Michele Campopiano

State, Land Tax and Agriculture in Iraq from the Arab Conquest to the Crisis of the Abbasid Caliphate (Seventh-Tenth Centuries)

As several historians of the Middle East have noted, a significant decline in tax revenue occurred in Iraq from the time of the Arabic conquest to the rise of the Buwayhids (945)1. The decline in tax revenue is a crucial element in the study of the social, political and economic history of the Medieval Middle East, because State income relied heavily on land tax. A decline in tax revenue from Iraq would have deeply affected the stability of the Islamic Caliphate, since the Caliphate relied heavily on tax income from the Mesopotamian plain2. A decline in tax revenue could be seen as a consequence of inefficient tax collection, of weaker control on

Land Tax alā l-misāa and muqāsama: Legal Theory and the Balance of Social Forces in Early Medieval Iraq (6th-8th Centuries C.E.)

The article argues that any analysis of tax policies must be grounded in the given society’s ‘mode of production’. This is demonstrated through analysis of the political relationship between the Abbasid state and the landlords, and the reasons why certain prominent Muslim jurists between 750 and ca. 900. promoted muqāsama in the Sawād of Iraq. These jurists’ tax policy is explained with reference to Haldon’s concept of the tributary mode of production. It is concluded that according to the jurists, muqāsama favoured a redistribution of surpluses between the state and the landowners which could strengthen relations between the Abbasid state and the powerful landlords in Iraq.

Factor markets in early Islamic Iraq, c. 600-1100 AD

AbstractThis paper reconstructs the organization and development of factor markets in early medieval Iraq. It shows that from the late Sasanian period on, and accelerating in the early Islamic period, there was a relatively unrestricted functioning of markets for goods, labour, and capital. This stimulated market exchange, associated with growing monetization of the economy, especially in the towns, but also in the countryside, even though coercion remained more pronounced there. We hypothesize that these developments brought economic dynamism but simultaneously increased inequality and furthered the rise of new, powerful elite groups, causing the decline of the same markets.

Rural communities, land clearance and water management in the Po Valley in the central and late Middle Ages

This article shows how groups that acquired the highest concentration of social and political power in the Po Valley in the High and late Middle Ages, firstly rural seigniorial lords and latterly urban governments, tried to subordinate rural communities to their policies of land clearance and water management. The development of forms of collective organisation among the rural population implied the ready availability of local structures that could mobilise manpower and provide knowledge of environmental conditions in the locality. Rural communities developed these functions through negotiation between their population and the socio-political forces that framed the government of the countryside, first the lords and then urban governments.

Zoroastrians, Islam and the Holy Qur’ān. Purity and Danger in Pahlavi Literature in the Early Islamic Period (Seventh–Tenth Centuries)

Abstract This paper will reflect on how Pahlavi texts after the Islamic conquest conceptualize conflicts between Islamic norms and Zoroastrian rules, in particular those concerning purity. The paper will therefore be concerned with the representation of Islam and Islamic practices within the Mazdean community. For this reason, the issue of the reception of the Holy Qur’ān within Pahlavi literature will also need to be addressed. The paper will formulate some hypotheses on what goals the Mazdean intellectual elites (in this case, essentially their clergy) tried to achieve through their representation of Islam. It will also discuss how this representation connected with the economic and social transformation that this community underwent with the end of the Sasanian Empire, in particular with the changes in landholding that had been among the main sources of wealth and power for the Sasanian aristocracy.