Aristocracies, Peasantries and the Framing of the Early Middle Ages

Abstract

This paper sets out to establish a general contrast between the traditions of agrarian bondage that characterized the West in the wake of the disintegration of the Roman empire and the peculiar vulnerability of the peasantry in the Byzantine, Sasanian and Islamic Near East. Within this general contrast between peasantries, I explore the differences between aristocracies in the late antique and post‐Roman worlds, date the beginnings of the medieval expansion to the seventh century, and advance a critique of the way Chris Wickham handles the relations of production of the early middle ages. I argue that there was both more coercion and more complexity in the use of labour than Wickham's characterization of a self‐managing peasantry suggests. The paper concludes by looking at some of the peculiarities of agrarian domination in the Near East.

Gold Coinage and Its Use in the Post-Roman West

“…99 However, the speed and nature of the process were shaped by local circumstances. 100 Survival of terminology did not always mean the survival of institutions, 101 and what was true of one kingdom-or even one city-need not have been true for all. 102 One might also question the sharp division between "public" and "private" and consider the proposition that "private" minting may still, on some levels, have served "public" purposes.…”

Land Tax alā l-misāa and muqāsama: Legal Theory and the Balance of Social Forces in Early Medieval Iraq (6th-8th Centuries C.E.)

“…60) Zubaida, 2003: 12-22 and 51-8. 61) Banaji, 2009;Morony, 1981: 139. 62) Daryaee, 2009: 29 and 147-8;Morony, 1981;Altheim-Stiehl, 1957: 141.…”

Historical Materialism and Agrarian History

“…Jairus Banaji has long been a contributor of original and powerful articles and review essays to the Journal of Peasant Studies (Banaji, , , , 1996/7) and to the Journal of Agrarian Change (Banaji, ), as well as co‐editing a recent special issue on Aristocrats, Peasants and the Transformation of Rural Society, c. 400–800 (Sarris and Banaji). Readers, therefore, will welcome this collection of his essays, which won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2011, awarded annually for ‘a book which exemplifies the best and most innovative new writing in or about the Marxist tradition’.…”