IMC 2024: Sessions

These panels compare collegiate and multiple rulerships in all their forms. In this panel, speakers explore a range of rulerships from medieval Europe and the Islamic world, questioning how these are defined and how they reflect broader political culture. Jonathan Tickle explores the continued existence of sub-kingship and regional political communities within the emergent tenth-century English kingdom, and how conceptualisations of sub-rulership were mobilised during times of crisis or contestation. Eddie Meehan looks at the political discourses of the Carolingian rebellions of the early 830s and how these reflect Carolingian political culture and sub-rulership. Finally, Leone Pecorini-Goodall studies Umayyad governors and succession in the third fitna (744-54), using a prospographical approach to understand how barriers to caliphal succession fluctuated. These papers offer comparative perspectives on the nature of sub-rulership in the early medieval world, namely through an exploration of the distinct experiences of multiple authorities in England, the Carolingian empire, the Umayyad caliphate and Wales. In so doing, they question how individual historiographies have approached sub-rulership, and ask what can be learnt from further dialogue between scholars.