A ‘new’ economic history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

This article argues that there is a need to develop a ‘new’ economic and social history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that is based on exploiting novel sources of data, including (a) primary papyrological sources from the medieval period, (b) primary sources at the region's local archives and European (colonial) archives, and (c) primary sources from the ancient (pre-Islamic) period. The proposed ‘new’ history of the MENA region must be inter-disciplinary for two reasons: (a) digitizing and employing these novel data sources in research requires the collaboration of social scientists, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, demographers and papyrologists, as well as the co-operation of MENA-based scholars who have better access to MENA's local archives, and (b) even if these novel sources are digitized, data limitations are likely to impose a constraint on the reach of quantitative analysis and thus necessitate an inter-disciplinary methodology that combines quantitative evidence with historical analysis.     

Landholding Patterns in Early Islamic Egypt

This article examines the impact of the Arab conquests of the 630s and 640s on rural society and fiscal organization in Egypt. Traditional accounts paint a picture of a seventh-century Egypt from which the aristocracy had largely disappeared and in which Arab rulers and administrators communicated directly with village communities. Drawing upon the testimony of seventh-century documentary papyri, this essay reveals the continued role of Christian elites in administering tax collection and the extent to which the Arab conquerors left agrarian social relations largely undisturbed. Only over the course of the eighth century were indigenous Christian elites sidelined, leading to a number of tax revolts on the part of the Coptic population.