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1 - The resources of Late Antiquity

from PART I - THE LATE ANTIQUE CONTEXT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

By
John Haldon
Edited by
Chase F. Robinson
Chase F. Robinson
Affiliation:
The Graduate Center, The City University of New York
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Summary

The physical and strategic environment

Landscape

The late ancient world in the lands that were to be conquered by the first Muslim armies included a number of disparate regions, each offering a particular environment: Asia Minor or Anatolia, very roughly modern Turkey; the Levant or Middle Eastern regions down to and including Egypt; Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau to the east; North Africa, from Egypt westwards to the Atlantic; and the Balkans. The Mediterranean and Black Seas united the westernmost of these very different regions, while riverine systems on the one hand and plateaux and desert on the other served both to differentiate and to connect those in the east. Climate determined the patterns of agricultural and pastoral exploitation within these zones, but it also constrained and determined in many respects the nature of state and private surplus-extracting activities.

The limited but fertile agricultural lands of Palestine and western Syria have always been relatively wealthy, in contrast to the more mountainous lands to the north and the deserts to the south and east. Greater Syria, including Palestine and the Lebanon, incorporates a number of very different landscapes, the terrain alternating from rugged highlands, through the fertile plains of northern Syria or central Palestine, the hilly uplands around Jerusalem to the desert steppe of central Syria. These landscapes had stimulated the development of very different communities, and the artificial unity imposed by the Roman state and, later, the early caliphate, should not disguise these stark contrasts.

Keywords

agricultural landsclimatic frameworkLate Antiquitystrategic environmentstrategic routessocial environmentlater Islamic traditionroad buildinglate Roman urban landscapeSasanian markets
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The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 17 - 71
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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