International Visiting Researchers
WIVA serves as a vibrant hub where scholars and researchers from across the globe come to contribute to our Centre's dynamic environment. Our visiting researchers bring fresh insights, and specialized expertise, filling our Centre with new ideas and exciting collaborations.
Here, you can learn about their research projects, areas of focus, and the unique contributions they are making to WIVA and the broader academic community.
Dr. Samuel Ottewill-Soulsby
In the year 802 an elephant named Abu al-ʿAbbas arrived at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne (r.768-814) in Aachen. Abu al-ʿAbbas was a gift from the ʿAbbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (r.786-809), whose vast empire dwarfed even that of Charlemagne, who was the most powerful ruler Western Europe had seen since Rome. But Abu al-ʿAbbas was almost certainly born in India and had already travelled the long distance from there to Iraq before he set off for Europe.
Charlemagne’s elephant is an extraordinary story, but he fits into a wider picture of contact between Europe and the Islamic world. This contact could be hostile, as demonstrated by invading armies and raiding pirates of the period. But it could also be peaceful. Christian pilgrims travelled to holy sites in the Caliphate such as Jerusalem and merchants crossed the Mediterranean in large numbers.
Much of my research is concerned with these contacts. In my first book, The Emperor and the Elephant: Christians and Muslims in the Age of Charlemagne (Princeton University Press, 2023), I examined diplomacy between the Carolingian empire and the Islamic world. It was particularly important for me to place relations Muslim relations with the Franks in the context of the political environment of the Islamic world. Harun al-Rashid’s dealings with Charlemagne did not take place in a vacuum but were shaped by the other concerns he had.
It's important for me that we recognise that the early medieval world was a deeply interconnected place, shaped by movement and migration. Like modern leaders, medieval rulers juggled multiple issues at the same time and we need to think about different pressures and opportunities interacted with each other if we want to understand the decisions that they made. We should also note that even groups apparently at odds with each other, such as early medieval Christians and Muslims, could nonetheless do business with each other in the right circumstances, even if it was not always easy. These are themes that I want to bring to bear on my research with the WiVA Centre.
The Franks were not the only people at this time who were interested in the Caliphate. The vikings also had tight links with the Islamic world. Vast numbers of silver dirhams have been found in Scandinavia from this period, while Arabic writers such as Ibn Fadlan discuss their encounters with them. In my current research, as with my earlier work on the Franks, I place that contact in the context of the politics of the Caliphate. In particular, following the ‘Anarchy at Samarraʿ’ (861-870) in which a run of short-lived caliphs were held prisoner by their own soldiers, the late ninth century saw powerful dynasties take over important provinces of the Caliphate. I think this had important implications for viking involvement in the Islamic world.
This is why I’m so excited to be here in Uppsala with the WiVA Centre. As with Charlemagne’s elephant, I see the movement of exotic animals as a window into contact and relations. I’m beginning by thinking about how the supply of arctic falcons from Scandinavia was shaped by the struggle for power in the Caliphate in the late ninth century. The Centre’s focus on placing the vikings in a wider context aligns perfectly with this work. I’m surrounded by people who are thinking deeply about the vikings and the wider world and who have expertise in Scandinavia in the period and in material culture that I’m already benefitting from.
The ninth-century Caliphate was a complicated and mesmerising place. I want to place Scandinavians within it and make them part of this vast, multifaceted and endlessly fascinating world.
