While there are many deep continuities in the economic and social life of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, some profound changes began or accelerated in the Umayyad era. A new military class, combining migrants from the Arabian Peninsula and pastoralists from the Syrian steppe reshaped both the landscape and the economy. New towns were founded, and the tax revenues of the urban hinterlands were redirected to new ends. The political unification of the Roman and Sasanian monetary zones and the emergence of Arabic as a lingua franca began to stimulate new commercial activity, just as the demands of the new imperial elites also provoked new patterns of trade or expanded older ones. Some of those same elites became wealthy landowners, and many acquired wealth in bullion, livestock and slaves, taken as loot and tribute on the frontiers. Both these spoils of war and attitudes to slavery, domestic life and inheritance among the new elite prompted high demand for enslaved women, shaping both the frontier economies and demographic patterns in the new cities.

This chapter begins with a brief overview of the physical geography of the lands ruled and contested by the Umayyads. This is followed by an assessment of some of the large-scale climate fluctuations that affected Africa and West Eurasia between the beginning of the sixth and the middle of the eighth century. These climatic effects impacted patterns of disease, agriculture and the economy and so are an important context for the Arabian conquests and subsequent social and economic change. These latter questions of human geography and economic change are the subject of the final parts of the chapter, which begins with the material resources of the empire, before turning to patterns of settlement and commerce.

The Physical Geography of the Umayyad Empire

At its greatest extent, in the 720s and 730s, the Umayyad Empire spanned much of the subtropical zone of North Africa and West Eurasia (see Map 10.1). The steppe regions of Arabia, North Africa, southern and eastern Iran were the main corridors of the first conquests, but the Arabian armies extended their control well beyond them, into the neighbouring highland and forest regions. Lowland zones irrigated by the major river systems of the Middle East were the wealthiest arable regions. Some highland and forest zones also supported significant settled agriculture, while in others pastoralism predominated, as it did in the steppes.