Caliphs and Merchants: Cities and Economies of Power in the Near East (700-950).

• Author: Allehbi, Mohammed

Caliphs and Merchants: Cities and Economies of Power in the Near East (700-950). By FANNY BESSARD. Oxford Studies in Byzantium. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020. Pp. xxviii + 360. $115, [pounds sterling]90.

Henri Pirenne's thesis from the early twentieth century that the rise of Islam introduced a radical break, rupturing trade between Europe and the Mediterranean, has been effectively challenged by many historians. However, a fresh economic narrative was still needed to show both the innovations that Islamic civilization introduced during its first three centuries and its late antique heritage. Fanny Bessard's comprehensive and inventive monograph reviewed here infuses a new and compelling reading into this subject.

Her book covers the economic continuity and changes in the Islamic Near East and Central Asia, from their pre-Islamic Roman and Sasanian roots to their emergence and expansion in the Umayyad and Abbasid periods, between the sixth and tenth centuries. Such a wide scope requires a holistic approach, which she undertakes. Utilizing an eclectic mixture of epigraphic, archeological, and literary material, Bessard builds a three-dimensional portrait of early Islamic economic history while maintaining a rigorous and critical approach. Collating details on the various economic actors, institutions, and patterns found in literary documentation, she avoids taking anecdotal narratives at face value or overemphasizing the data derived from fragmentary evidence found in inscriptions. Her research epitomizes the progress that secondary scholarship has made in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and is a testament to the ongoing breakthroughs in early Islamic archeology.

In her first chapter, "The Historical Context," addressing historiographical portrayals on the rise of Islam as a rupture in late antiquity, she establishes that Arab-Muslim rulers fostered a prosperous period of trade and economic growth. While economic histories of early Islam are usually centered on the Near East and the Mediterranean, Bessard establishes a new analytical framework that categorizes the Islamic Near East and Islamic Central Asia as two distinct economic zones. She avoids the pitfall of viewing these economic transformations through a center-periphery lens by extensively discussing the substantial provincial and transregional trade and economic enterprises that were established without the direct involvement of the Umayyads and Abbasids. Within this broad scope, Bessard shows that the early Islamic economy was made up of a variety of actors and regions.

In her second chapter, "A Stamp of Authority," she makes a valuable contribution by demonstrating that Umayyads...