Charlemagne remains a compelling entry point for accessing the medieval, pre-Crusades context of Christian-Muslim relations. In the twentieth century, multiple Euro-Western scholars drew comparisons between the Carolingian emperor and significant Muslim figures, such as the Prophet Mohammad or the ‘Abbāsid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd, as foils curated to represent medieval Latin Christendom and the Islamic world. In The Emperor and the Elephant, Sam Ottewill-Soulsby joins this substantial body of scholarship to examine the diplomatic history of the Carolingian Empire and its relationship to Muslim polities based on three case studies: the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate, the Umayyad Emirate in al-Andalus, and the Mediterranean context of North Africa and Italy. Ottewill-Soulsby’s main purpose and arguments are historiographical: to refute Francis Buckler’s “alliance system” argument in Harunu’l-Rashid and Charles the Great (1931), which simplistically categorizes the Carolingians and ‘Abbāsids as allies versus the Byzantines and Umayyads of al-Andalus, and to assert the value of...

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