by Bonine, Michael E. ; Amanat, Abbas; Gasper, Michael Ezekiel
33. On the “Herat Question,” see Amanat, Pivot of the Universe; Amanat, “Herat Question.”
34. On the Helmand River, the Goldsmid Mission, and the Sistan Boundary, see Hopkins, “Bounds of Identity,” 233–54; Khazeni, “Helmand,” 173–76.
35. al-Saltana, Tarikh-i Vaqa‘i’[0] va Savana-yi Afghanistan, 47.
36. For a narrative of the disastrous Persian campaign on Marv in 1861, see de Blocqueville, “Quatorze mois de captivité, chez les Turcomans aux frontieres du Turkestan et de la Perse,” 225–72.
37. For the text of this agreement and a facsimile of the original document, see Mirniya, Vaqa‘i’[0]-yi Khavar-i Iran dar Dawra-yi Qajar, 179–90.
38. Qaragazlu, Majmu‘a[0]-yi Asar, 142–43.
39. al-Mamalik, Ruznama-yi Safar-i Khurasan. This travel book was written in the nastaliq script of Persian by a scribe in the service of Hakim al-Mamalik by the name of Ali Asghar. The 485-page text was completed and lithographed in the printing house of Aqa Mir Baqir Tehrani in 1868.
40. Ibid., 4–5.
41. Ibid., 6.
42. Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar, Safarnama-yi Khurasan. This work is also referred to as Safarnama-yi Duvvum-i Khurasan, an oral travel narrative by the shah that was written down by Muhammad Hasan Khan Sani‘ al-Dawla I‘timad al-Saltana during the course of the journey. The final 227-page text was written in nastaliq script in the hand of Mirza Riza Kalhur and printed in lithograph form.
43. In addition to the shah’s own journal of his second pilgrimage and journey to Khurasan, the safarnama of Mirza Qahraman Amin Lashkar, who accompanied the 1882 pilgrimage and mission to the eastern borderlands, also deserves mention. See Lashkar, Ruznama-yi Safar-i Khurasan.
44. I‘timad al-Saltana, Matla‘ al-Shams: Tarikh-i Arz-i Aqdas va Mashhad-i Muqaddas, dar Tarikh va Jughrafiya-yi-Mashruh-i Balad va Imakan-i Khurasan. I‘timad al-Saltana (1843–1896), a graduate of the Dar al-Funun, was Nasir al-Din Shah’s “dragoman in royal attendance” and minister of publications. In the late 1870s, he compiled a geographical chronicle of Iran in four volumes, titled Mir‘at al-Buldan, but the project was never completed, the fourth volume ending with the letter jim (before the entry for Khurasan). This geographical interest continued with Matla‘ al-Shams, which was lithographed in three books between 1882 and 1884. For a reference to this text and its purported author, see Browne, Literary History of Persia, 453–56.
45. I‘timad al-Saltana, Matla‘ al-Shams, vol. 1, 4.
46. In Persian: “Har ja ki tir bar zamin aftad anja sarhadd-i Iran va Turan bashad.” Ibid., 18.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 7.
Chapter 7
1. As is well known, Marshall G. S. Hodgson originally coined the word “Islamicate” in the 1960s. For his definition, together with a discussion of the surrounding terminological issues, see his Venture of Islam, vol. 1, 56–60. Hodgson justified the neologism on the grounds that the default term “Islamic” is so closely associated in modern scholarship with the religious traditions of Islam and with the doings of Muslims that it cannot be readily extended to other aspects of the more capacious polities of which they were part. “Islamicate,” however, is relatively free of such associations, which makes it appropriate for emphasising, in contrast, the everyday social and cultural complexes typically found in premodern polities that were under one form of Islamic dominion or another. This was Hodgson’s approach, and, as the situation has not changed much in the interim, his is my approach too. For my purposes, the chief analytical value of “Islamicate” is that it not only acknowledges the significance of Islam and of Muslims but also permits (a) meaningful involvement in the life of the region’s polities of non-Muslim individuals, corporations, and groups, and (b) polities to be interpreted as Islamicate without themselves being under direct Islamic rule. This flexibility is essential if we are to take full account of the empirical findings that follow.
2. Perhaps the best-known work to escape such constraints is Goitein’s Mediterranean Society. This is complemented by his Studies in Islamic History and Institutions and (with Mordechai A. Friedman) India Traders of the Middle Ages. Also see Guo’s Commerce, Culture and Community in a Red Sea Port in the Thirteenth Century.
3. British Library, London (hereafter BL)/Lansdowne/1046, doc. 68.
4. Ibid., docs. 40, 56, 60.
5. Ibid., docs. 37, 38, 39, 49, 50, 54, 58.
6. Ibid., docs. 39, 40, 60.
7. Ibid., docs.39, 40, 49, 50, 58.
8. Ibid., docs. 65, 66, 70, 71, 78.
9. Ibid., doc. 74.
10. Ibid., doc. 26.
11. In a sample of 44 documents, Basra is mentioned 68 times. The frequency distribution of attributes used with the toponym, which on occasion is qualified by more than one simultaneously, is: no attribute, 57; bandar (port), 8; madīna (town), 2; balda (town), 1; mahrūsa (protected), 1; mubārak (blessed), 1;. Cochin in the same sample is mentioned 31 times, and the frequency distribution of attributes used is: bandar, 18; makān (place), 5; jā (place), 3; mulk (possession, estate), 2; mahrūsa, 1; maqām (place), 1; no attribute, 1.
12. BL/Lansdowne/1046, doc. 8.
13. Ibid., doc. 77.
14. Ibid., doc. 63.
15. Ibid., doc. 2.
16. Ibid., doc. 14.
17. Ibid., doc. 8; The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, UK (hereafter NA)/HCA/32/1833.
18. Ibid., docs. 63, 64.
19. Ibid., docs. 2, 4, 5, 6, 49, 54, 71.
20. NA/HCA/32/1833.
21. Ibid.
22. The partial exceptions to this were the outer limits of islands and, more generally, transitions between land and sea. These were sometimes noted explicitly. Thus, a Shi’i trader mentioned that his ship on a recent voyage had reached the frontier (sar hadd) of Lakshadweep before it was surrounded by Angria pirates. BL/Lansdowne/1046, doc. 11.
23. BL/Lansdowne/1046, doc. 13.
24. On these genres, see Young, Latham, and Serjeant, Religion, Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid Period, 307–19.
25. Compare this mental map with what is currently known about indigenous cartography in the region in premodern times: Harley and Woodward, History of Cartography; Gole, Indian Maps and Plans.
26. This is discussed for an earlier period in Bonner, “The naming of the frontier: ‘Awāsim, thughūr, and the Arab geographers,” 17–24 and Brauer, Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography.
27. He also noted that Salaymā Kāhīya had gained control of Adana.
28. BL/Lansdowne/1046, docs. 73, 74.
29. BL/Lansdowne/1046, doc. 8.
30. BL/Lansdowne/1046, docs. 39, 40, 60. In the documents, the word is written as . There are two possible readings of this: mulk and milk. The latter has a more specialized meaning than mulk. It is a legal concept in Sharia that refers to ownership in the sense of “the right to the complete and exclusive disposal of a thing” and is to be distinguished from “possession” (yad or mulk). Schacht, Introduction to Islamic Law, 136–39. Of course, both meanings might have been intended.
31. BL/Lansdowne/1046, docs. 12, 67, 68.
32. NA/HCA/32/1833.
33. BL/Lansdowne/1046, docs. 14, 26.
34. For commentary on Nadir Shah’s taxation policies, see NA/HCA/30/682(undated) and BL/Lansdowne/1046, doc. 32; for commentary on the decree to merchants, see BL/Lansdowne/1046, docs. 73,76.
35. Interestingly, this approach to politics and the state is in marked contrast to the practice of western Europeans residing in the region and that of their close associates. As shown by the records of the European trading companies and the papers of European merchant-officials and private traders of the time, it was commonplace and, indeed, expected for correspondents to discuss systematically and in detail political goings-on, both near and far. This information was considered an invaluable asset to be exploited if necessary to tilt local circumstances in their favor.
36. Subjecthood here refers narrow
ly to exclusive political allegiance to a single sovereign. With regard to ethnicity, I follow Frederik Barth in taking an ethnic group to be denned by “self-ascription.” In other words, the members of a group select and use a handful of cultural attributes, such as dress, language, general style of life, and house form, as “overt signals or signs” of their distinctiveness. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, 14.
37. I have yet to chance across any explicit reference to the Hindu or Jewish religious traditions, even though their followers resided in urban settlements throughout the region in noticeable communities. When individuals who belonged to these faiths do crop up, which is a frequent occurrence, they are invariably denoted by their given names or the occupations typically associated with them.
38. This is to be contrasted to jurists in the Islamic tradition for whom the sociocultural world was denned first and foremost in religio-civilizational terms.
39. BL/Lansdowne/1046, docs 67, 68, 70.
40. Ibid., doc. 67.
41. Ibid., docs. 13, 49, 71.
42. Ibid., docs. 67, 68, 71.
43. Ibid., docs. 12, 65, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76.
44. Ibid., doc. 14.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., docs. 4, 5.
47. For “the great and little,” see ibid., doc. 49. Elsewhere, the standard pattern reasserts itself: “all of the young and old gentlemen” (jamī‘ah-yi khwurd o kalān-i sāhibān, hamah-yi khwurd o kalān, jamī‘ah-yi khwurd o kalān). Ibid., docs. 13, 23. For “the old and young,” see ibid., doc. 68. In other documents, this phrase is prefaced by a general collective: ‘people of the house, young and old’ (ahl bayt sighār wa kibār). Ibid., doc. 73.
48. Before any transaction can take place, it is necessary that (a) the total level of trust between the parties exceeds a certain threshold; and (b) the expected costs of undertaking the transaction be affordable. If these requirements are not met, then, in a situation where free choice prevails, the transaction will not be deemed viable. Trust in this context is understood to be a quality innate to relationships between individuals. It is a concept that is, in effect, a label for the nexus of mechanisms that facilitate one or more desired ends. Depending on the nature of these mechanisms, trust may be separated into the personal and impersonal types. The first is rooted mainly in the personal relationship between the individuals concerned; it is a function of the strength of their kinship ties and their ties of sentiment, as well as their knowledge of each other’s character. The second results primarily from public knowledge about each other, usually in the form of reputation, and from the available institutions, such as couriers and arbitration forums, through which they might monitor and verify one another’s activities and enforce their agreement. Though both types were in play throughout history, there was relatively more emphasis on personal trust in the kind of arena treated in this chapter in comparison with analogous arenas in modern times.
Chapter 8
1. Adams, Green Development, chap. 8; Blumler, “Biogeography of Land-Use Impacts in the Near East”; Perevolotsky and Seligman, “Role of Grazing in Mediterranean Rangeland Ecosystems”; Davis, “Indigenous Knowledge and the Desertification Debate”; and Olsvig-Whittaker et al., “Grazing, Overgrazing and Conservation.”
2. Swift, “Desertification”; Davis, “Neoliberalism, Environmentalism and Agricultural Restructuring Morocco.”
3. Messerli and Winiger, “Climate, Environmental Change, and Resources of the African Mountains from the Mediterranean to the Equator”; Roberts, Holocene, 115–17, 162–63.
4. J. Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia, 57–58.
5. See Grove and Rackham, Nature of Mediterranean Europe; Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean Forest. Thirgood provides a particularly well-articulated version of the declensionist environmental narrative for the Mediterranean basin, whereas Grove and Rackham systematically and successfully rebut it in their important and well-documented book.
6. Meadows, “The Younger Dryas Episode and the Radiocarbon Chronologies of the Lake Huleh and Ghab Valley Pollen Diagrams, Israel and Syria”; Yasuda, Kitagawa, and Nakagawa, “The Earliest Record of Major Anthropogenic Deforestation in the Ghab Valley, Northwest Syria.”
7. See, for example, Mikesell, “Deforestation of Mount Lebanon.”
8. Blumler, “Biogeography of Land-Use Impacts in the Near East”; Wengler and Vernet, “Vegetation, Sedimentary Deposits and Climates During the Late Pleistocene and Holocene in Eastern Morocco.”
9. Lamb, Damblon, and Maxted, “Human Impact on the Vegetation of the Middle Atlas”; Lamb, Eichner, and Switsur, “An 18,000-Year Record of Vegetation”; Ritchie, “Analyse pollinique de sédiments holocènes”; Rognon, “Late Quaternary Climatic Reconstruction.”
10. For a detailed discussion of this French colonial environmental narrative and its construction and application in the occupation and administration of the Maghreb, see Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome.
11. Christian, L’Afrique française, l’empire de Maroc et les déserts de Sahara, 315.
12. Although it is true that significant quantities of grain were produced and exported from North Africa during the Roman period, even larger amounts were produced during the French colonial period using primarily indigenous agricultural methods, and these amounts were surpassed easily by the mid-twentieth century. See Davis, Resurrecting the Granary, 5. The amounts of grain produced during the Roman period, therefore, were not spectacular or unusual as they were portrayed during the colonial period.
13. Périer, Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, 29.
14. Bernard and Lacroix, L’Évolution du nomadisme en Algérie, 26. See Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, chap. 3, for a fuller discussion of the use and misuse of the work of Ibn Khaldun during the French colonial period.
15. Résidence Générale de France à Tunis, Historique de l’annexe des affaires indigènes de Ben-Gardane, 13.
16. Ballais, “Conquests and Land Degradation in the Eastern Maghreb During Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” See also Milchunas and Lauenroth, “Quantitative Effects of Grazing on Vegetation and Soils over a Global Range of Environments”; Niamir-Fuller, “Resilience of Pastoral Herding in Sahelian Africa;” Davis, “Indigenous Knowledge and the Desertification Debate”; Swift, “Dynamic Ecological Systems and the Administration of Pastoral Development;” Westoby, Walker, and Noy-Meir, “Opportunistic Management of Rangelands Not at Equilibrium”; Olsvig-Whittaker et al., “Grazing, Overgrazing and Conservation.”
17. Messerli and Winiger, “Climate, Environmental Change, and Resources of the African Mountains,” 332.
18. Lamb, Damblon, and Maxted, “Human Impact on the Vegetation of the Middle Atlas”; Lamb, Eichner, and Switsur, “An 18,000-Year Record of Vegetation”; Ritchie, “Analyse pollinique de sédiments holocènes”; Rognon, “Late Quaternary Climatic Reconstruction.”
19. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, 32–33.
20. Ibid., 120–23.
21. Ibid., 96–99.
22. This process included the massive sedentarization of nomads who were forced out of their traditional livelihoods for lack of extensive grazing lands. Their sedentarization had been a primary goal of the colonial administration since the early days of occupation because they were deemed a threat to security as well as a threat to the environment.
23. See Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, chap. 5.
24. I am not dealing here with Ottoman rule, although policies impacting the environment, such as the “tree tax,” were instituted during the Ottoman period.
25. W. Browne, Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria from the Year 1792 to 1798, especially chaps. 22, 23.
26. Thomson, The Land and the Book, 1859, quoted in Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean Forest, 113.
27. “Note sur la situation économique de la Syrie,” 1897, quoted in Shaul Cohen, Politics of Planting, 45.
28. G. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 83.
29. Conder
, “Fertility of Ancient Palestine,” 207.
30. Ben-Arieh, Rediscovery of the Holy Land, 206; S. Rosen, “Decline of Desert Agriculture,” 46.
31. Ben-Arieh, Rediscovery of the Holy Land, 211.
32. Blyth, When We Lived in Jerusalem, 1927, quoted in Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean Forest, 113.
33. El-Eini,[0] “British Forestry Policy in Mandate Palestine,” 79.
34. Shaul Cohen, Politics of Planting, 49.
35. Ibid.
36. El-Eini,[0] “British Forestry Policy in Mandate Palestine,” 75.
37. Ibid., 79.
38. Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean Forest, 53, 115. The 1870 Ottoman forest law had been applied to Palestine before the Mandate period. See also Goadby and Doukhan, Land Law of Palestine, 51, 58, 66.
39. Tyler, State Lands and Rural Development in Mandatory Palestine, 22.
40. Amir and Rechtman, “Development of Forest Policy in Israel in the 20th Century,” 42, 47.
41. El-Eini, “British forestry,” 90.
42. Ibid., 91.
43. Abu-Rabia, A Bedouin Century, 39; El-Eini,[0] “British Forestry Policy in Mandate Palestine,” 118, 122. The Bedouin Control Ordinance was not repealed until 1973.
44. See Mouterde, La végétation arborescente des pays du Levant, 7.
45. Ben-Gurion quoted in Shaul Cohen, Politics of Planting, 62.
46. Shaul Cohen, Politics of Planting, 63.
47. Lowdermilk, Palestine.
48. Reifenberg, Struggle Between the Desert and the Sown, 30–31, 98–100. See also Evenari, Shanan, and Tadmor, Negev and Avraham Negev, “The Nabatean Cities in the Negev,” Ariel 62–63 (1988): 1–157, in Hebrew, cited in S. Rosen, “Decline of Desert Agriculture.”
49. S. Rosen, “Decline of Desert Agriculture,” 54.
50. Ibid., 58. For more details of this argument, see S. Rosen, “Desertification and Pastoralism.”