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Recent trends in Middle East economic history: Cultural factors and structural change in the medieval period 650–1500 (Part one)

Ultimately, the changes to the structures of the economy in the Middle East explain part of the growth in the economy, but not all. A shift to property rights, for instance, could not have occurred without a state, “a specialized form of organization, to specify, adjudicate and enforce property rights” (North, 1981, p. 64). Indeed, the early Islamic state, that of the Umayyads and Abbasids, played a significant role investing in and organizing the economy (Brett, 2011; Frantz‐Murphy, 2007a,b; Sijpesteijn, 2013; Blaydes, 2017). The imperial administration in the early centuries of Islamic rule implemented several policies and presided over cultural processes that benefitted the economy. The new regional states in the Middle East and North Africa, successor states that followed the dismemberment of the empire and reconstituted themselves as independent units with state capacity, benefitted from these policies. The term state capacity refers to the power of the state to discharge its responsibilities and efficiently organize the economy, extract resources, collect taxes in equitable manner, distribute the benefits accrued to society, defend its citizens, invest in, and organize economic activities (Besley & Persson, 2009; Blaydes, 2017; Dincecco, 2017). The question at hand is to demonstrate how did the successor‐states by maintaining the benefits obtained during the Empire period in the post‐Empire period, save on the costs involved in state formation and in building state capacity (Bosworth, 2004; Spuler, 1977). Two such policies put in place by the imperial administration with long‐term effect on the economy and eventually on the economies of the successor states demonstrate the saliency of the question. The first was a policy of urbanization, the second one of monetization. As Arab and other groups contributed new immigrants to the Middle East to settle in cities, the region experienced higher urbanization rates than elsewhere. Bairoch (1988) estimates that “Around the year 1000 the Muslim world must have had approximately 40‐50 cities with populations of more than 20,000, 6‐8 of which had populations of more than 100,000 (pp. 374–375).” They were larger than European towns and served different economic activities: There were mining towns, as well as agricultural and producer towns. Comparative estimates suggested that the urban network had fewer smaller towns than Europe but the level of urbanization in the Muslim world was approximately 10–13% as opposed to only 8–9% in Europe (Bosker, Buringh, & van Zanden, 2013). The second policy was the centralization and systematization of the monetary system. As early as the seventh century, the central administration in Damascus introduced a new unified currency with all coins inscribed in Arabic and bearing the same religious symbols (Ehrenkreutz, 1977; Shatzmiller, 2017). The coinage was linked to three