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The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: AD 500-1000

Online ISBN:
9781617971372
Print ISBN:
9789774165443
Publisher:
American University in Cairo Press
Book

The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: AD 500-1000

Timothy Power
Timothy Power
Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage
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Published online:
23 May 2013
Published in print:
30 December 2012
Online ISBN:
9781617971372
Print ISBN:
9789774165443
Publisher:
American University in Cairo Press

Abstract

This book examines the historical process traditionally referred to as the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam from the perspective of the Red Sea, a strategic waterway linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and a distinct region incorporating Africa with Arabia. The transition from Byzantium to the Caliphate – a period which falls under the broad rubric Late Antiquity – is contextualized in the contestation of regional hegemony between Aksumite Ethiopia, Sassanian Iran, and the Islamic Hijaz. The economic stimulus associated with Arab colonization is then considered, including the foundation of ports and roads linking new metropolises and facilitating commercial expansion, particularly gold mining and the slave trade. Finally, the economic inheritance of the Fatimids and the formation of the commercial networks glimpsed in the Cairo Geniza is contextualized in the diffusion of the Abbasid ‘bourgeois revolution’ and resumption of the ‘India trade’ under the Tulunids and Ziyadids.

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