The Emperor and the Elephant - by Sam Ottewill-Soulsby

Book Synopsis

A new history of Christian-Muslim relations in the Carolingian period that provides a fresh account of events by drawing on Arabic as well as western sources

In the year 802, an elephant arrived at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne in Aachen, sent as a gift by the ʿAbbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid. This extraordinary moment was part of a much wider set of diplomatic relations between the Carolingian dynasty and the Islamic world, including not only the Caliphate in the east but also Umayyad al-Andalus, North Africa, the Muslim lords of Italy and a varied cast of warlords, pirates and renegades. The Emperor and the Elephant offers a new account of these relations. By drawing on Arabic sources that help explain how and why Muslim rulers engaged with Charlemagne and his family, Sam Ottewill-Soulsby provides a fresh perspective on a subject that has until now been dominated by and seen through western sources.

The Emperor and the Elephant demonstrates the fundamental importance of these diplomatic relations to everyone involved. Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid's imperial ambitions at home were shaped by their dealings abroad. Populated by canny border lords who lived in multiple worlds, the long and shifting frontier between al-Andalus and the Franks presented both powers with opportunities and dangers, which their diplomats sought to manage.

Tracking the movement of envoys and messengers across the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and beyond, and the complex ideas that lay behind them, this book examines the ways in which Christians and Muslims could make common cause in an age of faith.

Review Quotes

"[A] lively, well-researched, and insightful book, written with great clarity and wit. . . . Excellent."---James H. Kane, Journal of Religious History

"A major contribution to the scholarship of the era. Erudite, well-written, interesting--one cannot say enough about this book."---Karl Bridges, Catholic Library World

"Groundbreaking. . . . An innovative and important model for studying diplomacy in the early medieval Mediterranean."-- "Choice"

"Ottewill-Soulsby has powerfully demonstrated that Carolingian historians cannot hope to examine Christian-Muslim diplomatic relations without first comprehending the political dynamics of Muslim polities based on their own sources. . . . An important, enduring contribution to medieval scholarship."---Sara Ann Knutson, Studies in Late Antiquity

"This book makes a convincing case for a fundamentally different reading of Christian-Muslim relationships in the early Middle Ages. . . . The panorama unfolded is fascinating, all the more so since the author has a great eye for detail."---Carine van Rhijn, History Today

"[The Emperor and the Elephant] is a finely produced book and is in the end a study that energetically engages with our medieval sources--both those well known and others less so--and centuries of academic scholarship. The result is a nuanced, wonderfully complicated, and yet admirably clear exposition of the practice of Carolingian diplomacy and the stakes involved for the Christian and Muslim states that ringed the shores of the early medieval Mediterranean."---Paul M. Cobb, Speculum

"A remarkably lively and intelligent book."---Robert Irwin, Times Literary Supplement

"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year"

"Ottewill-Soulsby is to be commended for undertaking such a meticulously researched, cleanly written, comprehensive study of a subject whose complexities have been buried far too long under an old thesis that oversimplified and, in the process, under-delivered."---Kenneth Baxter Wolf, Early Medieval Europe

About the Author

Sam Ottewill-Soulsby is a researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).