| The Villages of the Fayyum: A Thirteenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt Contributor(s): Rapoport, Yossef (Editor), Shahar, Ido (Editor) |
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ISBN: 2503542778 ISBN-13: 9782503542775 Publisher: Brepols Publishers OUR PRICE: $142.50 Product Type: Paperback Language: Arabic Published: October 2018 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Middle East - Egypt (see Also Ancient - Egypt) - History | Social History - History | Europe - Medieval |
| Series: Medieval Countryside |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 8.4" W x 10.9" (1.75 lbs) 268 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - Medieval (500-1453) - Cultural Region - Middle East - Demographic Orientation - Rural |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |