E38 - Landback in Eurasia, 622 CE [PREVIEW]

How does an Indigenous-led movement rebuild in the wake of imperial decline? With the spectacular collapse of both Sassanian Persia and Byzantime Rome in 622 CE, a certain revolutionary communal movement led by masses of nomadic herders, merchants, and farmers, provides us with one of the greatest and earliest examples, albeit one poorly attested in surviving contemporaneous sources. We turn to recent historical-critical scholarship on the birth of this movement (often quite tendentious in ways we’re not so interested in) for hints about its genesis and growth. To keep me from perfectionism in the face of this daunting topic and to...