Histories of the Middle East : studies in Middle Eastern society, economy and law in honor of A.L. Udovitch / edited by Roxani Eleni Margariti, Adam Sabra, Petra M. Sijpesteijn.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"There are 'ulama', and then there are 'ulama" : minor religious institutions and minor religious functionaries in medieval Cairo / Jonathan P. Berkey -- The Arabian silent trade : profit and nobility in the "markets of the 'Arabs'" / Michael Bonner -- Ringing church bells in Hafsid Tunis : religious concessions to Christian fondacos in the later thirteenth century / Olivia Remie Constable -- An overview of the slaves' juridical status at sea in Romano-Byzantine, and Islamic laws / Hassan S. Khalilieh -- Maritime cityscapes : lessons from real and imagined topographies of western Indian Ocean ports / Roxani Eleni Margariti -- Demonizing zenobia : the legend of al-Zabba" in Islamic sources / David S. Powers -- The view from the south : the maps of the book of curiosities and the commercial revolution of the eleventh century / Yossef Rapoport -- From artisan to courtier : sufism and social mobility in fifteenth-century Egypt / Adam Sabra -- Mini-dramas by the water : on irrigation rights and disputes in fifteenth-century Damascus / Boaz Shoshan -- Army economics : an early papyrus letter related to 'ata' payments / Petra M. Sijpesteijn.

For four decades Abraham L. Udovitch has been a leading scholar of the medieval Islamic world, its economic institutions, social structures, and legal theory and practice. In pursuing his quest to understand and explain the complex phenomena that these broad rubrics entail, he has published widely, collaborated internationally with other leading scholars of the Middle East and medieval history, and most saliently for the purposes of this volume, taught several cohorts of students at Princeton University. This volume is therefore dedicated to his intellectual legacy from a uniquely revealing an