The dominant interpretation of the origins of kharaj (land tax) and its transformation in early Islamic history betrays serious flaws. This interpretation has relied heavily on an uncritical reading of hadith collections and chronicle accounts that were compiled more than a century and a half after the conquest period, thus glossing over significant changes introduced over the course of the Arab conquest of kharaj lands in the Near East. My research proposes a fundamental revision to this interpretation by unraveling the controversial and complicated process through which kharaj was assimilated into Islamic law. The term kharaj appears in the Qur’an (23:72), however, it does not denote land tax. Whereas the Prophet Muhammad imposed jizya on the “People of the Book” and collected zakat from Muslims, his tradition included no levying of land tax. Historical and legal sources of early Islam credit the second caliph, ‘Umar (r. 634-644), with instituting land tax in Iraq—an institution that evidently derived from Sasanian and Byzantine tax practices. The sources, then, set out to construct narratives that effectively turned land tax into a category of Islamic law and a legitimate source of state revenue. To shed light on the process of narrative construction, I juxtapose early juristic texts such as Kitab al-Kharaj by Abu Yusuf, Kitab al-Kharaj by Yahya b. Adam, and al-Amwal by Abu Ubayd ibn Sallam, with the later conquest records supplied by al-Baladhuri, al-Tabari, and Ibn A‘tham al-Kufi, among others. Focusing on these juristic and historical sources, this research explores various ways in which the construction of the historical/legal narratives came about. I demonstrate that these sources shared a great deal of their content, their method of reporting (e.g., oral traditions that used chains of transmission for validation and were subsequently rendered into writing), and their use of Islamic salvation history that in the early Abbasid period created the notion of rashidun and incorporated policies introduced by the caliphs into the tradition corpus. Drawing attention to both commonalities and tensions that lay dormant in their narratives, I conclude that narrative construction allowed Muslim jurists to play an active role in public policy. The jurists ensured that the Islamic government depended on them for its laws to pass muster. This legal development additionally allowed the Islamic state to fend off charges of unethical tax extortion and legal malpractice.

Several scholars have examined the debates among eighth and ninth-century Muslim jurists surrounding the proper treatment of Qur’an codices, including the meaning of the Qur’anic verse forbidding the holy book to be touched by those in a state of ritual impurity (Q 56:77-79). One aspect of the status of the Qur’an that has not been examined is the impact of the increased prevalence of books, including Qur’ans, on Muslim attitudes toward the sanctity of their written scripture. This paper suggests that by the twelfth century, as Qur’an codices piled up in mosques and market stalls, the Muslim public adopted an attitude of familiarity, even intimacy, toward the written Qur’an, an attitude that was at odds with juridical rulings on the book’s status as a sacred object. Al-Tabari (d. 923) relates only two accounts of Muslims intentionally thrusting the Qur’an into the midst of Baghdad street conflicts. By the twelfth century, however, as related by Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201), residents of Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo had taken to the streets again and again during urban unrest with Qur’ans in hands, on sticks, and hanging from their necks. During one particularly violent conflict, women and children put the sacred texts on their heads. The Muslim public repeatedly exposed their holy book to possible destruction and defilement by a variety of impure substances, in essence defying Islamic law regarding the treatment of the Qur’an. It is not surprising, then, that Ibn al-Jawzi includes in his History a complaint from a Sha’fi jurist about the "decline of sanctity of the written Qur’an in the hearts of the people." This change in attitude is reflected in the manuscripts themselves. Beginning in the twelfth century, copyists and owners began adding a wide array of non-Qur’anic texts to copies of the Qur’an. This paper explores the Qur’an as a sacred material object and the tension between increasing human contact and the maintenance of sanctity. I argue that while the rise of the book in the eighth and ninth centuries in the Islamic Middle East initiated a transformation in Muslim attitudes toward the Qur’an as a sacred object, increased exposure to the written word in ensuing centuries further complicated their relationship with the Qur’an as a book. I demonstrate that the increased prominence of Qur’an codices in the material landscape of the medieval Middle East created a space for a written scripture with a multiplicity of meaning.

The long-distance trade that connected the prized medieval markets of the Indian Ocean with those of the Mediterranean has been the subject of great scholarly interest. In spite of the absence of developed near eastern institutions of trade (i.e., banks, guilds, maritime navies) such trade was regularized and efficiently responded to changes in international markets. How was this possible? The Genizah business letters of the Jewish community of Cairo, during the tenth through twelfth centuries, illustrate how medieval trade in the Near East was performed through a reciprocal system of 'formal friendship' ties between traders. S.D. Goitein argued that the formation of long chains of personal ties allowed for the long-distance exchange of people, goods, and most importantly, market information. The key feature of such relationships was a merchant's network of ashab, through which he could engage in trading outside his immediate city or region. This concept of suhba as the driving force behind the social organization of early medieval trade in the Near East continues to dominate. While the Genizah letters provide compelling evidence for the above use of suhba in facilitating early medieval trade, these sources do not explain how suhba and other practices unfolded in subsequent centuries, and whether it was different among Muslim or Christian traders. Whereas the early sixteenth century is recognized as a major realignment in Indian Ocean trade, brought about by European mercantilism, the period between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries has not been sufficiently examined for changes in business practices. My paper aims to address this lacuna by analyzing the use of the term suhba in its various forms (e.g., sahib, ashab, ashabbuna) as it appears in Arabic business letters, diaries and legal responsa from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. I will employ selections from the edited Quseir Qadim and Vienna collections of Arabic business letters to provisionally argue that the later use of suhba by Muslim traders reveals more ambivalence regarding “formal friendship”, if indeed it existed among these traders and brings into question the role of official intermediaries and formalism in trade.

In his "Graphs, Maps, Trees" Franco Moretti offers an approach of "distant reading" as a means for tracing the evolution of the novel in Europe. Moretti's provocative approach prompts an important question: Can we trace the development of Arabic written tradition in a similar manner? The question is essentially about data and method. Both are available. Arabists are blessed with sources that provide sufficient data for such a study: one of such sources is the "Hadiyyat al-'arifin," a biobibliographical collection that was composed by the Ottoman officer Isma'il Pasha Baghdatli (d. 1920). This collection is invaluable: covering almost 13 centuries of Islamic history, it includes short biographical records on slightly over 8,800 authors, listing perhaps about 50,000 works altogether. Although hardly an exciting read, the biobibliographical records of this collection are brief and structurally very similar what makes them ideal data for computational reading. Based on the algorithmic transformation of the text, this method allows surpassing the limitations of traditional approaches, and opens the door to effectively applying Moretti's approach to the wealth of Arabic/Islamic written legacy. After the general exposition of the method of computational reading, paper will offer preliminary results of the "distant reading" of this collection, which will be visualized with graphs and geographical maps.