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9 - Rural life and economy until 1800

from PART II - SOCIETIES, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

By
Andrew Watson
Edited by
Robert Irwin
Robert Irwin
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Summary

Diversity

The lives of sedentary people in the Islamic countryside unfolded in a multi-faceted context. Natural, technological, economic, political, cultural and religious factors all bore on rural life, and were in turn affected by it.

The natural world provided a backdrop of topography, soils, climate and water, while technologies offered tools, irrigation devices, plants, animals and rotations. Economic factors such as population densities, urbanisation, monetisation of the economy and long-distance trade further conditioned the activities of agriculturists, as did the policies of governments concerning security, land tenure, inheritance, water rights, taxation and the construction and maintenance of irrigation works. Cultural biases showed in preferences for different modes of settlement and production, as well as in diets, and both political and cultural elements were informed by religious teachings. None of these was a constant.

Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 290 - 305
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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