Graduate’s outstanding thesis on succession politics wins 2025 BRAIS Prize

“Growing up in an old Etruscan town in Italy, I was always immersed and drawn to ancient and medieval history” says Leone, who completed a masters in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA) at Edinburgh before embarking on his PhD.

Asked what drew him to Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies as a discipline, he says “I only discovered [it] in high school when I took a class on early and medieval Islam to avoid studying 20th century Europe!” 

“It was shortly after the Arab Spring had brought the Middle East and North Africa back into public discourse, and I began to realise how the formative periods of Islamic history still carried huge weight in the modern world.” 

“I was drawn to the first two caliphates because they are a period of momentous transformation, whether political, religious, cultural, or literary there’s something for everyone!” 

Leone’s prize-winning thesis is a history of succession in the first two Islamic caliphates (Umayyad and Abbasid) covering a period from 692-831. It makes use of sources in Armenian, Greek and Arabic - including classical Arabic poetry - and focuses on over-looked aspects of succession such as the matrilineal line, age, eligibility and ‘failed’ heirs.

Over the course of his research, Leone was supervised by a multi-disciplinary team led by Dr Marie Legendre in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, along with Dr Yannis Stouraitis in HCA (with whom he had worked on his masters), and Professor Tim Greenwood of the University of St Andrews. 

Asked about this diverse approach to supervision, Leone says “It was one of the best choices I could have made… every one of my supervisors was incredibly generous with their time and brought different perspectives, helping me bring disparate topics together.” 

“As an historian of Islam by training, it was great to be able to leave my comfort zone and go speak to a room full of experts in other fields, getting their perspective and learning from their methodologies, or bring things I’d learned from an Armenian context into dialogue with Islamic and Byzantine history. I also had access to double the libraries.” 

During his time in LLC, Leone played a key role in building community. He convened two reading groups (one on Early/Medieval Islamic texts, one in French Islamic Studies) and worked as a library assistant in IMES.

Telling us about his student experience, he says “Getting to do a PhD and being trusted that your work is important is an absolute privilege and I really tried to enjoy every moment of the process (even COVID).” 

“I enjoyed getting to meet and engage with so many fantastic scholars, whether at departmental reading groups or conferences. There are two highlights that jump out to me; the first, was spending three months at UCLA in Spring 2022 thanks to the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities [who funded his PhD]; a different setting and interacting with new interlocutors was a fantastic experience and really helps you understand “what is my thesis about?” 

“The second was inadvertently bringing back Armenian teaching in Scotland for the first time in a long while thanks to the generosity of my third supervisor, Professor Greenwood at the University of St Andrews, who started teaching a small group of us six years ago and has continued ever since (with the help of Dr Nicholas Matheou at Edinburgh).”

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