Michael G. Morony
Manufacturing involves the processing of raw materials, and animal and agricultural products into desired, usable forms. In the early Islamic world (seventh to tenth centuries CE) this included smelting and smithing metals, making pottery and glass, producing cheese and leather, grinding grain, pressing olives, winemaking, refining sugar, weaving animal and plant fibers, and making paper. Although the articles in this volume mainly concern Iraq, Egypt and Ifrīqiya, the literature in general tends to focus on identifying the products themselves, on the techniques of producing them, and on the artisans who made them. Manufactured objects that survive from this period are most often the province of archaeologists and art historians. Archaeology tends to focus on the most durable objects, especially pottery and glass, that are usually ordinary wares, but need not to have been made where they were found. The existence of kilns with wasters is the best evidence for local production. Art history tends to focus on luxury objects that end up in museums. Both pay some attention to production techniques, the place of products in the economy, and the evidence they provide for consumption patterns and commerce. For instance, in archaeology, Hodges and Whitehouse declare their intention to pay attention to "the production of goods in order to discover whether technology and output can throw light on the nature of one type of economy or another," and to "patterns of artifact distribution which may be associated with the different types of economic systems."1 That is to say the manufactured products themselves as objects have been less the province of economic historians of this period, who tend to work with texts.
Thus much of the literature relating to particular productive technologies or particular types of products has been published by archaeologists and art historians who tend to sort objects according to political/dynastic labels. This serves to create boundaries that may prove to be artificial in economic terms and leads to a tendency to credit some particular region or modern country with a particular achievement. A good example is the argument over whether early Islamic glazed pottery originated in Iran or Egypt. This, in turn, involves value judgments based on the modern importance of innovation and originality.
Whether or not early Islamic manufacturing involved any significant changes from the immediate Byzantine or Sasanian past has been something of an issue. The general consensus has been more or less in accord with the view presented in the article in this volume by Wiet, Elesséeff, and Wolf (Chapter 1). Its title is somewhat ironic, because the authors see no "evolution" in techniques, but rather astatic situation in which, with few exceptions, ancient techniques were neither improved nor altered. One should note their use of the argument that the employment of slave labour discouraged invention. This is also one of the few general articles on this subject; it spans the entire Islamic world, allowing for regional differences, and it treats an encyclopedic range of subjects in a descriptive way. The range of topics they consider appropriate and the order in which they are presented are instructive, the first because it has contributed to defining the field, the second because it indicates a certain order of priorities or how one subject leads to another. Not all of these involve manufacturing. They begin with irrigation, mills, and agricultural tools, and then focus on urban institutions, the building industry, articles of daily use important for the status of the urban middle class, such as clothing, furniture, metalwork, and food preparation. From this they move to transport and ship building, paper, textiles, oil and sugar pressing, drugs, perfumes, mining, pearl diving, pottery, glass, banking,2 and end, rather abruptly, with military technology. The lack of a real basis for analysis and the value judgments contained in this article make it a good example of the problems in this field. The early Islamic period is generally held to have seen the spread of existing manufacturing technologies more than the invention of new ones.
But the mere identification of products is not enough. Late Antique populations had been able to manufacture what they needed locally for the most part. The purpose of production needs to be taken into account. For the Late Antique and early Islamic worlds alike, the main possibilities were manufacturing for home use, for government use,3 and for exchange. By early Islamic times one has an impression of at least four changes in the nature of manufacturing. One is an increase in the volume of production, possibly related to demographic increase. There were now more consumers and more artisans. Second is an increase in the different kinds of products: that is, increasing specialization in manufacturing. Third is an increase in production for local exchange and a decrease in production for home use: that is, commercialized manufacturing. Fourth is an increase in manufacturing for export, reflecting greater interregional dependence and specialization.
There is noticeably more glass on early Islamic sites than immediately before; workshops were set up in abandoned buildings; the pottery of Jerash was distributed regionally and its technology included a reduction kiln; and amphoras were produced at 'Aqaba as containers for shipping. Rather than go over a long list of evidence, the early Islamic site at al-Rabadha, to the east of Mad in a, can be taken as an example. This was the location of the ḥimā, or pasture preserve for state-owned animals. It was also a minor industrial site engaged in tanning and dying leather, making wooden bowls and saucers, with hearths for smelting metal indicated by iron slag, glassmaking furnaces, arid some 25 ovens (possibly a bakery).4
Evidence that an increase in the production of glass, leather, and cloth began just before the rise of Islam is associated with the late Sasanians. The leather and cloth industry expanded in Yemen under the Sasanians at the end of the sixth century, and the Sasanians are associated with the expansion of mining in Arabia and of agriculture in Iraq and Khūzistān, One could hypothesize that the economic expansion in early Islamic times originated in a late Sasanian interaction with Arabia.
The seminal article by Goitein on industry in the Mediterranean region (Chapter 2) is important precisely because he recognized the proliferation of manufacturing occupations and the division of labour that involved. It is also here that he identifies textiles as the main industry. He notes that there was specialization according to the materials used, but even more by the kind of products made, and he points out that specialization by religion was not absolute.
When it, comes to particular products there is almost no separate literature on the production techniques or economy of production for most of them. For instance, there does not appear to he any monograph on the leather industry, and, surprisingly, there is no good, comprehensive treatment of the glass industry. Pottery is an exception, because of the amount of ceramics of Islamic provenence in museum collections and because of the importance of pottery in the stratigraphic dating of Islamic-period archaeological sites. The literature on "Islamic" pottery is huge, but most of it consists of the description and classification of objects from an art-historical point of view or of the categorization of objects in archaeological site reports. For that reason the works selected for inclusion in the bibliography are those that are most likely to have some information applicable to economic history. This literature does pay attention to the presence of kilns at sites and the nature of their construction and to the evidence that pottery provides for the geographical diffusion of this product, and possibly for its technology. An excellent description of a reduction kiln, which represents a new or revived technology, at early Islamic Jerash is given by Schaefer and Falkner in an article that was too long and too specific to be included in this volume.5
Rather than providing samples of art-historical or archaeological treatments of ceramics it is more useful to include Sauvaget's posthumous article here (Chapter 3), because it has the virtue of treating pottery as an industrial product. Its encyclopaedic nature arises from the fact that it was originally conceived as the introduction to a handbook for students. His bibliographical essay provides access to the older literature and he pays attention to the technology of ceramic production and to the potters themselves. His argument that the spread of techniques can be explained by the mobility of potters is important considering the popularity of theories of "imitation" and probably applies to other industries as well. He also notes that artisans were not as anonymous as we are sometimes led to believe. Potters sometimes signed their work. One could add that the use of geographical or locational names by potters when they were somewhere else (e.g. al-Shaml, "Syrian", in Egypt) is evidence for their mobility. He also suggests that the minimal investment required for pottery encouraged the mobility of potters.
This was probably the case for most ordinary wares, and it could be added that clay and sand were probably free; the main investment of the potter was in time and the expense of the fuel. But his claim that clay was the only plastic material available needs to be qualified; both metal and glass are plastic materials. He is, of course, right in pointing out that most pottery products were less expensive than objects of metal or glass. However, Sauvaget's assurance that there must have been a corporate organization for potters, in spite of the lack of evidence, rests on the conventional wisdom of the time he lived. The formation of artisanal organizations (aṣnāf) was a matter of historical development in the later Islamic centuries; there is no evidence for their existence in early Islamic times. His view of artisanal production belonging to an homogenous Islamic cultural bloc with local variants is somewhat overstated, but should be understood as a reaction to modern claims for a national identity for pre-modern material culture (or at least the use of language that seems to imply it).
Finally, Sauvaget's reluctance to describe the historical development of pottery (he had an outline but left only notes), because of problems of attribution and archaeological context, was circumspect at the time. Subsequent advances in Islamic, archaeology in the 30 years since the article was published have now provided more secure stratigraphic sequences from places such as Sīrāf, Pella, and Ayla (recent literature on Pella is included in the bibliography). Sauvaget's article is still a good introduction to the issues regarding manufacturing in general.
Unlike pottery, the textile industry was directly related to agriculture and animal-raising for its raw material. Literary references and material remains have allowed scholarship to focus on the fibers used (mainly wool, linen, cotton, and silk), the variety of weaves, the date and place of the introduction of the horizontal draw loom6 (important for the creation of repeat patterns in textiles), cloth produced in government factories (ṭirāz), specialization in particular kinds of cloth in different places, the low social status of weavers, and the role of textiles in commerce. By all indications the early Islamic period saw a significant increase in textile production that combined factory organization with cottage industry. In this context the article by Frantz-Murphy on the role of the textile industry in Egypt (Chapter 4) is important for specifically addressing economic issues and connecting cloth production to agriculture, commerce, and employment. This article is also important for identifying agricultural revenues as the main source for investment in the textile industry. Although she recognizes that the Egyptian economy was agrarian, she also makes the revisionist argument that the economic prosperity of Egypt (at least in the ninth and tenth centuries) was based on the textile industry and not on transit trade. Although this addresses a major theme in Egyptian economic history, there is probably too much of an "either/or" element in this argument. She also points out that textile production was a source of employment in the local cottage industry7 However, her assumption that the wool came from the pastoral population falls into the usual trap of ignoring sheep-raising by the sedentary population, while her suggestion that pastoralists were a source of labour for the textile industry is entirely speculative.
Most economic production in early Islamic times involved low-status occupations. The literature on labour in the early Islamic economy has tended to focus on the legal and social status of manual labourers, on the proliferation of occupations and specialization connected to the division of labour, on mobility, and on the organization of labour. Within the labour force a distinction tends to be made between skilled craftsmen, who possessed their own capital and formed their own partnerships and craftsmen of moderate or no means, unskilled and hired labourers. It should also be noted that the expansion of a labour-intensive economy in early Islamic times created a demand for labour that was met initially by the forceable importation of labour (war captives, slaves) and perhaps eventually by demographic growth. However, in most places local productive populations survived the conquest and provided continuity in the labour force, and most likely in the methods of production. Would it be appropriate, then, to associate changes in the nature of production with newly imported labour (eg. war captives, slaves, mawali, the Zutt, and the Zanj)?
The brief article by Goldziher (Chapter 5) that opens this section was the virtual fountain head for discussions of the status of labour in an Islamic context. His examples have been used ever since, and this article is still cited. It is clear that he was addressing the attitudes of bedouin, not those of ethnic "Arabs", although confusion with the modern ethnic usage of "Arab" has affected some more recent treatments. It should be noted that Goldziher based his argument on early Arabic poetry, unlike much subsequent literature that has tended to focus on juristic sources. Goldziher also addressed an issue already raised by von Kremer, who had related the low status of manual labour among Muslims to its association with slaves, and makes two important points. One is that the attitude that regarded manual labour as uncouth was pre-Islamic. The other is that in Arabia neither agriculture nor manual labour were considered to be despised occupations by townsmen, and that Muslims in particular held a more positive view of at least one craft—that of armourer.
Goldziher's themes are elaborated in Brunschvig's 1962 article on the low status of manual labour and the relative status of different occupations (Chapter 6), which cites Goldziher and uses some of the same examples. But for Brunschvig the category is Muslims, not Arabs, and this is a good example of the juridical approach to the issue. From the point of view of Muslim religious scholars the low status of certain occupations was based on Islamic legal prohibitions and the immoral or inhumane attributes of those occupations. Beyond this Brunschvig focusses on occupations that were discredited in spite of not being illegal and goes so far as to suggest that this reflects a society in which merchants were more honoured than producers. One can go further and suggest that the juristic literature that Brunschvig used was produced by scholars with merchant connections, and that it reflects the interests and concerns of merchants and landlords. However Brunschvig also finds a theme in this literature that favors honest labour, and he expands the list of prophets arid early caliphs who were farmers, artisans, and merchants. At the same time he revives the thesis that despised occupations were originally those of slaves.8 Much of this article is devoted to the low status of bloodletters and weavers (two of the categories already noted by Goldziher; the third was that of tanner). He admits that the low status of weavers was pre-Islamic, and makes the point that weavers did not necessarily profit from the production of luxury fabrics (with two important exceptions: Tinnis and Tunis). This article ends with a discussion of the legal status of weavers with regard to social equality for marriage and whether or not they could act as witnesses in a Muslim law court.
The issue is whether status adhered to the occupation or to the person who performed it. It was perhaps some of both, and it is useful at this point to consider Judah's chapter on the economic circumstances of mawālī during the first century of Islam (Chapter 7), which surveys the occupations they held. Most of these occupations were some form of manual labour, and their range gives some idea of the degree of the division of labour in the economy, although Judah notes that mawālī often practiced more than one trade. The generalization (demonstrably untrue) that he cites from the ninth-century writer al-Jāḥiẓ,9 to the effect that Arabs were not merchants, artisans, physicians, scribes, tradesmen, or farmers "because of their fear of diminishing the jizya" suggests an attitude ascribed to the ruling elite rather than that of Goldziher's bedouin. It also suggests (equally untrue) that these were the occupations only of jizya-paying non-Muslims (Jews and Christians). The mawālī that Judah lists were, of course, Muslims.
However, most of them had been slaves. Judah devotes a chapter that precedes the one included here to slaves and slavery in early Islamic times, He points out that slaves had been used in agriculture in pre-Islamic Yemen and the Yamāma.10 Most slaves in the early Islamic economy were acquired as captives in warfare or as tribute, and, if we can believe the numbers given in the sources, amounted to tens (if not hundreds) of thousands, both male and female.11 It should be added that slave and mawlā labour were not found distributed uniformly across the early Muslim world, but tended to predominate in the cities of the Ḥijāz, in those places where Muslim soldiers settled after the early conquests, and where there was agricultural development. In other words, imported labour was normally found where the economy was expanding.
Although the agrarian economy was manifestly expanding in early Islamic times, artisanal production is usually associated with cities and towns. The connection between the urban nature of Islam and of manufacturing is made in the article by Finster (Chapter 8), who finds an indigenous theoretical basis for the distinction between simple and complex handicrafts in the work of the tenth-century Ikhwan al-Ṣafā' at al-Baṣra and in the fourteenth-century scholar Ibn Khaldūn. It should be noted that her discussion of the mobility of labour is also informed by Ibn Khaldūn, who had emphasized the patronage of rulers in the building of new cities and attracting artisans. Indeed, Ibn Khaldūn's ideas about the role of royal patronage are widespread, if not predominant, in discussions of economic history in the premodern Islamic world.
However, Finster also makes the important point that it is sometimes possible to identify the artisans themselves from objects they produced. The often supposed anonymity of artisans, which can lead to a recourse to legal texts, is significantly qualified by the fact that they signed, and sometimes dated, their work. Even simple housewares were signed by both Christian and Muslim artisans from the first century of Islam onwards. But her generalization that the artisans of the Umayyad period were mainly recruited among Christians is highly debatable (even if they were originally of slave origin).
When it comes to the organization of labour, it should be noted that Finster entirely avoids the question of "guilds". She is primarily concerned with the organization of groups of artisans, engineers and architects for the building of cities, palaces, and mosques. Her thesis that the requisitioning of labour for major projects by the Muslim authorities can be traced to the Byzantine liturgy system is probably valid, although in the eastern Islamic world it may also go back to the Sasanian use of the forced labour of captives. In any case, there is already evidence of the requisitioning of labour and supplies by Muslim officials in papyri from early Islamic Egypt and Palestine. Lastly, the reader should be alerted to the way the discussion of the products of artisans slides over into art history at the end of this article.
Was labour forced or free in the early Islamic economy? In most places it seems to have existed along a continuum from one extreme to the other. There also seems to have been historical development from the mass enslavements of the earliest Islamic period to freer forms of labour, that is perhaps reflected in the emergence of more positive views of manual labour. In the next article (Chapter 9) Goitein sees the mobility of labour as being accomplished at first through enslavement and forced labour and later through free migration. There are two important things to remember in reading this article. One is that Goitein operates with the assumptions and vocabulary of economic liberalism. The other is that he argues for the geographical and chronological specificity of Egypt and the rest of the Muslim Mediterranean between the tenth and twelfth centuries. That is, generalizations based on conditions elsewhere (such as Iraq) or later (such as Mamluk Egypt) need not apply here. Goitein begins with a discussion of specialization and division of labour, in which he argues against an absolute concentration of crafts in particular urban locations and against an absolute identification of certain occupations with particular religious groups. There were no "occupational ghettoes". He cites Brunschvig with regard to despised occupations, but regards their relegation to Jews as a later development and or one that occured elsewhere. The reader will want to know that the work by Cohen, to which Goitein refers, was, in fact, published.12 Goitein also addresses, and disposes of, the issue of "Muslim guilds", for which there is no evidence before the thirteenth century. Labour was organized as free partnerships and wage labour. One should note his reference to the mercantile character of industrial contracts (p. 271), because this is one aspect of the commercialization of the economy. The distinction between manufacture and retail trade breaks down in the case of many artisans who sold the products they made (or produced them on consignment). He points out that it was the new industries, such as paper and sugar mills, that were organized as factories.
This is followed by two articles by Muhammad 'Abdul Jabbar Beg. The first (Chapter 10) deals with rural labour contracts and addresses the issue of the relationship of labour to the land. He argues for the mobility of rural labour and describes what might be called a rural labour market operating according to supply and demand among share croppers and landless workers. Combining literary anecdote Ḥanafī and Ibāḍī juristic sources, he gives a clear account of the types of share-cropping contracts recognized in Islamic law, one of which amounted to partnership. The second part of this article deals with other forms of rural labour: the workers on irrigation devices and projects and watchmen.
The second—mistitled—article on "The 'serfs' of Islamic society" (Chapter 11) is really about slave labour, but the title appears to belong to what can be called a debate over the relationship of labour to the land during the 1970s. The reference to "serfs" in the title might have been aimed at a 1947 article by Yakubovsky that 'Abdul Jabbar refutes in the first article included here (p. 16). However, the thesis had also been advanced by Forand in a 1971 article that agricultural labourers in early Muslim Iraq were serfs tied to the land.13 This was revived by Ziaul Haque in 1977, who argued that share-cropping farmers were serf-tenants from an Islamic juristic point of view.14 The debate continued in reviews critical of Ziaul Haque by Duri15 and Ziadeh.16
But 'Abdul Jabbar does not address these issues in this article; rather he is concerned with the slave trade as a source for labour, stereotypes about the preferred employment for slaves of different origins, the use of slaves in domestic, industrial, agricultural, and military occupations, and the employment of the Zanj in land reclamation. He also gives a clear account of the ḍarība, the portion of a slave's earnings that was paid to the owner. It is important to understand that slaves engaged in artisanal production and commerce in the early Islamic economy earned their own livlihood, and that the economic advantage in owning such slaves lay in the income they earned, part of which went to their owners, or in hiring them out.
The place of slaves in the economy is also the subject of the following article by Talbi (Chapter 12), who concentrates on ninth-century Ifrīqiya (roughly modern Tunisia). Since his sources include juristic material (notably the Mudawwana of Saḥnūn), it is significant that he finds it necessary to defend and rehabilitate the use of legal literature in the opening paragraph. He reconstructs a landholding pattern of large landed estates in the north formed by land grants to the Arab conquerors and their Berber allies in the early eighth century, and of medium and small-sized estates in the Sahel and the province of Tripoli. The large and medium-sized holdings were mainly cultivated by slaves, while a free labour force worked on the small holdings. He also notes the existence of seasonal agricultural labour. In all of this his use of a "feudal" vocabulary is unnecessary. The reader may wish to know that his reference to how Ya'qūb ibn al-Maḍā' "abandoned the Black and renounced the world" (p. '213) is to the colour of the robes worn by 'Abbasid officials. In the same paragraph the reference to sugar-cane plantations on Sicily owned by the Fatimid caliph at an "earlier time" is mistaken. Since this was in the tenth century, it should read "later".
Talbi's article is important for identifying the use of slaves in domestic service, agriculture, and herding in Ifrīqiya. In particular camels, sheep, and cattle were tended by wage-earning herdsmen or by slaves hired from their masters, which suggests a more commercialized form of stockraising. In evaluating the value of wages in terms of the price of bread he is justifiably cautious. Wages need to be compared to the prices for a variety of commodities and services in different circumstances, information that is not usually available. Goitein was probably too sanguine in this respect.
According to Talbi, the slaves came from Sicily and Italy. The reopening of a jihād front in the central Mediterranean by the Banū Aghlab in the ninth century, culminating in the Muslim conquest of Sicily, created conditions similar to those of the first Islamic century. Slaves were acquired as war captives and provided by a flourishing north-south slave trade. Imported labour contributed to the economic development of Ifrīqiya, but at a later trajectory than in the east; the economy of Ifrīqiya was expanding in the ninth century at the same time that the economy of Iraq was collapsing. But the agricultural, industrial, and commercial economy of Ifrīqiya had collapsed in turn by the early eleventh century, well before the arrival of the Arab bedouin of the Banū Hilāl. Since the bedouin could not have caused the collapse, Talbi explains it in terms of a labour crisis, which he dates to the loss of Crete to the Byzantines in 961. The change in the naval balance of power between Muslims and Christians in the Mediterranean signalled by this event meant that the Muslims of Ifrīqiya were unable to get as many slaves as cheaply as before. This led to a decline in agricultural production and the upkeep of irrigation, the drain of gold to pay for imported food, and famines, while the practice of birth control in times of crisis further reduced the population. With regard to the latter factor, birth control, if it occured, would have been an exascerbating consequence rather than a cause of the crisis.
There are at least four major objections to Talbi's thesis of a labour crisis as the cause for the economic collapse of Ifrīqiya. One is that it is one-dimensional, imputing a wide range of phenomena to a single cause. It could equally be argued that Ifrīqiya experienced a crisis of over-development, in which the population outstripped its food supply and turned to imports. The second is more serious: Talbi dates the change in the balance of naval power too early. In any case, Crete was not a possession of the Muslim ruler of Ifrīqiya. There were raids and campaigns by the Banū Kalb of Sicily and the Banū Zīrī of Ifrīqiya in southern Italy, the Balkan coast, and the Greek islands until 1034, when the Byzantines resumed the offensive in southern Italy. Muslims were probably excluded from the Tyrhennian Sea by the rise of Pisan and Genoese naval power in the early eleventh century. The turning point in the Tyrhennian can be seen occuring between 1005-1006, when the Pisan fleet decisively defeated a Muslim fleet in the Strait of Messina, and 1016, when the combined fleets of Pisa and Genoa took Sardinia. By that time the crisis was already gripping Ifrīqiya. Third, Talbi assumes that the only slaves used in agriculture were Christian and completely ignores the trans-Saharan slave trade. Black slaves were used in agriculture in the Jarīd (southeastern Tunisia) and were still available from the Sudan; the route via Zawīla remained active at least until the 1030s. Fourth, Talbi, along with many others, assumes that there must be a causative connection between political and economic events, that political crisis causes economic decline or that economic crisis causes political failure.
It is useful to end this collection with Udovitch's seminal article on labour partnerships (Chapter 13) in order to revisit the issues of the use of juristic materials and the organization of labour. One should note again the influence of commercial practices on labour partnership contracts, that Islamic law recognized labour as a form of investment in manufacturing, that the main legal arrangements for labour were partnership, lease, or hire, that partnerships between artisans and stall-owners were common, and that craftsmen did not necessarily own the raw material they worked. It should also be noted that al-Sarakhsīs example (p. 71) assumes the mobility of artisans. Udovitch's juristic sources are specific to eighth- and ninth-century Iraq and North Africa, and he ends, as we should, with the caveat that legal texts do not give actual examples and that literary and documentary sources need to be searched for "the manner in which, or the extent to which such partnerships were actually employed" (p. 80). That goes as well for the other kinds of information derived from the legal literature.
It will have become clear that the articles on manufacturing and labour included in this collection have the most to say about Iraq, Egypt, and Ifrīqiya. Iran, Syria, Arabia, the western Maghrib, and al-Andalus are largely unrepresented. There is literature for Iran and al-Andalus, and this is included in the bibliography, but it is also true that scholarship has been geographically spotty and reflects those regions with the greatest number of accessible sources. One useful direction for scholarship to take would be to examine those regions that have not yet been adequately investigated. But, in doing so, it would be desireable to escape dynastic and national frameworks.
For the most part the existing literature on manufacturing and labour is descriptive, but thereby performs a useful service. One needs an accurate account upon which to base theories. But the description is too often plugged into existing frameworks or issues derived from somewhere else (usually medieval Europe), such as the status and mobility of labour, the relative importance of manufacturing compared to commerce, and the impact of slavery on production. Economic questions need to be asked of this material, such as the nature and sources of investment in manufacturing, what happened to the debt-labour of Late Antiquity, and how a labour intensive economy expands or contracts. It would also be desirable for economic historians to move beyond the texts to pay attention to surviving examples of the products themselves and to work sites. There is a need for coherent work on the leather and glass industries, in particular from an economic point of view. But it is equally important to go beyond the mere identification of products and occupations, and commerce per se to a consideration of the commercialization of other sectors of the economy such as agriculture, stockraising, manufacturing, and labour contracts in early Islamic times.
1 Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe: Archaeology and the Pirenne Thesis (Ithaca, 1983), p. 18.
2 The uninitiated should be aware that most people would object to their description of the Sasanian monetary system as bi-metallic. The gold coins are too rare to justify it.
3 Government, manufacturing for its own use, or palace production, can be seen as a variety of production for home use, the royal household being different in scale but not in concept. However, both Byzantine and Islamic government factories sold their products too.
4 Sa'ad bin 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Rashid, Al-Rabadhah (Riyad, 1986), pp. 31, 34, 81.
5 J. Schaefer and R.K. Falkner. "An Umayyad Potters' Complex in the North Theatre, Jerash," in F. Zavadine, ed., Jerash Archaeological Project 1981-1983 (Amman, 1986), pp. 411-59.
6 A.C. Johnson and L.C. West, Byzantine Egypt: Economic Studies (Princeton, 1949), pp. 120-21, suggest that the draw loom may have been invented in Egypt by the fifth century, rather than by the Chinese and brought west by the Persians.
7 For details of the Egyptian cottage textile industry in the ninth century see Y. Ragib, Marchands d'etoffes du Fayyoum au IIIe/IXr siécle d'aprés leurs archives (actes et lettres), I: Les actes des Banū 'Abd Al-Mu'min (Cairo, 1982), pp. 6, 10, 14-15, 18-19, 28-29.
8 In II. Müller, "Sklaven," (in B. Spuler, ed., Wirtschaftgeschichte des vorderen Orients in islamischer Zeit, Leiden, 1977), p. 67, this turns into the thesis that Arabs were not great artisans and left that up to slaves.
9 Judah quotes the passage from al-Jāḥiẓ (Rasā'il, I, 69) on pp. 114 and 178.
10Judah, Awḍā', p. 48. The Yamāma is the region in central Arabia around modern Riyadh.
11 Ibid., pp. 77-78.
12 See Hayyim J. Cohen, "The Economic Background and the Secular Occupations of Muslim Jurisprudents and Traditionists in the Classical Period of Islam (Until the Middle of the Eleventh Century)," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 13 (1970), pp. 16-61.
13 P. Forand, "The Status of the Land and Inhabitants of the Sawād during the First, Two Centuries of Islam," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 14 (1971), pp. 25-37. The following year H.Q. al-Samarra'i published Agriculture in Iraq during the Third Century A.H. (Beirut, 1972).
14 Ziaul Haque, Landlord and Peasant in Early Islam: a Study of the Legal Doctrine of Mazāra'a or Sharecropping (Islamabad, 1977).
15 Abd al-'Aziz Duri, "Landlord and Peasant in Early Islam - A Critical Study," Der Islam, 56 (1979), pp. 97-105.
16 Farhat J. Ziadeh, The Muslim World, 70 (1980), pp. 153-54.
Allan, James W. Nishapur: Metalwork of the Early Islamic Period. New York, 1982.
—. Persian Metal Technology 700-1300 A.D.. Oxford, 1979.
Bel, A. Un atelier de poteries et faïences au Xe siècle de J.-C. découvert à, Tlemcen. Constantine, 1914.
Bellinger, L. "Repeats in Silk-Weaving in the Near East," Textile Museum Workshop Notes 24 (1961), pp. 1-4.
Caiger-Smith, Alan. Lustre Pottery: Technique, Tradition, and Innovation in Islam and the Western World. London, 1985.
Carroll, Diane Lee. Looms and Textiles of the Copts: First Millennium Egyptian Textiles in the Carl Austin Rietz Collection of the California Academy of Sciences. San Francisco and Seattle, 1988.
Day, Florence E. "The Ṭirāz Silk of Marwān," in George C. Miles, ed., Archaeologia Orientalia in Memorium Ernst Herzfeld (Locust Valley, New York, 1952), pp. 39 61.
Ettirtghausen, Richard. "An Early Glass Making Centre," Records of the Museum of Historic Art (Princeton), 1.2 (1972), pp. 4-7.
Fahmy, A.R. "The Earliest Islamic Rugs in Egypt," Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts 22 (1960), pp. 101-21.
Frierman, Jay D., Frank Asaro and Helen V. Michel. "The Provenance of Early Islamic Lustre Wares," Ars Orientalis 11 (1979), pp. 111-26.
Hassan, A.Y. "Iron and Steel Technology in Medieval Arabic Sources," Journal of the History of Arabic Science 2 (1978), pp. 31-43.
Jenkins, Marilyn. "Medieval Maghribi Lustre-Painted Pottery," in La céramique médiévale en Méditerrané occidentale (Paris, 1980), pp. 335-42.
Kennedy, C.A., "The Development of the Lamp in Palestine," Berytus 14 (1963), pp. 67-115.
Khairy, N., and A. 'Amr. "Early Islamic Inscribed Pottery Lamps from Jordan," Levant 18 (1986), pp. 143-53.
Koechlin, Raymond. Les cérarniques musulmanes dc Suse au Musée du Louvre. Paris, 1928.
Kühnel, E. "Die abbasidischen Lüsterfayencen," Ars Islamica 1 (1934), pp. 149-59.
—. Late Antique and Coptic Textiles. New York, 1926.
Lacam, J. "La céramique musulmane des époques Omeyyade et Abbaside, VII au X siècle," Cahiers de la céramique du verre et des arts du feu 20 (1960), pp. 247-93.
Lamm, C.J. Cotton in Medieval Textiles of the Near East. Paris, 1937.
—. Mittelälterliche Gläser und Steinschnittarbeiten aus dem nahen Osten. Berlin, 1929-30.
Lewis, B., "The Islamic Guilds," Economic History Review 8 (1937), pp. 20-37.
Lombard, M. Les textiles dans le mond musulman du VIIe au XIIe siècles. Paris, 1978.
Lukens, M.G. "Medieval Islamic Glass," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 23 (1965), pp. 198-202.
Marçais, G., Les faïences à reflets métalliques de la Grande Mosquée Kairottan. Paris 1928.
May, F. Silk Textiles of Spain, 8th- 15th Century. New York, 1957.
Mayer, A.L. "Islamic Glass Makers and their Works," Israel Exploration Journal 4 (1954), pp. 262-65.
Morral i Romeu, E., and A. Segura i Mas. La Seda en España: Leyenda, poder, y realidad. Barcelona, 1991.
Orssaud, Dominique. "Le passage de la céramique byzantine à la céramique islamique: quelques hypothèses à partir du mobilier trouvé à Déhès," in P. Canivet and J.-P. Rey-Coquais, eds., La Syrie de Byzance à I'Islam Vlle-VIIIe siècles (Damascus, 1992), pp. 219-28.
Riley, J.A. "The Petrological Investigation of Roman and Islamic Ceramics from Cyrenaica," Libyan Studies 10 (1978-79), pp. 35-46.
Sabat, Khalil, "Tatawwur ṣinā'at al-waraq fī Miṣr," Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts 19.1 (Cairo, 1957), pp. 245 61.
Schaefer, J., and R.K. Falkner, "An Umayyad Potters' Complex in the North Theatre, Jerash," in F. Zayadine, ed., Jerash Archaeological Project 1981-1983 (Amman, 1986), pp. 411-59.
Serjeant, R.B. Islamic Textiles: Material for a History up to the Mongol Conquest. Beirut, 1972.
Vallvé, J. "La industria en al-Andalus," Al-Qantara 1 (1980), pp. 109-238.
Vickers, Michael. Pots and Pans: a Colloquium on Precious Metals and Ceramics in the Muslim, Chinese and Graeco-Roman Worlds. Oxford, 1985.
Walmsley, Alan G. "The Social and Economic Regime at Fiḥl (Pella) and Neighbouring Centres, between the 7th and 9th Centuries: Urban Planning, Ceramics and Numismatics," in P. Canivet and J.-P. Rey-Coquais, eds., La Syrie de Byzance à Islam Vile-VIIIe siècles (Damascus, 1992), pp. 249-61.
—. "The Umayyad Pottery and Its Antecedants," in A. McNicol, et al., eds., Pella in Jordan (Canberra, 1982), I, pp. 143-57.
Ward, Rachel, ed. Gilded and Enamelled Glass from the Middle East. London,1997.
Watson, Pamela. "Change in Foreign and Regional Economic Links with Pella in the Seventh Century A.D.: the Ceramic Evidence," in P. Canivet and J.-P. Rey-Coquais, eds., La Syrie de Byzance à I'Islam. VIIe-VIIIe siècles (Damascus, 1992), pp. 233-48.
Whitehouse, D. "Islamic Glazed Pottery in Iraq and the Persian Gulf: the Ninth and Tenth Centuries," Annali dell'Istituto Orientale di Napoli 39 (1979), pp. 45-61.
Wulff, Hans E., The Traditional Crafts of Persia. Cambridge, Mass., 1966.
Zagórska, K. "La céramique musulmane ancienne avec la glaçure de Kom el Dikka, Alexandria," in W. Godlewski, ed., Coptic and Nubian Pottery (Warsaw, 1990), I. pp. 83-95.
Zayyat, H., "Al-Wirāqa wa-l-warrāqūn fi 1-Islām," A I-Mashriq, 41 (1947), pp. 305-50.
Cahen, Ci. "La changeable portée sociale de quelques doctrincs rcligieuses," in L'Elaboration de l'Islam (Paris, 1961), pp. 14-15, is a criticism of Massignon's theory of Islamic "guilds".
—. "Y a-t-il eu des corporations professionalles dans le monde musulman classique?," in A.H. Hourani and S.M. Stern, eds., The Islamic City (Oxford, 1970), pp. 51-63.
Cohen, Hayyim J. "The Economic Background and the Secular Occupations of Muslim Jurisprudents and Traditionists in the Classical Period of Islam (Until the Middle of the Eleventh Century)," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 13 (1970), pp. 16-61.
Duri, 'Abd al-'Aziz, "Landlord and Peasant in Early Islam: a Critical Study," Der Islam 56 (1979), pp. 97-105.
El-Daywachi, Sa'id, "The Crafts and Trades of Mosul in the Medieval Period," Sumer 7 (1951), pp. 88-98.
Fahd, T. "Les corps de métiers au IV/Xe siécle à Baghdad d'apres le chapitre XII d'al-Qādirī fī-t-ta'bīr de Dīnawarī," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 8 (1965), pp. 189-90.
Forand, P. "The Status of the Land and Inhabitants of the Sawād during the First Two Centuries of Islam," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 14 (1971), pp. 25-37.
Haque, Ziaul. Landlord and Peasant in Early Islam. Islamabad, 1977.
Lamblon, A.K.S. Landlord and Peasant in Persia. London, 1953.
Marquet, Y., "La place du travail dans la hiérarchie isma'ilienne d'aprés l'Encyclopédie des frères de la pureté," Arabica 7 (1961), pp. 225-37.
Masconi, Yusiph, "Crafts and Trade in Wasit," Sumer 5 (1949), pp. 297-305.
Massignon, L, "Les corps des metiers et la cité islamique," Revue Internationale de sociologie 28 (1920), pp. 473-88.
Müller, Hans, "Sklaven," in B. Spuler, ed., Wirtschaftgeschichte des vorderen Orients in islamischer Zeit (Leiden, 1977), pp. 53-83.
Pelliot, P. "Des artisans chinois à capitale Abbaside en 751-762," T'oung Pao 26 (1928-29), pp. 110-12.
Samarra'i, H.Q. Agriculture in Iraq During the Third Century A.H.. Beirut, 1972.
Shatzmiller, Maya. Labour in the Medieval Islamic World. Leiden, 1994.
Stillman, Norman A. "A Case of Labor Problems in Medieval Egypt," International Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1974), pp. 194-201.
Udovitch, A.L. Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam. Princeton, 1970.