L'Arabie marchande: Etat et commerce sous les sultans rasulides du Yemen (626-85811229-1454).

• Author: Varisco, Daniel Martin
• Position: Book review

L'Arabie marchande: Etat et commerce sous les sultans rascdides du Yemen (626-85811229-1454). By ERIC VALLET. Bibliotheque historique des pays d'Islam, vol. 1. Paris: PUBLICATIONS DE LA SORBONNE, 2010. Pp. 872. E90.

Eric Vallet is to be congratulated for filling a century gap in the historical reconstruction of the Rasalid state in Yemen. In 1906 J. W. Redhouse published the first volume of a translation and edition of the fourteenth-century Yemeni historian al-Khazraji's al-'Uqud al-lu'lu'iyya (The Pearl Strings), but since then the study of what may be the zenith of Yemen's Islamic history has been carried out mainly by Yemeni scholars, who have published several important texts from the time period. Apart from the work of the British Arabists R. B. Serjeant and G. Rex Smith, little has been published about this dynasty. Vallet's massive and comprehensive study of the administrative and fiscal aspects of the Rasalid state draws on the published sources as well as several recently discovered archival manuscripts. No one interested in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade network during the Mamluk period can afford to ignore this impressive account of the port of Aden and the role of the Rasulids in this international system.

The book is divided into an introduction, nine chapters, an epilogue, a conclusion, appendices (designating the known merchants involved in Yemeni trade, genealogical trees of merchants and administrators, and administrators in Aden), maps from the Rasulid texts, a forty-five-page bibliography, and indices of placenames, individuals, peoples, and a thematic breakdown of the contents. In the introduction Vallet provides a brief survey of the "miracle" of the Rasulids--their transformation of Yemen into a major trade center after the fall of the 'Abbasid caliphate and rise of the Mamluks in Egypt. Here he also introduces the main archival documents and other source material that he cites. Especially valuable is his elaboration of the Rasulid use of the term dawla (pp. 40-41).

The first chapter provides a historical and fiscal overview of the Rasulid state, its transition from the Ayyubids, whom the Rasulid emirs had served, and relations with the Mamluks in Egypt. This draws on the travel accounts of Ibn al-Mujawir, recently translated into English by G. Rex Smith (A Traveller in Thirteenth Century Arabia, London, 2007), and Ibn Battuta. But the most important sources are archival documents compiled for the sultans: Nur...