The villages of the Fayyum
Subtitle: a thirteenth-century register of rural, islamic Egypt
By: edited and translated by Yossef Rapoport and Ido Shahar
Contributors: Rapoport, Yossef, 1968- editor, translator; Shahar, Ido, 1969- editor, translator
Series: The Medieval Countryside -- volume 18.; Medieval countryside -- v. 18.
Publisher: Brepols; Brepols Publishers
Published: 2018
Place of publication: Turnhout, Belgium
Language: eng; ara
Number of pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9782503542775
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: Taxation; Registers; Sources; History; Antiquities; Rural conditions
Work titles: Iẓhār Ṣanʻat al-Ḥayy al-Qayyūm fī Tartīb Bilād al-Fayyūm
Description: Richly annotated and with a detailed introduction, this volume offers the first academic edition and translation of a first-hand account of the Egyptian countryside, offering a key insight into the rural economy of medieval Islam. Medieval Islamic society was overwhelmingly a society of peasants, and the achievements of Islamic civilization depended, first and foremost, on agricultural production. Yet the history of the medieval Islamic countryside has been neglected or marginalized. Basic questions such as the social and religious identities of village communities, or the relationship of the peasant to the state, are either ignored or discussed from a normative point of view. This volume addresses this lacuna in our understanding of medieval Islam by presenting a first-hand account of the Egyptian countryside. Dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, Abu-Uthman al-Nabulusi's Villages of the Fayyum is as close as we get to the tax registers of any rural province. Not unlike the Domesday Book of medieval England, al-Nabulusi's work provides a wealth of detail for each village which far surpasses any other source for the rural economy of medieval Islam. It is a unique, comprehensive snap-shot of one rural society at one, significant, point in its history, and an insight into the way of life of the majority of the population in the medieval Islamic world. Richly annotated and with a detailed introduction, this volume offers the first academic edition of this work and the first translation into a European language.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-251) and indexes.

Introduction in English; main text in Arabic and English.