Histories of the Middle East : studies in Middle Eastern society, economy and law in honor of A.L. Udovitch / / edited by Roxani Eleni Margariti, Adam Sabra, Petra M. Sijpesteijn.

• Superior document: Islamic history and civilization. Studies and texts, v. 79
• TeilnehmendeR: Margariti, Roxani Eleni, 1969-; Sabra, Adam Abdelhamid, 1968-; Sijpesteijn, Petra.; Udovitch, Abraham L.
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Islamic history and civilization ; v. 79.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (311 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

For four decades Abraham L. Udovitch has been a leading scholar of the medieval Islamic world, its economic institutions, social structures, and legal theory and practice. In pursuing his quest to understand and explain the complex phenomena that these broad rubrics entail, he has published widely, collaborated internationally with other leading scholars of the Middle East and medieval history, and most saliently for the purposes of this volume, taught several cohorts of students at Princeton University. This volume is therefore dedicated to his intellectual legacy from a uniquely revealing angle: the current work of his former students. The papers in this volume range chronologically from the period preceding the rise of Islam in Arabia to the Mamluk era, geographically from the Western Mediterranean to the Western Indian Ocean and thematically from the political negotiations of Christian and Islamic Mediterranean sovereigns to the historiography of Western Indian Ocean port cities.

Table of Contents

"There are 'ulama', and then there are 'ulama" : minor religious institutions and minor religious functionaries in medieval Cairo / Jonathan P. Berkey -- The Arabian silent trade : profit and nobility in the "markets of the 'Arabs'" / Michael Bonner -- Ringing church bells in Hafsid Tunis : religious concessions to Christian fondacos in the later thirteenth century / Olivia Remie Constable -- An overview of the slaves' juridical status at sea in Romano-Byzantine, and Islamic laws / Hassan S. Khalilieh -- Maritime cityscapes : lessons from real and imagined topographies of western Indian Ocean ports / Roxani Eleni Margariti -- Demonizing zenobia : the legend of al-Zabba" in Islamic sources / David S. Powers -- The view from the south : the maps of the book of curiosities and the commercial revolution of the eleventh century / Yossef Rapoport -- From artisan to courtier : sufism and social mobility in fifteenth-century Egypt / Adam Sabra -- Mini-dramas by the water : on irrigation rights and disputes in fifteenth-century Damascus / Boaz Shoshan -- Army economics : an early papyrus letter related to 'ata' payments / Petra M. Sijpesteijn.