Publisher Description

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.

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

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, 500–1000 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 (632–800 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, 500–1000 CE Maged S.A. Mikhail; Index.

Promotional

Maps Egypt's political, economic and cultural connections throughout the Mediterranean and beyond between 500 and 1000 CE.

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Maps Egypt's political, economic and cultural connections throughout the Mediterranean and beyond between 500 and 1000 CE.

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