Definitions of Poverty and the Rise of the Muslim Urban Poor

Abstract

Poverty in medieval Islam is an enormous topic. It is worth considering from a historian's point of view, especially in the light of what has been accomplished by historians of Rome, Byzantium, and the medieval and modern West who have dealt with poverty and the poor. But as always, the sources for Islamic history, especially for the formative early centuries, present difficulties. Here I wish to make a preliminary attempt at dealing with part of this problem. I shall begin by considering an event which represents a turning point in the history of the Muslim poor, or more accurately, in the way poverty and the poor have been represented in modern historical scholarship on medieval Islam. Then I shall suggest a way in which this event may be set in context, and a possible strategy for handling some of the relevant sources. This strategy involves the identification of different, competing ways in which the poor were defined in the first centuries of Islam.