Land, Law and Water Politics

Ibn ʿAsākir’s Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq includes a number accounts regarding the water distribution regime in Damascus and its hinterland under Umayyad rule in the seventh and eighth centuries CE. In studying these reports, I shall attempt to answer key questions that are otherwise hard to address: how did the early Islamic elites insert themselves into existing water regimes; did this cause friction; to what extent did the Umayyad caliphs consider themselves responsible for providing water to their subjects; was there a pattern of continuity or of rupture in the management of water and its infrastructure before and after the Arab-Muslim conquests; and how did local communities attempt to assert their water rights under a new regime? I suggest that, at a key moment of scarcity in the water supply, the Caliph Hisham instituted a new water distribution regime planned according to timed rotations of water rights

Ancient history · Political science · Politics · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law