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Recognizing that we know little about Arab settlement and Muslim populations in Armenia and Caucasian Albania during the Abbasid period, this article considers the data available in specific biographical compendia in Arabic: the works of al-Samʿānī, Ibn al-Aṯīr, Yāqūt, al-Ṣafadī, and Ibn Ḫallikān. It examines entries of notable Muslims from the fourth/eleventh through the seventh/fourteenth centuries with the nisbas related to the three provinces of the North. These tell of ethnic diversity, but also perceived geographical, scholarly, and ideological connectivity between the North and the more central lands of Islam and, specifically, the Persian cultural sphere. They engage themes and ideas that are key to the study of medieval Islam, such as ethnic diversity, slavery, the geographical definition of Islam, ǧihād, ṯuġūr, Sufism and asceticism, travel fī ṭalab al-ʿilm, and lines of transmission and authority.

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This paper explores the medieval Armenian understanding of the city of Balkh as a capital of the Arsacid Empire. Medieval Armenian sources employ four strategies of remembrance: scriptural geography, genealogy, folk etymology, and origin stories. These strategies invest the city of Balkh as the source of power of both Armenian royalty and nobility, through their connections to the Great Arsacids. There are two main themes in the descriptions of Balkh. First, the Arsacids of Balkh consistently decimated Sasanian armies in ways that the Armenian Arsacids could not emulate. Second, Balkh emerges as a refuge for (usually Parthian) rebels against the Chinese and Persian Empires. This paper explores the significance of Balkh as a site of memory by placing Armenian constructions of the Great Arsacid past (with some potential echoes of Great Kushan and Kushano-Sasanian history) into dialogue with the history of the city as it appears in Arabic.

Middle East Medievalists (MEM) is an international professional non-profit association of scholars interested in the study of the medieval Middle East, expansively defined to include all geographies with prominent Muslim political, religious, or social presences between 500-1500 CE. MEM has two primary goals. The first is to increase the representation of medieval scholarship at scholarly meetings by co-sponsoring panels. The second is to foster communication among individuals and organizations with an interest in the study of the medieval Middle East.