Society, Trade and Institutions

Beneath the level of dynasties, Islamic societies were held together by institutions: endowed schools and hospitals, craft guilds, courts applying a developed body of law, and legal frameworks governing the status of non-Muslim communities. Long-distance trade tied these societies to one another and to China, India, and Europe, and the wealth it generated funded much of the scholarship and building for which the period is remembered.

This collection covers that infrastructure. It includes the trade routes and the diplomatic practice that accompanied them, the guild systems of urban production, the dhimmi framework governing protected communities, educational institutions from the mosque school to the madrasa, the House of Wisdom, hospital development, the Constitution of Medina as an early governing charter, and the cities of Baghdad and Kufa as administrative centres. Ibn Battuta's travels are included as the period's most detailed first-hand account of this connected world.