No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 July 2012
One may say that our field has had a respectable crop of scholars engaged in research and numerous important publications to its credit. Past investigations of the agricultural sector have included excellent coverage of taxation systems and tax rates, good coverage of cultivation methods and crops, not very thorough coverage of landholding patterns, and almost no studies of productivity rates. For the manufacturing sector we have very good coverage of manufacturing techniques and good coverage of labor organization and division of labor but little on the productivity rates of individual sectors such as textiles, on apprenticeship and wages for either skilled or unskilled labor, or on the relationship of wages to prices. We have important studies on both regional and long-distance trade and commerce, including on routes and trade-related institutions and on tools of trade such as credit and investment partnerships (qirād/commenda), and related studies regarding urbanization, exchange, and markets. The auxiliary fields of numismatics and archeology have yielded important studies on coinage and minting and on settlement patterns that are likely to improve our grasp of the economic history of the medieval Middle East. We also have at our disposal volumes of statistical data, collected from literary and documentary sources, on prices, wages, commodities, weights, measures, and coins. Several online projects scrutinizing data from primary sources, mainly papyri and Geniza documents, yield more figures, though mostly on the economic history of early Islamic societies. Among the lacunae are studies related to topics such as economic institutions, property rights, standards of living and inequality, GDP estimations, sector productivity, market integration, exogenous shocks, and economic growth.
1 Because it is beyond the scope of this roundtable discussion to engage in a comprehensive bibliographical coverage of the economic history of the medieval Islamic/Middle East, I limit my comments here to general observations and reflections. Further discussion of the issues and full bibliographical details may be found in my recent paper “Economic Performance and Economic Growth in the Early Islamic World,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 54 (2011): 132–84.
2 For an example on standards of living and inequality, see Allan, Robert C., Bengtsson, Tommy, and Dribe, Martin, eds., Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives on Well-being in Asia and Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Michael Jursa, Aspects of the Economic History of Babylonia in the First Millennium BC: Economic Geography, Economic Mentalities, Agriculture, The Use of Money and the Problem of Economic Growth (with contributions by J. Hackl, B. Janković, K. Kleber, E. E. Payne, C. Waerzeggers, and M. Weszeli), Alter Orient und Altes Testament 377 (2010).
4 Bowman, Allan and Wilson, Andrew, eds., Quantifying the Roman Economy: Methods and Problems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Cheynet, J. Cl., Malamut, E., and Morrisson, C., “Prix et salaires. Byzance (Xe–XVe siècles),” in Hommes et richesses dans l'empire byzantine, ed. Kravari, V., Lefort, J., and Morrisson, C. (Paris: Editions P. Lethielleux, 1991), 2:339–74Google Scholar.
6 Mayhew, Nicholas, “Modeling Medieval Monetization,” in A Commercializing Economy: England 1086 to c. 1300, ed. Britnell, Richard H. and Campbell, Bruce M. S. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
7 Greif, Avner, “Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies,” Journal of Political Economy 102 (1994): 912–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kuran, Timur, The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.
8 Burjakov, Juri, “L'extraction minière en Asie centrale aux VIIIe–XIe siècles de notre ére,” in Islamisation de l'Asie central. Processus locaux d'acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècles, ed. De la Vaissière, E. (Louvain, France: Peeters, 2008), 257–74Google Scholar.