The first volume to map the interregional political, economic and cultural networks in which Egypt functioned as it was transformed from a Graeco-Roman to an Arabic-Islamic region. Brings together a wide range of disciplines, serving historians of late antiquity and Islam, archaeologists and papyrologists.
During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in the Mediterranean during this period. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, the individual chapters detail its connections with imperial and scholarly centres, its role in cross-regional trade networks, and its participation in Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultural developments, including their impact on its own literary and material production. With unparalleled detail, the book tracks the mechanisms and structures through which Egypt connected politically, economically and culturally to the world surrounding it.
Arvustused
' provides a very good insight into the interconnectedness of Egypt in the Eastern Mediterranean region over a long period of time.' H-Soz-Kult '(these essays) open a window on an important period of transition in Egyptian history.' Ancient Egypt Magazine 'The chapters of the book are written by specialists who draw on a wide range of archaeological and textual sources. Careful editing also contributes to the beauty of the book. It contains informative (and partly colored) graphs and tables, and a detailed overall index with names, places, and subjects.' Lucian Reinfandt, Journal of Near Eastern Studies
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Maps Egypt's political, economic and cultural connections throughout the Mediterranean and beyond between 500 and 1000 CE.
Introduction Jelle Bruning, Janneke H. M. de Jong and Petra M.
Sijpesteijn; Part
1. Political and Administrative Connections:
1. Egypt in
the age of Justinian: connector or disconnector? Peter Sarris;
2. At the
crossroads of regional settings: Egypt, 5001000 CE Yaacov Lev;
3. The
frontier zone at the first cataract before and at the time of the Muslim
conquest (fifth to seventh centuries) Stefanie Schmidt;
4. Islamic
historiography on early Muslim relations with Nubia Sylvie Denoix;
5. Local
tradition and imperial legal policy under the Umayyads: the evolution of the
early Egyptian school of law Mathieu Tillier;
6. Ibn ln's pacification
campaign: sedition, authority and empire in Abbasid Egypt Matthew S. Gordon;
Part
2. Economic Connections:
7. Between Ramla and Fus: Archaeological
evidence for Egyptian contacts with early Islamic Palestine (eighth-eleventh
centuries) Gideon Avni;
8. Egypt's connections in the early Caliphate:
political, economic and cultural Petra M. Sijpesteijn;
9. Trading activities
in the Eastern Mediterranean through ceramics between late antiquity and
fatimid times (ca. seventh-tenth/eleventh centuries) Joanita Vroom; Part
3.
Social and Cultural Connections:
10. The destruction of Alexandria: religious
imagery and local identity in early Islamic Egypt Jelle Bruning;
11. Scribal
networks, taxation and the role of coptic in Marwanid Egypt Jennifer
Cromwell;
12. A changing position of Greek? Greek papyri in the documentary
culture of early Islamic Egypt Janneke H. M. de Jong;
13. Regional diversity
in the use of administrative loanwords in early Islamic Arabic documentary
sources (632800 CE): a preliminary survey Eugenio Garosi;
14. Babylon/Qar
al-Sham: continuity and change at the heart of the new metropolis of Fus
Peter Sheehan and Alison L. Gascoigne;
15. Utilizing non-Muslim literary
sources for the study of Egypt, 5001000 CE Maged S.A. Mikhail; Index.
Jelle Bruning is a University Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University. He is the author of The Rise of a Capital: Al-Fus and Its Hinterland, 18/639-132/750 (2018). Janneke H. M. de Jong is a classicist and ancient historian with as expertise Greek papyrology. Her current research includes the social organization of the tax system of Aphrodito in the early Islamic period, and the preparation of editions of Greek papyri from late Byzantine and early Islamic Egypt. Petra M. Sijpesteijn is Professor of Arabic at Leiden University. She has published various academic and popular books and articles on the daily life experience of Muslims and non-Muslims in the caliphate.
