“State, Land Tax and Agriculture in Iraq from the Arab Conquest to the Crisis of the Abbasid Caliphate (Seventh-Tenth Centuries)”, in Studia Islamica, 3, 2012, 35-80

15 Gold Coins For Every Student: Musul’s Economic Condition Erbil’s Economic Prosperity From Articial Incubation to Building Ships Ayyubid Financial Organization Caliph As a Member of Futuwwat Organization Abolition of Heavy Taxes in Baghdad Return of Kharaj Tax in Iraq Theft of The State Returning of a Tax of 100,000 Gold Coins To Tax-Payers Innocent Prisoners Set Free Prices Are Falling An International Economic System Supported by Endowments No Taxes For Five Years and other topics.

Explorations in Economic History, 2006

Governments can tax productive activities with either uniform or discriminatory rates among taxpayers. Although discriminatory rates can cause productive inefficiency and require high cost of administration, they can be preferred because of their advantage in distributional flexibility. This paper studies the discriminatory taxation of production in the Fertile Crescent. Using information from the Ottoman tax registers, it examines the basis, distortionary effects, and distributional consequences of discriminatory rates quantitatively. The results challenge widely held beliefs about the basis for discriminatory rates in this region and the Ottoman government's motivation in adapting systems of taxation in newly conquered lands.

Administrative texts from the Sealand I kingdom, a second-millennium polity that emerged in the southern Mesopotamian area lost to Babylonian control during Samsu-iluna’s reign, show that a palatial system of agricultural taxation was in place around the palace town that produced this archive. The imposts collected by the palace are known from the preceding Old Babylonian and the following Middle Babylonian periods, with somewhat differing meanings and methods of recording. The present article examines the Sealand I evidence within the second-millennium Babylonian administrative continuum, in particular the collection of the šibšu, the miksu, and the kisru.

Sociology of Islam, 2019

This essay examines the Islamic land tax (kharāj) during the first wave of the Arab conquests (ca. 12–24/633–50) and the following century and a half. Highlighting the confused state of land tax and landholding, it argues that Sunni jurists incorporated land tax into Islamic law despite the lack of Qurʾānic injunctions and prophetic tradition. In doing so, they drew upon Qurʾānic concepts such as fay’ and ghanīma while reinterpreting a vast body of conquest narratives and traditions that helped present land tax as a bona fide Islamic practice. A major outcome of this juristic discourse of public finance was the recognition of the ruler’s right to discretionary taxation. Just as the jurists emphasized justice and equitable application of tax laws, they also enabled the government to enjoy a wide latitude in its fiscal management without legal backlash. It further allowed the jurists to speak for God and His Prophet.

The Umayyad Empire (661-747 CE), the first dynasty of Islam, reigned nearly ninety years after the so-called Rāshidūn era, was collapsed by the ʿAbbāsid Revolution (AR). After 750, the ʿAbbāsids became the new rulers of the Islamic empire through the culmination of an orchestrated secret campaign lasting more than thirty years and based on popular unfavourable views of the Umayyads. Although extensive research has been carried out on the AR, there have been no studies which try to understand the AR with reference to modern economic and Revolution theories by focusing upon the economic dissatisfaction of the Khurāsānī mawālī who supported the Revolution. The aim of this paper is to discuss the theory that economic disorder in Khurāsān was an important reason for the AR, by focusing on the taxation system in Islam and its abuse in the later Umayyad period (685-747) as well as by evaluating modern Islamic historiography in this perspective. [You may find an extended abstract of this article after the bibliograpy.]

Endeavoring to leave aside dogmatism and mechanically applied Marxist readings, this book examines, from a theoretical point of view, the issue of sociohistorical classification in the medieval Arab-Islamic society. Based on our consideration of feudalism as a mode of production whose essence is the reproduction of productive forces, and as a system that corresponds to serfdom, the form of labor under the feudal mode in which farmers are compelled to transfer surplus production to those who control the land in the form of taxes or in the form of labor rent in kind or in money. When distinguishing between modes of production, little difference emerges between taxation systems and various forms of rent. The Asiatic and tributary modes of production remain, consequently, similar: two sides of the same coin, and they induce little difference from the political, economic and ideological characteristics of the feudal mode of production. As a result, the Arab-Islamic society, then, is feudal according to the type that, in our opinion, was the result of the interaction and intermingling of the four following factors: the tribal confederation, the Islamic religion, the military conquest, and the economic heritage in its material and productive aspect for the peoples of the endemic countries in Western Asia in general. It led to the generation of a feudal mode production that underwent the following historical developmental stages: the tribal phase, the state phase, and the military phase. This coincided with the establishment of the Arab Islamic state, starting with the state of Medina during the reign of Muhammad, passing through the Rashidun, then the Umayyad Caliphate, all the way to the Abbasid Caliphate state.

2007

The subtitle, “Corpus and Context” is intended to emphasize and demonstrate the immeasurably greater value that can be gained from documents when they are examined within the largest relevant corpus manageable, and within the larger context provided by narrative, juridical, and other sources. Unlike papyrologists working on pre-Islamic periods, Arabic papyrologists have available a wealth of narrative sources, opaque though they may sometimes be, which can elucidate the papyri. When documents are examined and interpreted within the larger corpus and context, not only does the edition, translation and understanding of the individual documents increase dramatically, but, also, patterns emerge. The following is drawn from my study of Arabic Agrarian Leases and Tax Receipts from Egypt 765– 1035 A.D./148–427 A.H.2 That larger study is the first systematic edition, translation, and comparison of virtually the entire extant corpus of the identified agricultural leases and tax receipts that...

The article argues that al-Ṭ abarī's History of the Prophets and the Kings provides a free rideranalysis of the decline of Abbasid state power. Al-Ṭ abarī's historical analysis considers state policy on land tax, and religion as a legal norm related to the social contract between the head of state and the landlords. It is concluded that al-Ṭ abarī saw the misāḥ a tax system and 'rule of law' as the principal conditions for imperial rule, and that al-Ṭ abarī's History already provides an answer to modern historians' questions as to why the Abbasid state crumbled, and what role religion played in the political economy.

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 2014

Lack of direct evidence on the functioning of factor markets in Sasanian/Late Antique Iraq makes it difficult to present a clear picture of the production side of economy during this period. However, relying on the Talmudic evidence, as well as what is mentioned in the Mādayān ī Hezār Dādestān (MHD), this article aims to provide an idea of factor markets during the Sasanian period, as well as demonstrating the areas where further evidence and research could render better results and allow us to understand the economy of this region in more depth.