Reckoning time, recording history: the formation of historical consciousness in the medieval Near East -- Recovering the early Islamic past: problems and approaches to competing narratives -- Dawlah: transformative politics and historical memory -- Regionalism and regional identities versus the idealized Islamic community (Ummah) -- The first "Islamic" cities: religion, tribal identities, and civic organization -- The emergence of the imperial center in Islam: identity politics, architecture, and urban space -- The road to Samarra: clients, slave regiments, and the failure of central planning -- The dialectic of Jewish-Muslim relations in the medieval Near East -- Ritual purity and political exile: a Jew in the lands of Islam explains the Babylonian exile -- Contested narratives an sacred space: Muslims, texts, Jewish subtexts -- Joseph Sambari on Muhammad and the origins of Islam: a learned Rabbi confronts Muslim apologetics and a Christian polemical tradition.