Corroded pieces of metal, stamped lumps of copper, broken bits of glass with partial inscriptions, fragments of textiles, tiny beads-these were the raw material found at al-Fustat, the site of the first Muslim settlement in Egypt in the seventh century and the heart of Cairo for many centuries following. From the 1950s Dr. Henri Amin Awad accepted from the poor in this area objects that had no obvious market value in return for medical services rendered. Over the years he built up an extraordinary and important collection of artifacts. Carefully cleaned, sorted, and then analyzed by specialists, this material illuminates many areas of the archaeological record neglected or missing from other studies. The ten studies in this volume-covering beads, bone, coins, glass weights and vessel stamps, medical instruments, medical prescriptions, metal objects, and textiles-demonstrate the wide range of archaeological material once found in al-Fustat, a site no longer accessible since most of it has been buried under urban development or lost to a rising water table. Contributors: Ibrahim Abd al-Rahman, Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Tawwab, Henri Amin Awad, Jere L. Bacharach, Michael L. Bates, Lidia Domaszewicz, Katharina Eldada, Peter Francis, Jr., Sami K. Hamarneh, Nancy Arthur Hoskins, Peter Mentzel, Norman D. Nicol, Elizabeth Rodenbeck, W. Luke Treadwell

In The Rise of a Capital: Al-Fusṭāṭ and Its Hinterland, 18/639-132/750, Jelle Bruning maps al-Fusṭāṭ’s development from a garrison town founded by Muslim conquerors near modern Cairo (Egypt) in c. 640 C.E. into a bustling provincial capital a century later. Synthesising contemporary papyri, archaeology and narrative sources, this book argues that al-Fusṭāṭ’s position in Egypt changed with the different policies of the Rightly-Guided and Umayyad caliphs and their provincial representatives. Because these policies affected the town’s centrality in the administration as well as in commercial and legal networks throughout Egypt, from Alexandria in the north to Aswan in the south, The Rise of a Capital offers valuable new insights into Egypt’s society during the first century of Muslim rule.

A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems. Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other. Chris Wickham offers a new account of the Mediterranean economy in the tenth to twelfth centuries, based on a completely new look at the sources, documentary and archaeological. Our knowledge of the Mediterranean economy is based on syntheses which are between 50 and 150 years old; they are based on outdated assumptions and restricted data sets, and were written before there was any usable archaeology; and Wickham contends that they have to be properly rethought. This is the first book ever to give a fully detailed comparative account of the regions of the Mediterranean in this period, in their internal economies and in their relationships with each other. It focusses on Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, the Byzantine empire, Islamic Spain and Portugal, and north-central Italy, and gives the first comprehensive account of the changing economies of each; only Byzantium has a good prior synthesis. It aims to force our rethinking of how economies worked in the medieval Mediterranean. It also offers a rethinking of how we should understand the underlying logic of the medieval economy in general.

'Fustat Egypt which sits on the River Nile' - this is how the Jews called their city. Coalition and opposition, power struggles between leaders who were aided by local Jewish pressure groups and abetted by the Muslim authorities - these were a few of the characteristics of the leadership in the Jewish community of Fustat, the largest and liveliest of the Jewish communities in the eleventh century. The author follows the activities of these leaders and analyzes their motives in the light of the complex relationships developing in the community between the different ethnic groups, while in the background the traditional centers of Jewish authority in Palestine and Babylon battle each other for control of the Jewish people. The survey of the dramatic events was made by analysis of documents and letters from the Geniza in Cairo.

Manuscripts provide rich documentary evidence for understanding the history of cultural life across the breadth of Europe and Asia down through the Middle Ages. Many illustrate engagement between and across languages, in both similar and contrasting ways from east to west. The demarcation of manuscript studies into single-language academic disciplines has often obscured this reality, privileging one constituent part or contributing language from each manuscript rather than exploring the combination as a nuanced and complex whole. This volume seeks to examine manuscripts as integrally united artefacts, respecting the diversity of their constituent elements. Case studies are presented of twelve manuscripts with evidence for various levels of inter-language exchange and collision, from horizons as diverse as the Atlantic West, Carolingian Europe, the Byzantine world, the Silk Road cultures, and east Asia. The essays function individually as discrete contributions, but together they highlight a range of overlapping themes, illustrating language interaction in global religions, pedagogical exchange, and secular society-building.The analogies as well as the concrete points of connection between them underline the value of a cross-disciplinary approach.

The first history of Mohammedan decorative arts to appear in English, this publication from 1930 highlights The Metropolitan Museum of Art's strong Islamic art collection with over 170 works discussed. The diverse selection objects spans over twelve centuries and includes richly illuminated manuscripts, colorful glazed pottery, and intricate woven carpets, among others. Dimand contextualizes Mohammedan decorative arts within the history of Islam and its spread across the world, from the Middle East to Egypt and India.

The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture is the most comprehensive reference work in this complex and diverse area of art history. Built on the acclaimed scholarship of the Grove Dictionary of Art, this work offers over 1,600 up-to-date entries on Islamic art and architecture ranging from the Middle East to Central and South Asia, Africa, and Europe and spans over a thousand years of history. Recent changes in Islamic art in areas such as Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq are elucidated here by distinguished scholars. Entries provide in-depth art historical and cultural information about dynasties, art forms, artists, architecture, rulers, monuments, archaeological sites and stylistic developments. In addition, over 500 illustrations of sculpture, mosaic, painting, ceramics, architecture, metalwork and calligraphy illuminate the rich artistic tradition of the Islamic world. With the fundamental understanding that Islamic art is not limited to a particular region, or to a defined period of time, The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture offers pathways into Islamic culture through its art.