Garden of Egypt : irrigation, society, and the state in the premodern Fayyūm / Brendan Haug.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Haug, Brendan, author.

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Series:

New texts from ancient cultures.

New Texts from Ancient Cultures

Language:

Arabic

English

Greek, Ancient (to 1453)

Subjects (All):

Irrigation--Egypt--History.

Irrigation.

Irrigation--Egypt--Management--History.

Fayyūm (Egypt : Province)--History.

Fayyūm (Egypt : Province).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 volume : illustrations (some color), maps (some color))

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2024.

Language Note:

Text in English; passages in Arabic and Ancient Greek with English translation.

Summary:

Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm is the first environmental history of Egypt's Fayyūm depression. The volume studies human relationships with flowing water, from the third century BCE to the thirteenth century CE. Until the arrival of modern perennial irrigation in the nineteenth century, the Fayyūm was the only region of premodern Egypt to be irrigated by a network of artificial canals. By linking large numbers of rural communities together in shared dependence on this public irrigation infrastructure, canalization introduced to Egypt a radically new way of interacting both with the water of the Nile and with fellow farmers. Drawing upon ancient Greek papyri, medieval Arabic literature, and modern comparative evidence, this book explores the ways in which the Nile's water, local farmers, and state power together continually reshaped this irrigated landscape over more than thirteen centuries. Following human/water relationships through both space and time further helps to erode disciplinary boundaries and bring multiple periods of Egyptian history into contact with one another.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Preface

List of Maps

List of Figures

List of Tables

Aids for Reader

Note on the Transliteration and Translation

Introduction: From Water, Everything

Chapter 1. Capturing the Flood

Chapter 2. Hybrid Landscapes

Chapter 3. Governing Flow

Chapter 4. Communities of Flow

Chapter 5. The Tail End

Conclusion: Not Static but Flowing

Appendix: English translation of al-Maqrīzī (1364-1442) on the canals and villages of the Fayyūm, containing an epitome of Abū Isḥāq's description of its irrigation system (1031 CE)

Bibliography

Index Toporum

Index Verborum.

Notes:

Title from eBook information screen..

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-251) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472904402

047290440X

OCLC:

1417149501

Access Restriction:

Open Access Unrestricted online access