Corroded pieces of metal, stamped lumps of copper, broken bits of glass with partial inscriptions, fragments of textiles, tiny beads-these were the raw material found at al-Fustat, the site of the first Muslim settlement in Egypt in the seventh century and the heart of Cairo for many centuries following. From the 1950s Dr. Henri Amin Awad accepted from the poor in this area objects that had no obvious market value in return for medical services rendered. Over the years he built up an extraordinary and important collection of artifacts. Carefully cleaned, sorted, and then analyzed by specialists, this material illuminates many areas of the archaeological record neglected or missing from other studies. The ten studies in this volume-covering beads, bone, coins, glass weights and vessel stamps, medical instruments, medical prescriptions, metal objects, and textiles-demonstrate the wide range of archaeological material once found in al-Fustat, a site no longer accessible since most of it has been buried under urban development or lost to a rising water table. Contributors: Ibrahim Abd al-Rahman, Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Tawwab, Henri Amin Awad, Jere L. Bacharach, Michael L. Bates, Lidia Domaszewicz, Katharina Eldada, Peter Francis, Jr., Sami K. Hamarneh, Nancy Arthur Hoskins, Peter Mentzel, Norman D. Nicol, Elizabeth Rodenbeck, W. Luke Treadwell

The glass finds are from the nine seasons of archaeological excavations carried out under the direction of Professor GT Scanlon at Fustat in south Cairo between 1964 and 1980. These were recovered under stratified conditions thus supplying dating sequences for glass from about 700 AD to the end of the twelfth century when Fustat ceased to be occupied. Glass of the later period-the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries- is represented by surface finds. These finds from Fustat are a principal source for the history fo the glass industry in Egypt from the Umayyad period down to the Fatmid caliphate. All the glass techniques known to the Islamic world are represented and show the manifold uses of glass ranging from objects of everyday use to high quality products for the luxury market. Although the Fustat glass comes mainly from local glass houses, the collection includes pieces imported from other centres in the Islamic world.

"Contains most of the papers read to the 7th section, part 2 of the XXXIst International Congress of Human Sciences in Asia and North Africa held in Tokyo, Japan."--Pref.

The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture is the most comprehensive reference work in this complex and diverse area of art history. Built on the acclaimed scholarship of the Grove Dictionary of Art, this work offers over 1,600 up-to-date entries on Islamic art and architecture ranging from the Middle East to Central and South Asia, Africa, and Europe and spans over a thousand years of history. Recent changes in Islamic art in areas such as Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq are elucidated here by distinguished scholars. Entries provide in-depth art historical and cultural information about dynasties, art forms, artists, architecture, rulers, monuments, archaeological sites and stylistic developments. In addition, over 500 illustrations of sculpture, mosaic, painting, ceramics, architecture, metalwork and calligraphy illuminate the rich artistic tradition of the Islamic world. With the fundamental understanding that Islamic art is not limited to a particular region, or to a defined period of time, The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture offers pathways into Islamic culture through its art.

This volume presents over 1070 coins (ca. 310 BC–AD 641) and 1320 examples of Late Roman and Early Islamic pottery. Kom al-Ahmer and Kom Wasit emerge as centers of an exchange network involving large-scale trade of raw materials to and from the central and eastern Mediterranean.

A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems. Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other. Chris Wickham offers a new account of the Mediterranean economy in the tenth to twelfth centuries, based on a completely new look at the sources, documentary and archaeological. Our knowledge of the Mediterranean economy is based on syntheses which are between 50 and 150 years old; they are based on outdated assumptions and restricted data sets, and were written before there was any usable archaeology; and Wickham contends that they have to be properly rethought. This is the first book ever to give a fully detailed comparative account of the regions of the Mediterranean in this period, in their internal economies and in their relationships with each other. It focusses on Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, the Byzantine empire, Islamic Spain and Portugal, and north-central Italy, and gives the first comprehensive account of the changing economies of each; only Byzantium has a good prior synthesis. It aims to force our rethinking of how economies worked in the medieval Mediterranean. It also offers a rethinking of how we should understand the underlying logic of the medieval economy in general.

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.