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THE PROMISE AND PITFALLS OF MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC SOCIAL HISTORY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2014

Jonathan P. Berkey
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Extract

When I was in graduate school, in the 1980s, one frequently heard complaints about the comparatively unsophisticated nature of the historiography of the medieval Middle East. There was considerable envy of historians in fields like early modern European history, who pushed broader disciplinary limits and whose works were read not just for content but also for historiographical and theoretical inspiration. There were some in our own corner of the profession blazing new methodological trails—Clifford Geertz, for example, who, though not a historian, had much to say to historians, and whose books were read eagerly by historians, and not just in Middle Eastern history; or Fedwa Malti-Douglas, as much at home in feminist literary theory as in medieval Arabic literature. But many graduate students in Middle Eastern history felt a bit underrepresented on the cutting edge of historical thought and practice.

Type
Review Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 2: Politics of Benevolence , May 2014 , pp. 385 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

NOTES

1 Petry, Carl, The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

2 Petry, Carl, Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamlūk Sultans and Egypt's Waning as a Great Power (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

3 Lapidus, Ira, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

4 Peirce, Leslie, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

5 Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2nd ed., 1966, trans. Reynolds, Siân (New York: Harper & Row, 1972)Google Scholar.

6 And a fair amount of secondary literature as well. Richardson's survey of the historiography on disabilities in medieval Islam (pp. 7–9) is remarkably full, and a reminder that earlier historians really have accomplished a great deal.

7 See Foster, Benjamin R., “Agoranomos and Muhtasib,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 13 (1970): 128–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Tyan, Émile, Histoire de l'organisation judiciare en pays de l'Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960)Google Scholar.

9 There are at least two modern studies in Arabic, as well as Chalmeta, Pedro's study of the office in Islamic Spain, El “señor del zoco” en España (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Árabe de Cultura, 1973)Google Scholar.

10 Powers, David, Law, Society, and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

11 Al-Zayni Barakat (Cairo: Maktabat Madbuli, 1974); trans. Farouk Abdel Wahab (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1988).