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12 - The monetary history of Egypt, 642–1517

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Warren Schultz
Edited by
Carl F. Petry
Carl F. Petry
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
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Summary

“The economic, and perhaps even the political history of a country cannot be successfully investigated without a proper knowledge of the means of payment current in the period studied.” When it comes to Islamic Egypt, the sentiment behind these words has not fallen on deaf ears. Drawing upon sources – documentary, literary, and numismatic – that can only be described as rich, especially in comparison with other areas of the medieval Islamic world, much work has been produced about the monetary history of Islamic Egypt for the 875 years covered by this volume. Yet using this material is often fraught with difficulty. The research is scattered across the years and found in many journals – some well–known, some obscure – as well as in numerous monographs, collected–study volumes, encyclopedias and the like. Given the fragmented nature of this specialized scholarship, it is not unusual to find that even though many conclusions regarding various aspects of money in Islamic Egypt have trickled into the wider field of Egyptian history, others have remained in the preserve of numismatists. Furthermore, while limited narratives of Egyptian monetary policy – usually divided by dynastic period or type of coin – have been written, as yet no coherent narrative summary of Egyptian monetary developments from the Muslim conquest to the Ottoman takeover has been attempted. This should not be a surprise, for such an undertaking would be huge indeed. It would also be premature prior to the publication of the Fustāt–Cairo volume of the Sylloge Numorum Arabicorum, Tübingen What follows is necessarily only an overview of the monetary history of Egypt.

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The Cambridge History of Egypt , pp. 318 - 338
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

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