This extraordinary volume adds a new dimension to our knowledge of medieval (Christian) Nubian economy and society, and in particular to land tenure. It is based entirely on the analysis of some thirty legal documents, in the now-extinct Old Nubian language, found at the site of Qasr Ibrim in Egyptian Nubia. This fortified citadel, situated high on a promontory overlooking the Nile, was the principle administrative center for the northern part of Nubia (the province of Nobadia) throughout the middle-ages; it was finally abandoned in 1811 ce. The documents in question, all relating to land sales, were found at different times in four archives, each cached under a house floor.
The documents studied have a recurring, and intriguing, format. They begin with a protocol listing from eight to twelve currently-serving public officials in the medieval Kingdom of Dotawo, of which Nobadia formed a part. There follows a specification of the property being transferred, the method and amount of payment, and then a long list of witnesses. Many documents then end, intriguingly, with a specification of the food provided to the witnesses!
The Introduction sets out the history of medieval Nubia, introduces the site of Qasr Ibrim and its excavation, provides an overview of the texts to be studied, and states the goals of the study. Chapter One discusses the nature of the documents, noting that they are of three types, depending on whether a third party was involved and what part he played. Chapter Two then offers a close analysis of a series of documents centering around a certain Mashshouda, the nature of his relationships with various other named individuals, and the meanings of some of the titles they bore.
Chapter Three opens with an abstruse discussion of economic theory before proceeding to a critique of medieval Arabic writing on the Nubian economy and land tenure. Chapter Four, the heart of the book, then offers a succinct analysis of Nubian land sales as a legal genre. The overly long Chapter Five, on Nubian land sales as ceremony, examines the odd practice of specifying the food that was provided to the witnesses. Giovanni Ruffini makes a good case that land transfers constituted a kind of ceremony and that the provision of food is a recurring feature of human ceremonies. He fails to explain however why the scribes found it necessary to record the fact.
Chapter Seven places Nubian legal tradition in the context of previous and contemporary Greco-Roman, Coptic, and Arabic practices. Chapter Eight, on money, rent, taxes, and investment, is another very useful overview summary. Chapter Nine makes the important point that there is still a great deal to be learned, because there are many unstudied Old Nubian documents not concerned with land tenure or sales. The author fails to mention the many Arabic documents, some also unstudied, that are also germane to the topic of his book. The Conclusion includes a digression on gender in medieval Nubia, a subject not previously considered, then draws the various individuals mentioned in the legal texts into a chronological sequence. A very brief Appendix offers a chronology of the documents found in the most important of the archives.
The above bald enumeration of contents does not do justice to the richness of detail or the many insightful and original observations found throughout the book. The author offers three important conclusions. First, it is self-evident from the texts that there was private land tenure throughout Nubia far to the south of Qasr Ibrim. The tenth-century statement of Ibn Selim el Aswani that all land above the Second Cataract belonged to the king must therefore be taken to refer to the principle of eminent domain, found in nearly all state-level societies.
Second, he concludes that the economy of Nubia was monetized, because one or two gold dirhem (the Arabic equivalent of drachmae) are mentioned as part of the payment in several land sales. On this point I have to demur, because monetization is very much a matter of degree. An economy in which a limited number of high-denomination coins have found their way into the hands of the elite is at best monetized only very partially. I think of the dirhem as capital assets rather than currency. A fully monetized economy, in which coinage has largely replaced commodities as the basic medium of exchange, requires enormous numbers of low-value coins. This was clearly never the case in Nubia, where such coins have been found only in minuscule numbers. The author informs me in a personal communication that there are many additional references to gold coins in other texts, not cited in his book.
Third, the author asserts, and I agree, that the society and culture of medieval Nubia was of basically Mediterranean rather than of African type. This was unmistakably true of the legal institutions and of the forms of society implied by them.
The writing throughout the book is admirably clear, if at times repetitious. The organization however leaves something to be desired, as the author moves back and forth between highly particularized and highly generalized chapters, in no very logical order. For example, the discussion of the historiography of Nubian land tenure in Chapter Three should certainly have preceded any discussion of the actual content of the documents, while the discussion of Nubia's legal tradition in Chapter Six would be better placed either at the beginning or at the end. Cavils aside, this is an outstanding achievement – surely the most important work on medieval Nubia in a generation.
