Abbasid Soldier Diaries
Midterm Paper
You are a soldier in Abu Muslim’s army in 749 CE, marching on the Umayyad forces in Iraq and
Syria. Write a two-to-three-page (typed, double-spaced) account of yourself, your background,
and your political and religious views. You should address the following questions:
What is your ethnic background?
What languages do you speak?
When did your family convert to Islam? Are you one of the mawali?
What are your attitudes towards the Umayyads?
What are your attitudes towards the Family of the Prophet?
Who should be caliph and why?
How did you first join Abu Muslim’s forces?
Who do you think you are fighting for?
Citations: Cite the class readings to show where you are getting your information; place the
author’s last name and the page number where the information is found in parenthesis at the
end of the sentence. For example, you might right something like the following: I had long
hated the Umayyads for what they had done to Husayn, when Yazid ordered his small
band, with women and children, cut down at Karbala (Momen, 30). This means that you got
your information about Husayn, Yazid, and Karbala on page 30 of the chapter by Momen. You
should provide a citation for every sentence or set of sentences that is based on a particular
piece of information you learned from the readings. You should cite a wide variety of class
readings—three different sources at the very least, and probably more.
Plagiarism: Using other peoples’ words or using other peoples’ ideas without giving then credit
is a serious academic offence. You need to put everything in your own words, including
information from the class readings, even if you cite it. One of the ways that we check for
plagiarism is with TurnItIn, an online tool that generates a “similarity score” by comparing your
work to work in its database. A non-plagiarized paper will usually have a similarity score in the
low single digits. You can see your score after submitting your paper by clicking “view history”
from the upload confirmation page. If your similarity score is high, I suggest you revise and
resubmit; you can re-upload as many times as you like. Note that similarity scores are only one
of the tools we use to determine if plagiarism has occurred; sometimes there are legitimate
reasons for a score to be high, and sometimes a plagiarized paper will have a low score. A
paper with any amount of plagiarized material will receive a zero, and there may be other
academic consequences as well.
Due Date: The papers are due at 1:00 pm on Monday, Oct. 1stth. Turn in both an electronic
copy via D2L, AND a paper copy in class. Late submissions will not be accepted.
Good Luck!
