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Material Culture and Geography: Toward a Holistic Comparative History of the Middle East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Nikki R. Keddie
Nikki R. Keddie
Affiliation:
University of California at Los Angeles
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Extract

The study of material culture and geography is relatively new and underdeveloped in most fields of history, but this underdevelopment is particularly acute for the history of the Middle East since the rise of Islam. Although, for most historians, the period when nearly everything in Middle Eastern history was ascribed to Islam has passed, and there is a new awareness of socioeconomic factors, discussions of these factors often overstress trade or center almost exclusively around dependent relations with the West, virtually ignoring specific internal developments in Middle Eastern material culture and ecology that help explain Middle Eastern history. This essay will suggest what may be learned from such studies by drawing attention to some of the relevant conclusions of works written on these subjects. It will also show how study of material culture can illuminate phases of development and decline in the Middle East and suggest some reasons why the West overtook and passed the Middle East economically.

Type
CSSH Discussion
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , October 1984 , pp. 709 - 735
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1984

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References

This article is intended to suggest the importance of further work in a field in which the author has done relatively little primary research. The works discussed and cited are given as examples of what can be learned by historians from the study of material culture; the article is not intended to be a comprehensive bibliographical essay. Some important works, especially in foreign languages, have been omitted. It would be useful for specialists to do a multilingual critical bibliography for historians.

Oleg Grabar has written to me noting that a number of Soviet scholars use material culture in important ways. Among them are V. V. Barthold, K. A. Inostrantzev, and B. I. Marshak. Grabar's letter (1978) also names Jean Sauvaget as “the first one to see history and things together,” and “as much the founder of that attitude as Monneret de Villard.” Several additions and amendments suggested in letters from Halil Inalcik have been incorporated into the text, as have comments from Michael Bonine, Richard Bulliet, Edmund Burke, William McNeill, Carlo Poni, and Peter von Sivers. Profound thanks for his help and ideas are also due my former assistant, Jean-Luc Krawczyk, who is working on Middle Eastern and European technology, and on tribal history. Ken Mayers checked my notes, Andrew Newman the proofs.

1 See, for example, among the very intelligent works that stress class or trade and underplay technology, Brenner, Robert, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe,” Past and Present, no. 70 (1976), 30–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the discussion of Brenner's article in subsequent issues of Past and Present, now brought together in The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, Ashton, T. H. and Philipin, C. H. E., eds. (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar; and Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System (New York, 1974).Google Scholar More coverage of technological, geographic, and climatic factors is given in Duby, Georges, The Early Growth of the European Economy, Clarke, Howard B., trans. (Ithaca, 1974).Google Scholar

2 See Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge, 1954), esp. vol. I.Google Scholar

3 Lack of such technical expertise has been confessed to me by such pioneering authors as Bulliet, Richard W., author of The Camel and the Wheel (Cambridge, Mass., 1975)Google Scholar; White, Lynn, Jr., author of Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar and numerous articles on technology; William McNeill; and Carlo Poni, author of important works on agricultural and silk technology in Italy.

4 Grabar, Oleg, “The Architecture of the Middle Eastern City,” in Middle Eastern Cities, Lapidus, Ira, ed. (Berkeley, 1969), 26–46.Google Scholar

5 Watson, Andrew M., Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar

6 The most complete study is that by an engineer, Goblot, Henri, Les qanais: une technique d'acquisition de l'eau (Paris, 1979).Google Scholar Goblot shows the spread of qanats from Iran, and thinks there were only a few places of independent origin, in Europe. He also indicates that qanats could only have emerged as a by-product of the runoff water from mining. The diffusion of qanats occurred mostly in Islamic times, but Goblot does not, as does Watson, tie this diffusion and the later decline of some qanats to more general agricultural and economic developments. On qanats and irrigation, see also Adams, Robert McC., Land behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement on the Diyala Plains (Chicago, 1965)Google Scholar; Beckett, P., “Qanats-Persia,” Journal of the Iran Society, 1 (1952), 125–33Google Scholar; Cahen, C., “Le service de l'irrigation en Iraq au debut du XIe siècle,” Bulletin d'études orientales, 13 (1949–1951) 117–43Google Scholar; Colin, G. S., “La noria marocaine et les machines hydroliques dans le monde arabe,” Hesperis, 14 (1932), 22–60Google Scholar; Glick, Thomas F., Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia (Cambridge, Mass., 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, 1979)Google Scholar; Krenkow, F., “The Construction of Subterranean Water Supplies during the Abbaside Caliphate,” Glasgow University Oriental Society Transactions, 13 (1947–1949), 23–32Google Scholar; Smith, A., “Qanats,” Journal of the Iran Society, 1 (1951), 86–90.Google Scholar See also English, P. W., “The Origin and Spread of Qanats in the Old World,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 112:3 (1968), 170–81Google Scholar; and Wulff, H. E., “The Qanats of Iran,” Scientific American, 218:4 (1968), 94–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Adams, , Land behind Baghdad.Google Scholar A partial critique of Adams's methods and conclusions is in Watson, , Agricultural Innovation, 206, n. 14.Google Scholar

8 Watson, Andrew M., “A Medieval Green Revolution: New Crops and Farming Techniques in the Early Islamic World,” in The Islamic Middle East, 700–1900: Studies in Social and Economic History, Udovitch, A., ed. (Princeton, 1981)Google Scholar; idem, “The Arab Agricultural Revolution and its Diffusion, 700–1100,” The Journal of Economic History, 34:1 (03 1974), 8–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, esp. idem, Agricultural Innovation.

9 See the discussions on agriculture in Ashtor, E., A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages (London, 1976).Google ScholarWatson, , Agricultural Innovation,Google Scholar includes critiques of writers who ascribe Islamic advances to pre-Islamic times or over generalize from a few cases of decline. Also stressing agricultural productivity is von Sivers, Peter, “Riverine Realms: Iraq, Egypt, and Syria during the Classical Islamic Period,” Newsletter of the American Research Center in Egypt, no. 124 (Winter 1983), 12–18.Google Scholar

10 McNeill, William, The Rise of the West (Chicago, 1963), 487, n.3,Google Scholar citing works by Barthold, W.. Watson, , Agricultural Innovation, pt. 5.Google Scholar

11 The probable importance of medieval climatic change in the extension of nomadism was suggested to me in conversation by William McNeill, who has dealt with the climatic factor in his writings on world history. The most comprehensive book on the history of European climate (using and describing methods that could also be used in the Middle East), is Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the Year 1000 (Garden City, N.Y., 1971).Google Scholar The same medieval warm climate trends that helped Europe may have hurt the Middle East. On medieval eras of aridity and high temperatures and their probable special impact on areas that were agriculturally marginal, see Climate and History, T.M.L. IngramWigley, M. J. Wigley, M. J., and Farmer, G., eds. (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar Medieval climate and geographical issues relevant to comparisons with the Middle East are also discussed in Duby, , Early Growth of European Economy, esp. ch. 7Google Scholar; and in Jones, E. L., The European Miracle: Environments, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar

12 Watson, , Agriculture Innovation, pt. 5.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Rabie, H., “Some Technical Aspects of Agriculture in Medieval Egypt,” in Islamic Middle East, Udovitch, , ed. The books of Glick, Goblot, and Watson are cited in notes 5 and 6 above.Google Scholar

14 Iran, perhaps because of the range, sophistication, and esthetic appeal of Iranian crafts, has been particularly well served with descriptive books and articles on crafts, and much of what they say about technique is applicable to other countries. The most comprehensive descriptions of craft processes and products are in A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, Pope, Arthur Upham, ed., 6 vols. (London, 1938–1939)Google Scholar; Wulff, H., The Traditional Crafts of Persia (Cambridge, Mass., 1966)Google Scholar; and A Survey of Persian Handicraft, Gluck, J. and Gluck, S., eds. (Tehran, 1977).Google Scholar See also the very important unpublished paper by Shepherd, Dorothy G., “The Textile Industry in Medieval Iran,” and Reath, N. A. and Sachs, F. B., Persian Textiles and Their Technique (New Haven, 1937).Google Scholar

15 Wulff, , Traditional CraftsGoogle Scholar; Digard, J.-P., Techniques et culture des nomades baxtyari d'lran (Paris, 1981).Google Scholar

16 On the high rate of invention in the Middle Ages, see White, , Medieval Technology, and his chapter in The Fontana Economic History of Europe: The Middle Ages, Cipolla, Carlo M., ed. (Collins, n.p., 1972)Google Scholar; Gimpel, Jean, La revolution industrielle du moyen age (English trans., The Medieval Machine (Harmondsworth, 1977))Google Scholar; and Lilley, S., Men, Machines and History (London, 1965).Google Scholar Although some of the generalizations of White and Gimpel have been criticized, their demonstration of rapid and cumulative technological development in the West during the Middle Ages seems irrefutable.

17 Ashtor, , Social and Economic History;Google Scholar and esp. idem, “Levantine Sugar Industry in the Late Middle Ages—An Example of Technological Decline,” in Islamic Middle East, Udovitch, , ed.Google Scholar

18 Barkan, Omer Lutfi, “The Price Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: A Turning Point in the Economic History of the Near East,” McCarthy, Justin, trans., International Journal of Middle East Studies, 6:1 (01 1975), 3–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Inalcik, Halil, “Bursa and the Commerce of the Levant,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 3:2 (1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Harir” [silk], Encyclopedia Islamica (1971).Google Scholar Professor Inalcik kindly wrote correcting some points in my first draft; his emendations are briefly incorporated in this revised version.

19 Poni, Carlo, “Archeologie de la fabrique: La diffusion des moulins a soie…,” Annates, 27:6 (1972), 1475–96Google Scholar; Inalcik, “Bursa.”

20 White, Lynn, Jr., Medieval Religion and Technology (Berkeley, 1978), 47–50,Google Scholar discusses windmills. On the importance of medieval Europe's superiority in water and wood, see Krawczyk, J.-L., “Environment, Constraints and Technology: The Middle East and Europe in the Middle Ages,” manuscript; F. Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, Kochan, M., trans. (New York, 1973), 266.Google Scholar

21 Bulliet, , Camel.Google Scholar

22 Thanks are due William McNeill for suggesting the importance, and need to study the economics, of the caravan trade.

23 Goitein, S. D., A Mediterranean Society, 4 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968–1983).Google Scholar

24 ar-Raziq, Ahmad Abd, La femme au temps des Mamlouks en Egypte (Cairo, 1973)Google Scholar

25 Keddie, Nikki R. and Beck, Lois, “Introduction” to Women in the Muslim World, Beck, Lois and Keddie, Nikki R., eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1978).Google Scholar

26 Dengler, Ian, “Turkish Women in the Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age,” in Women, Beck, and Keddie, , eds.Google Scholar

27 See Beck, and Keddie, , Women,Google Scholar and the various references to women in Keddie, Nikki R., Roots of Revolution (New Haven, 1981).Google Scholar

28 This account is translated twice in Sana‘a’ an Arabian Islamic City, Sergeant, R. B. and Lewcock, R., eds. (London, 1983),Google Scholar with the better translation that of Martha Mundy (p. 535), saying Imam Hadi used to inspect the streets, and “if he saw a woman he ordered her to wear a veil, and if she was past menopause, he ordered her to wear a cloak. He was the first to bring the burqu face-veil to Yemeni women and he ordered them to adopt it.”

29 See particularly the historical articles on tribes by Garthwaite, Gene, Reid, James, and Smith, John M. in the special issue of Iranian Studies, State and Society in Iran (01 1979), Banani, A., ed.Google Scholar These authors have also done other work on tribal history. The impact of nomads on Middle Eastern history in Islamic times is also very well analyzed in various works by Claude Cahen. See also Garthwaite, Gene R., Khans and Shahs (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; Oberling, Pierre, The Qashqa' i Nomads ofFars (The Hague, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Beck, Lois, The Qashqa'i Confederacy of Iran (New Haven, in press).Google Scholar

30 See Rodinson, M., Mahomet (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar; published in English as Mohammed, Carter, Anne, trans. (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Watt, W. M., Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford, 1953)Google Scholar; idem, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar; Cahen, Claude, L'Islam: des origines au debut de l'empire ottoman (Paris, 1970),Google Scholar published also in German, Italian, and Spanish translations.

31 Cahen, Claude, “Les changements techniques militaires dans le proche orient medieval et leur importance historique,” in War, Technology, and Society in the Middle East, Parry, V. and Yapp, M., eds. (London, 1975).Google Scholar See also the discussion of medieval military technology in McNeill's, WilliamThe Pursuit of Power (Chicago, 1982),Google Scholar and the superbly illustrated survey of Muslim military technology and organization, Bosworth, E., “Annies of the Prophet,” in The World of Islam, Lewis, Bernard, ed. (London, 1976), 201–24.Google Scholar

32 Ayalon, David, Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom (London, 1956; 2d ed., 1978).Google Scholar

33 Inalcik, Halil, “The Socio-Political Effects of the Diffusion of Fire-arms in the Middle East,” in War, Parry, and Yapp, , eds.Google Scholar; Robert McDaniel, who is studying the Iranian military, told me this conclusion about tribal power.

34 Guilmartin, J. F., Jr., Gunpowder and Galleys (Cambridge, 1974).Google Scholar See also “Barud” [gunpowder], Encyclopedia Islamica (1960).Google Scholar

35 From Madina to Metropolis, Brown, L. Carl, ed. (Princeton, 1973)Google Scholar; Middle Eastern Cities, Lapidus, , ed.Google Scholar; and The Islamic City, Hourani, A. and Stern, S. M., eds. (Oxford, 1970).Google Scholar

36 The crucial refutations are the articles by C. Cahen, “Y a-t-il des corporations profession-nelles dans le monde musulman classique?” and Stern, S. M., “The Constitution of the Islamic City,” both in Islamic City, Hourani, and Stern, , eds., 51–63, 25–50.Google Scholar Recently, some writers, including André Raymond, have spoken and written of “Arab cities” as an entity. This seems to me no improvement over “Muslim cities” because city types no more follow linguistic lines than religious ones, and many Eastern Arab cities resemble those in Iran and Turkey more than they do Moroccan or Yemeni cities. On the material basis of derivation of urban street patterns from patterns of water channels and fields, see Bonine, M. E., “The Morphogenesis of Iranian Cities,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 69:2 (06 1979), 208–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 See Grabar, , “Architecture,” in Middle Eastern Cities, Lapidus, , ed.Google Scholar; idem, The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven, 1973)Google Scholar; and idem, “Islamic Art and Archeology,” in The Study of the Middle East, Binder, L., ed. (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

38 de Villard, Ugo Monneret, lntroduzione alio studio dell'archeologia islamica: le origini e il periodo omayyade (Venice, 1966).Google Scholar A recent application of archeology to history is Hodges, R. and Whitehouse, D., Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins of Europe (Ithaca, 1983).Google Scholar

39 The chief works on urban topics by these authors are: Lapidus, I., Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)Google Scholar; Raymond, A., Artisans et commercants au Caire au CVIIle siècle (Damascus, 1974)Google Scholar; Lassner, J., The Topography of Baghdad in the Early Middle Ages (Detroit, 1970)Google Scholar; English, P., City and Village in Iran: Settlement and Economy in the Kirman Basin (Madison, Wis., 1966)Google Scholar; Abu-Lughod, J., Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious (Princeton, 1971)Google Scholar; Gulick, J., Tripoli: A Modern Arab City (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the series of reports on work at Siraf by David Whitehouse which appeared in the journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, Iran. The six interim reports were published as “Excavations at Sīrāf: First Interim Report,” etcetera, Iran, 6(1968), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 7 (1969), 39–62; 8 (1970), 1–18; 9(1971), 1–17; 10 (1972), 63–87; 12 (1974), 1–30. For Eugenio Galdieri, see note 40 and the Holod volume cited below; for articles by the above authors and others, see the fine bibliographical survey of this multidisciplinary urban literature in Bonine, Michael E., “From Uruk to Casablanca: Perspectives on the Urban Experience of the Middle East,” Journal of Urban History, 3:2 (02 1977), 141–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Among the books Bonine notes that are not cited above, and are relevant to material culture, are Adams, Robert McC., The Evolution of Urban Society (Chicago, 1966)Google Scholar; Ịrrigation's Impact on Society, Downing, T. E. and Gibson, M., eds. (Tucson, Ariz., 1974)Google Scholar; de Planhol, Xavier, The World of Islam (Ithaca, 1959)Google Scholar; Goitein, S. D., Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden, 1966)Google Scholar; Baer, G., Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago, 1969)Google Scholar; Lane, Edward W., The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 5th ed. (London, 1871)Google Scholar; Le Tourneau, R., Fes avant le Protectorat (Casablanca, 1949)Google Scholar; Brown, K. L., People of Salé: Tradition and Change in a Moroccan City (Cambridge, Mass., 1976)Google Scholar; and Studies on Isfahan, Holod, Renata, ed. (Boston, 1974).Google Scholar There are numerous studies of individual cities, especially in English, French, and German, and mainly by geographers.

40 See Galdieri, E., Isfahan: Masgid-i Gum'a (Rome, 1972–1974)Google Scholar; Zander, G., Travaux de restauration des monuments historiques en Iran (Rome, 1968).Google Scholar

41 See Andrews, P. A., “The Felt Tent in Middle Asia: The Nomadic Tradition and Its Interaction with Princely Tentage” (D. Phil, thesis, University of London, 1980).Google Scholar On mud architecture and passive cooling systems, see Bonine, Michael E., “Aridity and Structure: Adaptation of Indigenous Housing in Central Iran,” in Desert Housing: Balancing Experience and Technology for Dwelling in Hot Arid Zones, Clark, K. N. and Baylore, P., eds. (Tucson, 1980)Google Scholar; Bahadorī, M. N., “Passive Cooling Systems in Iranian Architecture,” Scientific American, 238:2 (1978), 144–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Gaube, Heinz and Wirth, Eugen, Der Bazar von Isfahan (Wiesbaden, 1978).Google Scholar