Cooperation and Private Enterprise in Water Management in Iraq: Continuity and Change between the Sasanian and Early Islamic Periods (Sixth to Tenth Centuries) (2017)
This article shows that the management of water resources in Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Iraq (sixth to tenth centuries ad) implied the participation of local communities and the mutual cooperation of landholders. The organisation of water management in the Late Sasanian Period (sixth to seventh centuries) depended on a highly complex system of interaction between local communities, aristocratic rulers and the imperial bureaucracy. This interaction allowed the government to gather information from different regions of the empire and to understand the needs of the different stakeholders. As such, the system provided a favourable institutional framework for the expansion of irrigated agriculture. The system changed when landholding conditions were transformed in the Early Islamic period, during the ninth century. These institutional transformations allowed the influence of a group of tax-farmers and merchant-bankers to increase. Irrigation policies were therefore bent to the interests of these new elites, which often lay in short-term gains rather than in long-term success. The article suggests that, in the long run, these socio-economic and institutional changes contributed substantially to the breakdown of the agricultural system in Ancient Iraq.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Thesis
Alma Igra;
(2020)
Farm to Pharmacy: Nutrition, Animals, and Governance in Britain 1870–1945
(/isis/citation/CBB148954314/)
Book
Yossef Rapoport;
(2020)
Islamic Maps
(/isis/citation/CBB678112778/)
Article
Albert L. Park;
(2018)
Introduction to a Forum on War and Environment on the Korean Peninsula, 1598–1965
(/isis/citation/CBB790503273/)
Book
Wolfe, Mikael;
(2017)
Watering the revolution: an environmental and technological history of agrarian reform in Mexico
(/isis/citation/CBB630915743/)
Article
Isacar Bolaños;
(2022)
Water, Engineers, and French Environmental Imaginaries of Ottoman Iraq, 1868–1908
(/isis/citation/CBB594251287/)
Chapter
Paolo Morelli;
(2003)
La navigazione fluviale nel Valdarno inferiore durante il Medioevo
(/isis/citation/CBB530326811/)
Book
Arturo Calzona;
Daniela Lamberini;
(2010)
La civiltà delle acque tra Medioevo e Quattrocento
(/isis/citation/CBB536899685/)
Chapter
Roberto Greci;
(2010)
Le città navigabili. I progetti dell'età comunale
(/isis/citation/CBB275767989/)
Book
Sarah T. Romano;
(2019)
Transforming rural water governance : the road from resource management to political activism in Nicaragua
(/isis/citation/CBB261176072/)
Book
Thomas Robertson;
Richard P. Tucker;
Nicholas B. Breyfogle;
Peter Mansoor;
(2020)
Nature at War: American Environments and World War II
(/isis/citation/CBB159359594/)
Article
Stathis Arapostathis;
(2017)
Fertilising Farms and Institutional Authorities: Experts, Regime-Making and Agricultural Politics in Greece, 1945–2000
(/isis/citation/CBB680844934/)
Book
Renata Motta;
(2016)
Social mobilization, global capitalism and struggles over food: A comparative study of social movements
(/isis/citation/CBB992894360/)
Book
Sonja Brentjes;
(2018)
Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies
(/isis/citation/CBB180314092/)
Book
Robson, Eleanor;
(2008)
Mathematics in Ancient Iraq: A Social History
(/isis/citation/CBB000950285/)
Article
Pormann, Peter E.;
(2002-2003)
Theory and Practice in the Early Hospitals in Baghdad: al-Kaškarī on Rabies and Melancholy
(/isis/citation/CBB000501036/)
Article
Jan-Peter Voß;
Jannik Schritt;
Volkan Sayman;
(February 2022)
Politics at a distance: Infrastructuring knowledge flows for democratic innovation
(/isis/citation/CBB229106240/)
Article
Mitchell Kiefer;
(2021)
Re-basing Scientific Authority: Anthropocene Narratives in the Carnegie Natural History Museum
(/isis/citation/CBB937863298/)
Article
Pietro Daniel Omodeo;
Sebastiano Trevisani;
Senthil Babu;
(2020)
Benedetto Castelli’s Considerations on the Lagoon of Venice: Mathematical expertise and hydro-geomorphological transformations in seventeenth-century Venice
(/isis/citation/CBB552404456/)
Book
Raffaello Vergani;
(2001)
Brentella. Problemi d’acque nell’alta pianura trevigiana dei secoli XV e XVI
(/isis/citation/CBB821439856/)
Book
Peppino Ragonese;
(2020)
«Volendo servire la città di acque fresche e pure». L’approvvigionamento idrico nella città di Palermo dalla sorgente del Gabriele alla sorgente di Scillato (IX-XXI secolo)
(/isis/citation/CBB721488269/)
Be the first to comment!