Welcome to the School of Abbasid Studies!

The School of Abbasid Studies was originally founded by the late Dr. D.E.P. Jackson and the late Professor J.N. Mattock in the early eighties and was based at the University of St Andrews. After some ten years in abeyance, the School was revived by Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, John Nawas and Monique Bernards in 2000.

Our mission

The School of Abbasid Studies (SAS) is intended to provide a forum for the discussion of the political, cultural, social, economic, religious and intellectual life of the Abbasid Caliphate from c.700 – c.1250 C.E., a time span approximately bounded by the formative period of early Islam and the invasion of the Mongols. (The Fatimid Caliphate and al-Andalus will only be covered tangentially.)

The aim of the School is to bring together scholars working on the Abbasid world but in disciplines which would rarely “talk” together – working towards a holistic contemplation of the Abbasid world.

Dialogue

The School holds biennial meetings hosted by the Universities of its directors or one of its members. Since 1992, sixteen conferences have been held at the universities of Cambridge, Leuven, St Andrews, Exeter, Istanbul, Leiden, Yale, Oxford, and Venice.

Latest news

Next conference

The Seventeenth Conference of the School of Abbasid Studies will take place at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, July 2026. More details will be posted in due course.

Scopus acknowledgement

The Journal of Abbasid Studies has been accepted for Scopus. The Scopus Content Selection & Advisory Board (CSAB) has reviewed the journal’s application and approved it for coverage. The editors are pleased with the Scopus acknowledgement and hope that the journal’s inclusion in the Scopus database will attract even more excellent work for publication in the Journal of Abbasid Studies.

New publications

Imposer l’ordre. La police dans les villes et les campagnes de l’Iraq abbasside (132-334/750-945)
Eugénie Rébillard

Years of existence

Members

Conferences