Economic History of the middle east-midterm review .
Project instructions:
Please answer these questions. I will attach the readings that you will find the answers in.
Section: Ecology and Economy
A. Early Islamic Economy, 600-1000 CE
1. What are the Eurocentric theses about globalization? Are they valid? Why or why not?
2. What are some of the innovations around 600 CE that facilitated this globalization?
3. What is the Pirenne thesis?
4. Did Islam ? as a religion ? support or undermine globalization?
5. What were the policies that the Arab rulers adopted towards peoples they conquered?
6. How does Shatzmiller support her claims of economic growth in the Middle East during the period, 700-1000 CE?
B. Islamic Economy in the Middle Period: 1000-1500 CE
1. What is the teleological approach to writing/understanding history?
2. What is a circuit of trade? What are the eight overlapping circuits of trade that comprise the world system described by Janet Abu-Lughod?
3. What were the factors that led to the breakup of this world system of the 13th-14th century?
4. What is the evidence that Eliyahu Ashtor offers in support of this claim of an economic decline of the Middle East that unfolded during the first half of the second millennium?
C. The Ecology, Ways of Living and Economic Formations
1. What are the most important ecological characteristics of the Middle East?
2. What are the different ways in which the peoples of the region have adapted to its ecology?
3. Did the Middle East face a labor shortage ? as claimed by Fernand Braudel?
4. Why has long-distance trade been so important to the Middle East?
5. What are some of the chief Bedouin values? Where do they derive from? Do the shepherds share these values?
6. Was the Middle East ? over 500 to 1500 CE — egalitarian in its values and social structures? Explain why?
7. Fernand Braudel describes the Middle East as the ?intermediate continent/desert archipelago?? Why?
8. In what sense were the agricultural societies of the Middle East built on precarious foundations?
D. Irrigation
1. Compare the relative merits of an agriculture based on rain and irrigation?
2. What are qanats? Briefly describe how they work, where they were first employed and the diffusion of this technology to other areas of the world?
3. How were some of the houses cooled during summer?
4. What are the different ways in which the peoples of the Middle East have sought to solve the problem of water scarcity in the Middle East?