Medieval Muslim Money

Andrew Ehrenkreutz is one of the scholars who have placed the study of monetary history of the medieval Middle East on a new footing, integrating numismatic research into the study of economic history. The present volume brings together all his major contributions to this subject. It opens with three essays presenting an overview of economic and monetary changes in the region, then continues with a series of detailed studies on its gold and silver coinages; in these Ehrenkreutz's work on standards of fineness broke new ground. The chronological focus of the volume is from the Umayyad period up to the Ayyubids, but particular emphasis is given to Egypt and to the impact of the Crusades on the monetary history of the Near East. A further set of articles investigates aspects of fiscal administration and the operation of the Cairo mint."

High rates of divorce, often taken to be a modern and western phenomenon, were also typical of medieval Islamic societies. By pitting these high rates of divorce against the Islamic ideal of marriage,Yossef Rapoport radically challenges usual assumptions about the legal inferiority of Muslim women and their economic dependence on men. He argues that marriages in late medieval Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem had little in common with the patriarchal models advocated by jurists and moralists. The transmission of dowries, women's access to waged labour, and the strict separation of property between spouses made divorce easy and normative, initiated by wives as often as by their husbands. This carefully researched work of social history is interwoven with intimate accounts of individual medieval lives, making for a truly compelling read. It will be of interest to scholars of all disciplines concerned with the history of women and gender in Islam.

The transformation of the eastern provinces of the Roman empire from the middle of the seventh century CE under the impact of Islam has attracted a good deal of scholarly attention in recent years, and as more archaeological material becomes available, has been subject to revision and rethinking in ways that radically affect what we know or understand about the area, about state-building and the economy and society of the early Islamic world, and about issues such as urbanisation, town-country relations, the ways in which a different religious culture impacted on the built environment, and about politics. This volume represents the fruits of a workshop held at Princeton University in May 2007 to discuss the ways in which recent work has affected our understanding of the nature of economic and exchange activity in particular, and the broader implications of these advances for the history of the region.

Provides a close analysis of theʿAqila, a group collectively liable for blood money payments, in Islamic law and history.

"A Cultural History of Money presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. The set of six volumes charts how money has made the world go around over four millennia and how it has shaped, and been shaped by, the broader social and cultural world. Each volume discusses the same themes in its seven chapters: money and its technologies; money and its ideas; money and religion; money and the everyday; money and art (or visual representations); money and its interpretation (or verbal representations); and money and the issues of the age"--

FOLLOW THE MONEY Some people work all their lives for it. Some people have huge amounts of it, and some have almost none. Some steal it, some kill for it. Some men and women marry for it. Some people gamble everything they can, hoping to win more of it and some actually do win, but most lose. Some lie for it, some die for it. Many nations go to war for it. Most of the films we see and a great many of the stories we read are about people who do many of the above things for it. But what is money? The modern world is a complex place. Ideologies and religions swirl, entangle with and wage war upon each other. Politically, socially and militarily the world is in upheaval. Economics, commerce and finance move in their own fashion and move many other forces from behind. The whole makes a strangely compelling but disturbing fabric of interwoven threads. And when was it ever different? This book was written in the conviction that if we use the old journalist's rule "Follow the Money" we can make some sense of that. ABDASSAMAD CLARKE Abdassamad Clarke is from Ulster and was formally educated in Edinburgh. He accepted Islam at the hands of Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi in 1973 and later studied in Cairo. He has translated a number of classical Arabic works and is currently an imam and teacher at the Ihsan Mosque, Norwich, UK and Dean of the Muslim Faculty of Advanced Studies. The book has 118 pages.

The transformation of the eastern provinces of the Roman empire from the middle of the seventh century CE under the impact of Islam has attracted a good deal of scholarly attention in recent years, and as more archaeological material becomes available, has been subject to revision and rethinking in ways that radically affect what we know or understand about the area, about state-building and the economy and society of the early Islamic world, and about issues such as urbanisation, town-country relations, the ways in which a different religious culture impacted on the built environment, and about politics. This volume represents the fruits of a workshop held at Princeton University in May 2007 to discuss the ways in which recent work has affected our understanding of the nature of economic and exchange activity in particular, and the broader implications of these advances for the history of the region.