Land and Trade in Early Islam

Abstract 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.