Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Contributors

Introduction: Material Evidence and Narrative Sources. Interdisciplinary Studies of the History of the Muslim Middle East

Part 1 Economics and Trade

Chapter 1 Material Evidence and Narrative Sources: Teaching and Studying Numismatic Evidence

Chapter 2 How to Measure Economic Growth in the Middle East? A Framework of Inquiry for the Middle Islamic Period

Chapter 3 Ladies of Quseir: Life on the Red Sea Coast in Ayyūbid Times

Part 2 Governmental Authority

Chapter 4 What Happened in 155 / 771–72? The Testimony of Lead Seals

Chapter 5 The Architectural Patronage of the Fāṭimid Queen-Mother Durzān (d. 385/995): An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Literary Sources, Material Evidence and Historical Context

Chapter 6 On Archives and Archaeology: Reassessing Mamlūk Rule from Documentary Sources and Jordanian Fieldwork

Part 3 Material Culture

Chapter 7 Evidence of Material Culture from the Geniza—An Attempt to Correlate Textual and Archaeological Findings

Chapter 8 Originality and Innovation in Syrian Woodwork of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Chapter 9 Two Mamlūk minbars in Cairo: Approaching Material Culture through Narrative Sources

Part 4 Changing Landscapes

Chapter 10 Icons of Power and Religious Piety: The Politics of Mamlūk Patronage

Chapter 11 The Early Islamic City of Ramla in Light of New Archaeological Discoveries, G.I.S. Applications, and a Re-examination of the Literary Sources

Chapter 12 The Role of the Imperial Palaces in the Urbanization Process of Istanbul, 1856–1909

Part 5 Monuments

Chapter 13 Turbat Abū Zakariyyā Ibn ʿAbd Allāh Mūsa (Chief Surgeon of al-Bīmāristān al-Manṣūrī) and his Social Status according to his Endowment Deed (waqfiyya)

Chapter 14 Oral Tradition and Architectural History: A Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Mosque in the Balkans in Local Memory, Textual Sources, and Material Evidence

Chapter 15 Deliberately not Empty: Reading Cairo’s Unknown Soldier Monument

Index