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) 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 (New York, NY), 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.

When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty, Da Capo Press (Cambridge, MA), 2005.

The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2006.

(Editor) Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria: From the Coming of Islam to the Ottoman Period, Brill (Boston, MA), 2006.

The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In, Da Capo Press (Philadelphia, PA), 2007.

Also cotranslator of The History of al-Tabari. Contributor of articles and reviews to academic journals.

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," wrote William E. Watson in History: Review of New Books. In The Armies of the Caliphs, Kennedy looks 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 that 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."

When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty is Kennedy's study of the golden age of Islam during the eighth and ninth centuries. Baghdad's Abbasid Dynasty ruled from Tunisia to India and was an influence for many years. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the personalities profiled by Kennedy include Caliph Harun al-Rashid, who was mythologized in The Arabian Nights, as well as his queen, Zubayda. The reviewer commented that Kennedy does not offer a dry history, but rather one "full of stories of love, sex, power, corruption, sibling rivalry and political intrigue." The reviewer also noted that in presenting the human aspects, "Kennedy does a superb job."

"The author shows how poetry, especially love poetry, could be both entertainment and a potent form of political discourse, not to mention a path to wealth and stardom," wrote Thomas Noble in National Catholic Reporter. "The Abbasids were builders on an almost unimaginable scale. Saddam Hussein was a piker in comparison. The harem is carefully, not salaciously, described. The harem was less a sexual pleasure palace than the private quarters of an elite residence."

Booklist reviewer Gilbert Taylor wrote: "Kennedy accessibly presents his expertise on the Abbasids in this insightful history of the dynasty." "Nicely written, accessible history, rich in detail and most timely," concluded a Kirkus Reviews contributor.

The fourteen essays of The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East were first published between 1980 and 2004 and deal with Middle Eastern history from approxi- mately 550 to 1000 A.D. The three main themes are Syria in late antiquity and the changes and continuities with the early Islamic period, relations between Muslims and the Byzantine Empire from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, and the development of the economy and the government in the early caliphate. The volume emphasizes economic and social factors and archaeological and written evidence in clarifying developments in this crucial area of the world.

Kennedy is editor of Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria: From the Coming of Islam to the Ottoman Period, a collection of twenty-one papers that come from a conference on Islamic fortification in Bilad al-Sham, held in the northern Syrian city of Aleppa in 2003. The volume focuses on the history of Muslim military architecture in Syria from its beginnings under the Umayyads (661-750) to Ottoman times. These studies range from groundbreaking archaeological studies to wide-ranging analysis of broader trends. Many of the photographs and plans included in this book have never before been published.

In The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In, Kennedy writes that in slightly more than one hundred years after the death of Mohammed in 632, Arabs expanded their territory to include an area greater than the Roman Empire, and they accomplished this in half the time. The thousand-year-old Persian Empire was conquered by the middle of the eight century, while the Byzantine Empire was reduced to the immediate site of Constantinople, and the Visigoth kingdom of Spain was destroyed. The speed with which the religious and political maps of the world were changed was astonishing. Although violence was sometimes an aspect of conversion, for the most part, it wasn't necessary. Conquered peoples paid tribute and accepted the new religion rather than face the wrath of their conquerors.

"The Arabs were also lucky in their timing," noted an Economist reviewer. "Mr. Kennedy speculates that, had they got going a generation earlier, success would probably have eluded them. As it was, disarray within the Byzantine and Sasanian empires helps to explain why the Arabs met little serious resistance there."

Writing in New Statesman, Ziauddin Sardar described The Great Arab Conquests as being "a swashbuckling narrative of daring and highly motivated men moving with great velocity across harsh and inhospitable land to subdue empires and kingdoms. But it is also a tale of how the Muslims were able to maintain their own identity and culture and to create an environment that encouraged many of the conquered people to embrace Islam. Furthermore, it is an account of how memory is formed, cherished and used to establish a community."

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, Jessica A. Coope, review of Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus, p. 861.

Booklist, January 1, 1993, Frances Woods, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 878; October 1, 1996, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Original Color, p. 323; June 1, 2005, Gilbert Taylor, review of When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty, p. 1745; September 1, 2007, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In, p. 42.

Bookwatch, December, 2005, review of When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World.

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.

Economist, July 7, 2007, review of The Great Arab Conquests, p. 79.

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.

Internet Bookwatch, November, 2007, review of The Great Arab Conquests; December, 2007, review of The Great Arab Conquests.

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; April 1, 2005, review of When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World, p. 402; July 15, 2007, review of The Great Arab Conquests.

Library Journal, February 1, 1993, Ellen R. Cohen, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 112; October 1, 1994, Bennet D. Hill, review of Crusader Castles, p. 94; September 15, 1996, review of Original Color, p. 96; November 1, 1997, review of Original Color, p. 140; November 1, 2007, Melissa Aho, review of The Great Arab Conquests, p. 83.

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

National Catholic Reporter, October 6, 2006, Thomas Noble, review of When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World, p. 8.

New Statesman, July 16, 2007, Ziauddin Sardar, review of The Great Arab Conquests, p. 61.

New York Times Book Review, March 28, 1993, Jennifer Howard, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 25; December 4, 1994, Martin Filler, review of Crusader Castles, p. 26; October 20, 1996; review of Original Color, p. 22; January 6, 2008, Max Rodenbeck, review of The Great Arab Conquests, p. 17.

Publishers Weekly, January 11, 1993, review of Everything Looks Impressive, p. 57; August 19, 1996, review of Original Color, p. 50; May 2, 2005, review of When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World, p. 186.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2006, review of Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria: From the Coming of Islam to the Ottoman Period; November, 2006, review of The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East.

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, August 25, 1995, Simon Pepper, review of Crusader Castles, p. 26; August 22, 1997, Richard Fletcher, review of Muslim Spain and Portugal, p. 30; October 4, 2002, Gerald Hawting, 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.