of this broad subject in books such as Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus, and The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State. The former provides "a seamless narrative of the rise and fall of the Islamic states of Spain and Portugal," according to Roger Collins in English Historical Review. Kennedy brings his subject vividly to life in a book that shows he "possesses a mastery of the Arabic sources and the ability to tell a good story," approved William E. Watson in History: Review of New Books. In The Armies of the Caliphs, Kennedy looked at the importance of weaponry and military leadership in the spread of Islam through the Middle East and North Africa. It is "the most comprehensive and balanced discussion yet of such things," noted Gerald Hawting in the Times Literary Supplement. "Kennedy focuses consistently on the army, and shows how much of early Islamic history was driven by struggles for inclusion in it and resentment at exclusion from it…. This is a bracing alternative to, but certainly not incompatible with, more religiously focused accounts of early Islam."

Crusader Castles is, in one sense, a travel book, as it is Kennedy's account of his studies of various ruins of great structures from the period of the Crusades. The book is academic in a sense, as the author analyzes history through these castles and fortifications, and throughout it all, he "manages to communicate, without sentimentality, genuine awe when contemplating some of these monuments," noted C. J. Tyerman in English Historical Review. Jonathan Phillips, reviewing the book in another issue of English Historical Review, recommended it as "an enjoyable and stimulating work to be warmly welcomed."

Kennedy has also won praise for his fiction. His first novel, Everything Looks Impressive, concerns a young man from Maine who attends Yale on a scholarship. Initially enamored with his idea of Ivy League life, he finds the reality to be very different, and during his years at the university, his outlook undergoes many transformations. It is an "endearing bildungsroman," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer, in which the author "does a fine job of tracing out what happens when young people who have too much time and too much money are set free from the constraints of parents and boarding-school dorm mothers." In another novel, Original Color, Kennedy takes a wry look at the art world in the extravagant years of the late 1980s. The protagonist, Fred Layton, is a recent graduate of Princeton who works for a greedy, self-interested art dealer. The story "fairly brims with infectious good humor," stated Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist. A Publishers Weekly writer also recommended Original Color as a "glib and cynical" novel that "moves along briskly."

Kennedy once told CA: "The purpose of my work has been to treat the history of the Islamic state in such a way that it is accessible and comprehensible to historians of other cultures and societies, rather than remaining the arcane preserve of a few specialists."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Historical Review, June, 1998, review of Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus, p. 861.

Booklist, January 1, 1993, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 878; October 1, 1996, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Original Color, p. 323.

Boston Review, December, 1994, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 30.

Change, September-October, 1993, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 62.

Choice, July, 1995, review of Crusader Castles, p. 1780; June, 1997, review of Muslim Spain and Portugal, p. 1722.

English Historical Review, November, 1996, review of Crusader Castles, p. 1239; February, 1999, Roger Collins, review of Muslim Spain and Portugal, p. 142; September, 2001, C. J. Tyerman, review of Crusader Castles, p. 928.

Entertainment Weekly, November 15, 1996, review of Original Color, p. 67.

History: Review of New Books, fall, 1997, William E. Watson, review of Muslim Spain and Portugal, p. 28.

History Today, October, 1994, review of Crusader Castles, p. 46.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, October, 2000, Pedro Chalmeta, review of Muslim Spain and Portugal, p. 778.

Journal of the American Oriental Society, October-December, 1993, Elton L. Daniel, review of The History of al-Tabari, p. 627.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1992, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 1459; August 15, 1996, review of Original Color, p. 1174.

Library Journal, February 1, 1993, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 112; October 1, 1994, review of Crusader Castles, p. 94; September 15, 1996, review of Original Color, p. 96; November 1, 1997, review of Original Color, p. 140.

Middle East Journal, spring, 1995, review of Crusader Castles, p. 362.

New York Times Book Review, March 28, 1993, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 25; December 4, 1994, review of Crusader Castles, p. 26; October 20, 1996; review of Original Color, p. 22.

Publishers Weekly, January 11, 1993, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 57; August 19, 1996, review of Original Color, p. 50.

Speculum, January, 1990, review of The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, p. 182; January, 1997, review of Crusader Castles, p. 187.

Times Literary Supplement, June 19, 1987; August 25, 1995, review of Crusader Castles, p. 26; August 22, 1997, review of Muslim Spain and Portugal, p. 30; October 4, 2002, review of The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State, p. 12; March 28, 2003, David Morgan, review of Mongols, Huns and Vikings: Nomads at War, p. 28.