The Villages of the Fayyum
A Thirteenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt
Edited by Yossef Rapoport Edited by Ido Shahar
Medieval Islamic society was overwhelmingly a society of peasants, and the achievements of Islamic civilization depended, first and foremost, on agricultural production. Yet the history of the medieval Islamic countryside has been neglected or marginalized. Basic questions such as the social and religious identities of village communities, or the relationship of the peasant to the state, are either ignored or discussed from a normative point of view. This volume addresses this lacuna in our understanding of medieval Islam by presenting a first-hand account of the Egyptian countryside. Dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, Abu ‘Uthman al-Nabulusi’s Villages of the Fayyum is as close as we get to the tax registers of any rural province. Not unlike the Domesday Book of medieval England, al-Nabulusi’s work provides a wealth of detail for each village which far surpasses any other source for the rural economy of medieval Islam. It is a unique, comprehensive snap-shot of one rural society at one, significant, point in its history, and an insight into the way of life of the majority of the population in the medieval Islamic world. Richly annotated and with a detailed introduction, this volume offers the first academic edition of this work and the first translation into a European language. By opening up this key source to scholars, it will be an indispensable resource for historians of Egypt, of administration and rural life in the premodern world generally, and of the Middle East in particular.
- Edited by Yossef Rapoport
- Edited by Ido Shahar
Other Titles in this Series
Peasants and Lords in the Medieval English Economy
Essays in Honour of Bruce M. S. Campbell
Volume 16
Scale and Scale Change in the Early Middle Ages
Exploring Landscape, Local Society, and the World Beyond
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Conflict, Language, and Social Practice in Medieval Societies
Selected Essays of Isabel Alfonso, with Commentaries
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The Historic Landscape of Catalonia
Landscape History of a Mediterranean Country in the Middle Ages
Volume 23
Rural Economy and Tribal Society in Islamic Egypt
A Study of al-Nabulusi's 'Villages of the Fayyum'
Volume 19
The Medieval Household
Daily Life in Castles and Farmsteads: Scandinavian Examples in their European Context
Volume 2
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