Land and trade in early Islam : the economy of the Islamic Middle East 750-1050 CE / edited by Hugh Kennedy and Fanny Bessard.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kennedy, Hugh, editor.

Bessard, Fanny, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economics--Religious aspects--Islam.

Economics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xlviii, 582 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

Land and Trade in Early Islam discusses the latest developments in the field of early Islamic economic and social history, focusing on the period between 700 and 1050 CE. The book draws on recent scholarship to better understand the regional economic, social and political dynamics of this period.

"This collection of essays sheds new light on the economy of the Islamic Middle East in the three centuries from 750 to 1050 ce, a period when this area sustained the largest and most complex economic systems in Western Eurasia. It is also a period that has been largely neglected by modern scholarship, focusing as it has on the transition from Late Antiquity to Islam or the impact of the coming of the Franks to the Eastern Mediterranean from the eleventh century on. The essays in the volume investigate the causes of this development and the interactions of different factors. These chapters are characterized by the use of both textual and archaeological evidence and the insights gained from the interaction between them. It also examines the relationships between core and periphery, visiting such economic area as Armenia, the Red Sea, Khuzistan, and North Africa. Among other specific topics discussed are the influence of government and tax structures on demand in the economy and the effect that urban expansion had on rural settlement in the Fertile Crescent, where irrigation systems and the cultivation of land can be seen to be responding to the needs of urban populations for food supplies. Another theme is the way in which demand led to the expansion of trading networks far beyond the porous frontiers of the Dar al-Islam. Two examples are examined, the slave trade from northern Europe and the trade in rock crystal from Madagascar. These essays open up numerous new ways of looking at economic activity in a fascinating and important but neglected area of global economic history"-- Oxford Academic.

Contents:

The late antique and Byzantine context to early Islamic mercantile activity / Peter Sarris

The Islamic agricultural revolution : myths and realities / Michael Decker

Introduction : towards a model of the early Islamic economy / Hugh Kennedy

Caliphs, the economy, and political separatism in the Ḥijāz / Harry Munt

Power and money on the Ḥajj : connections between caliphate and pilgrimage in early Islam / Peter Webb

Early Islamic water management in northern Mesopotamia / Louise Rayne

Landholding, investment, and irrigation in Lower Iraq during the first two centuries of Islam : assessing the role of the Islamic state / Noëmie Lucas

Dynamics of agricultural investment in al-Ahwaz in the early Islamic period / Mehrnoush Soroush

A tale of two services : the Khums and the Matjar, two Fatimid public services to control the maritime trade / David Bramoullé

The imams as economic actors : early Imami Shiʿism as a ‘sacred economy’ / Edmund Hayes

Silent partners : Christians in the economy of early Islamic Palestine / Daniel Reynolds

Introduction : trade in the polycentric ʿAbbāsid caliphate / Fanny Bessard

The Ibāḍī trading communities of the Maghreb (eighth to eleventh centuries) / Cyrille Aillet

Baḥr al-Ḥijāz : Muslim expansionism and the formation of an Arabian mercantile complex in the Red Sea (seventh to ninth centuries) / Kristoffer Damgaard

Ivory and rock crystal trade in East Africa, eighth to twelfth centuries / Stéphane Pradines

The Middle East as seen by the Arab geographers (ninth to tenth centuries) : a multipolar urban network / Jean-Charles Ducène

North-eastern Mesopotamia as an economic area from an archaeological perspective / Karel Nováček

Infrastructures and organization of the early Islamic slave trade with northern Europe / Marek Jankowiak

The politics of trade : merchants, mujāhids, and strangers in early ʿAbbāsid Armenia / Alison Vacca

The Islamic trade network in the Indian Ocean (ninth to eleventh centuries) : locations and practices / Jean-Charles Ducène.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed November 24, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: Land and Trade in Early Islam : The Economy of the Islamic Middle East 750-1050 CE.

ISBN:

9780192608178

0192608177

9780191895616

019189561X

OCLC:

1496391893

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license