During the period 500-1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in the Mediterranean during this period. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, the individual chapters detail its connections with imperial and scholarly centres, its role in cross-regional trade networks, and its participation in Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultural developments, including their impact on its own literary and material production. With unparalleled detail, the book tracks the mechanisms and structures through which Egypt connected politically, economically and culturally to the world surrounding it.

Jelle Bruning is a University Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University. He is the author of The Rise of a Capital: Al-Fusṭāṭ and Its Hinterland, 18/639-132/750 (2018).

Janneke H. M. de Jong is a classicist and ancient historian with as expertise Greek papyrology. Her current research includes the social organization of the tax system of Aphrodito in the early Islamic period, and the preparation of editions of Greek papyri from late Byzantine and early Islamic Egypt.

Petra M. Sijpesteijn is Professor of Arabic at Leiden University. She has published various academic and popular books and articles on the daily life experience of Muslims and non-Muslims in the caliphate.

2025

Paperback