ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on key concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book begins with a simple list of the different Abbsid identities. Identity could be provided by city, province, family/tribe, ethnicity, language, a memory of a vanished past, religion, a sense of belonging to an overarching empire, as Roman imperial' identity had provided in an earlier age and also, though these were not discussed here, trading/artisanal/professional groupings, gender and, not least, class. The author would add that even language can be constructed; Hugh Kennedy showed it for neo-Persian. It is useful in that it shows how the internal structures of identity can change, which indeed they can. The book argues that, if we do use ethnicity as a scientific term, we have to be more flexible about how to use it.
