Faiyum tax register A.D.1245

Rural Society in Medieval Islam

The ‘History of the Fayyum’ is a unique tax register, in Arabic, listing revenues from 130 villages and hamlets in one Egyptian province for AD 1245. It is the most detailed tax survey to have survived from any region of the medieval Islamic world, a Domesday Book for the medieval Egyptian countryside.

This website offers the tools for a quantitative and qualitative micro-study of society, economy, and agriculture of medieval Fayyum. It gives access to:

• Full fiscal and demographic data set, presented in 17 Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets.
• Spatial representation of the data, presented in 14 Geographical Information System (GIS) maps.
• Extracts from the English translation and Arabic edition of the work.
  

It also includes resources for teaching the rural history of the Middle East, and a forum area for postings on the history of the Fayyum (available from September 2011).

The website is part of the 'Rural Society in Medieval Islam' project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, and based at the School of History, Queen Mary University of London.