Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East

M. A. Cook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136040085
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: History

First Published in 2004. Did medieval Muslims have the concept of a 'social class'? If not, can we usefully employ the term in analysing their society? Were there such things as guilds in the medieval Middle East? Would we understand the economic de- cline of Mamluk Egypt better if we used paradigms derived from the study of the economic history of England and Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries? How much can the enormous fiscal archive of the Ottoman Empire tell us about population history? Why was the Middle East so backward, if indeed it was, compared with the rest of the Afro-Asian world in the nineteenth century? Have Iran and Iraq better prospects for economic growth than otherwise comparable countries thanks to their oil royalties? Or are these paradoxically a hindrance rather than a help? The study of the economic history of the Middle East in Islamic times is notoriously underdeveloped. This volume contains papers discussed at an international conference held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1967, together with three short critical essays which attempt to tie them together. Some papers are specific contributions to research, others survey wider areas. The volume is not a comprehensive history or a systematic inventory, but it is hoped that, in addition to presenting a set of papers which are interesting in themselves, it will give the reader a tolerable idea of the state of studies in the field.

PART ONE

The Middle Ages

Introductory Remarks

ABRAHAM UDOVITCH

‘BEHOLD, your child lives,’ the prophet Elijah announced to the widow of Zarephath after a period of famine and drought had threatened the life of her offspring (I Kings 17 : 23). A similar message of hope and optimism can be proclaimed concerning the vitality and future of the economic history of the medieval Near East. After decades of comparative neglect, and even despair, the summer of 1967 witnessed a truly impressive upsurge in interest, encouragement and activity in this sector of Near Eastern Studies. The London conference (in early July) on the Economic History of the Middle East, with its special section devoted to the medieval period, was preceded by a colloquium at All Souls College, Oxford, on Islam and the Trade of Asia, which focused almost entirely on the Middle Ages, and was followed in mid-August by a panel devoted to medieval Near Eastern economic history at the 27th International Congress of Orientalists in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the first such session in the long and venerable history of these meetings.

Thus, if after the summer of 1967 it is incontestable that ‘the child lives’, it is equally certain that the study of medieval Near Eastern economic history is still in its early developmental stages, especially when compared to other branches of historical study such as intellectual and political history. One of the most important contributing factors to this comparative immaturity is the nature of our sources. Dearth of appropriate documentary sources comparable to those preserved in the medieval West has been a recurrent lament of all those seeking to toil in the vineyards of medieval Islamic economic history. While there is justice in this complaint, only new discoveries will rectify it, and in the interim one has to follow the advice of ‘Seek and ye shall find’ by extracting from the available sources, both documentary and other, all the relevant information that they might yield. From Professor Lewis’ survey, it is clear that while the medieval East may be relatively impoverished with regard to archival and other unmediated documentary material, it is amply endowed (far more than the medieval West) with a wide range of literary and archaeological sources. Even the documentary sources are not yet fully exploited. Of an estimated 50,000 Arabic papyri extant, only 5,000 have so far been published, and Geniza research is only at its beginnings. It is to be hoped that the existence of a heightened demand for and interest in this material and its content will, in accordance with the time-honoured economic principle, result in a more steady supply of publications and studies.

In connection with the Geniza material some amplification of Professor Lewis’ remarks is, I believe, called for. These documents are important not only as things in themselves, that is, for the particular information they contain, but also for the indirect guidance they provide with respect to institutions and practices from both earlier and later periods. In spite of the limitation imposed by its ‘minority’ provenance, from a methodological point of view the significance of the data in these documents exceeds both the limits of the ethnic group from which they stem as well as the chronological boundaries of the few centuries in which these documents originated. For example, with regard to the business methods reflected in the Geniza material, there is little in general outline and even in substantial detail that is not anticipated or implied in some of the earliest Islamic legal writings. Scholars, however, have been hesitant to use Islamic legal material for historical purposes, i.e., to project social and economic institutions and practices on the basis of what has been considered as almost entirely theoretical source material. In light of the close correspondence of Geniza data to the legal economic institutions treated in Islamic legal works, we can assert that many of the latter were indeed transformed into actual economic institutions. This permits us to go a step further and postulate the existence of these commercial institutions in an earlier period, as well as to scan legal sources for information on commercial matters that are absent or only partially manifested in the Geniza documents.

This is but one example of the methodological advance made possible by the Geniza material. Many others, which cannot be detailed here, are to be found pertaining to a variety of social and economic practices and institutions, monetary history, urban taxation and governmental relations to commerce. The myriad of details on seafaring, land-travel, packing and transport, mail services, finance and banking throws light not only on the practices of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, but also provides us with a wedge and opening into hitherto closed areas of earlier and later periods, illuminating and placing in clearer perspective the fragmentary data yielded by non-documentary sources.

As Professor Lewis implies, even such obvious sources of medieval economic information as coins and inscriptions have been far from fully exploited. It is not only concerning the hoards of Islamic coins from Northern and Eastern Europe that many questions loom large. Very few of the numerous hoards found within the Islamic world have been properly studied with the application of the rigorous methods and techniques developed by numismatists and historians who have made comparable finds in the West yield a great deal of valuable information. (A notable and exemplary exception in this regard is G. D. Miles’ analysis of the hoard of dirhams found at the excavations in Susa, cf. ‘Trésor du Dirhems du IX^e Siècle’, Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique en Iran, vol. xxxvii.) With respect to inscriptions, economic historians have apparently been daunted by the rather narrow range of information they contain. Yet their importance goes far beyond their specific formulaic content. Would it not, for example, be of prime interest to economic historians to collate and collect building inscriptions from various localities so that we could, in conjunction with other evidence, at least indulge in some semi-educated speculations on the problem of ‘investment in culture’, i.e., on the withdrawal of capital from economic activity and its allocation for other purposes? A host of other similarly relevant problems could be devised to be brought to the attention of epigraphers and archaeologists. The latter, especially, all too often allow their understandable preoccupation with purely archaeological and art-historical concerns to obscure the many other historical problems for which their findings might have relevance.

Generally one might comment that the study of all immediate, contemporary materials—coins, inscriptions, archaeological artifacts, etc.—will not only answer questions that we already have, but just as importantly, raise relevant problems and questions that we haven’t yet thought of.

Professor Lewis is certainly correct in stating that the entire vast range of medieval Arabic writings is a legitimate source for economic history. It is sufficient to recall that some excellent studies of early Byzantine economic history were written from data garnered largely from saints’ lives. Beginning with the inimitable Qurʼān and going through the chronicles, collections of traditions, dīwāns of poetry, treatises on theology, etc., a great deal of economically significant data is given in a casual and almost off-hand manner, sometimes not even articulated, but implied, and is, therefore, for the most part probably authentic. The systematic collection, collation and analysis of this material would certainly add considerably to our knowledge in a wide range of subjects pertaining to economic history.

The ample numismatic remains from the Islamic middle ages are, of course, useful for numerous historical purposes (chronology, dynastic personnel, administration, etc.); but our immediate concern is their use for economic history. The plethora of medieval Islamic coins as well as copious supportive literary and documentary evidence indisputably points to a developed monetary economy. This should not, however, blur the fact that a barter economy persisted simultaneously, especially in the area of petty exchange. For example, the monetary units in which many transactions and economic functions were evaluated did not correspond to actual currency, and thus often no actual money was exchanged but payment was made in kind.

Professor Ehrenkreutz correctly emphasizes the importance of differentiating various types of coins according to size, weight and metallic content. It is from this vantage-point that surviving medieval coins could be of greatest significance for some of the key questions of medieval economic life, such as prices and wages. In view of the fact that, except for exceptional and short periods of time, there was no way of enforcing any given exchange rate (even though minting was a function of the central governmental administration), a knowledge of the weights and alloys is particularly important in determining the economic significance of coins. Coins found their level of value on the basis of the gold–silver ratio prevalent at the time. To be sure, other factors may also have influenced exchange-rates and purchasing power of given coins, e.g. supply and demand, but these were definitely secondary; the basic determinants in this regard were their intrinsic value.

The volume of coinage issued in any given year would, of course, be nice to know, but its importance as a meaningful index of economic life is considerably qualified and reduced by a number of factors. (a) Barter, i.e., goods or merchandise as a means of exchange can be assumed, throughout the Middle Ages, to have been an important element in the total volume of goods and services exchanged. (b) We have no way of knowing the extent of credit operations; but since we do know that the techniques for commercial credit were highly developed, we may assume that they were utilized and accounted for a sizable proportion of the exchange of goods and services. (c) Old coins remained in circulation simultaneously with newer ones for long periods. (d) Low quality coins such as copper and lead dirhams could often be made to do service on a local or regional level in face of the inadequate supply of good-quality coins, with the latter effectively reserved for long-distance trade. (e) We do not know the velocity of exchange and circulation. The volume of coins minted annually, therefore, was only one of several determinants of the volume and intensity of economic life, and it was not necessarily the most important.

In any case, it is questionable whether we can estimate the number of coins produced in any given period within a tolerable margin of error. There are inherent shortcomings in the coin-die method of calculation. We are totally dependent on extant coins with no knowledge of their relationship to the coin types originally issued. Furthermore, we cannot be sure that each die was used for the maximum numbe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part One The Middle Ages
• Part Two The Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
• Part Three The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
• Index