Islam in that country, was considerably enlarged in the Mamluk era. P. K. Hitti writes in his History of Syria that ‘Arab traders introduced sugar cane from India or south eastern Asia, where it must originally have grown wild’.49 Cotton was the most common textile plant.
Fruits and vegetables were also grown in huge quantities and in great variety. Qalqashandī gives details of every kind of fruit and vegetable grown in Egypt at that time.50 The Mamluk Sultans, especially Nāṣir, paid great attention to the planting of fruit trees and gardens. People became so interested in laying out gardens that towards the end of Nāṣir’s regime there were a hundred and fifty in one city alone. The gardens of al-Jazīrah were second to none in their beauty and yield.51
(a) Iqṭā‘ system
Land in the Mamluk period was distributed among Amirs in the form of iqṭā‘, a sort of administrative grant. We shall use this term, because its European counterpart ‘fief’, though a helpful analogy is fundamentally different52 – a point we shall discuss in Chapter VI when examining Ibn Taimīyah’s views on different forms of economic organization. The Fatimid caliphs used to confer iqṭā‘ upon high-ranking civil officials such as vizier, and the heads of the dīwāns (departments), in lieu of salaries. In this case the muqṭa‘ or ‘fief-holder’ was not liable to military service, but was liable to pay ‘ushr (tithe) on his iqṭā‘ revenue, to the treasury. Even in the earlier Islamic centuries, this type of assignment of iqṭā‘ was found. Maqrīzī mentions a number of such grants made by the Prophet, peace be upon him, and his caliphs. Even mines were sometimes granted as iqṭā‘ by the Prophet.53
When Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ayyūbi captured the throne of Egypt he was neither able to make full use of the Fatimid iqṭā‘ nor ignore it. He used the Fatimid iqṭā‘ when introducing the military iqṭā‘, but did not adopt the Fatimid model as a whole, since it was no longer subject to ‘ushr, and for this reason the Ayyubid iqṭā‘ is considered to have been freer economically than the Fatimid version.54
When the Mamluks came to power they inherited the Egyptian iqṭā‘ system as it had developed under the Ayyubids. The muqṭa‘ had no right to sell or transfer his iqṭā‘ or pass it on to his heirs. On the contrary, after the expiration of the iqṭā‘ or the death of the muqṭa‘ the land reverted to the Sultan who could then reassign it.55
(b) Obligations of the muqṭa‘
The duties and obligations of the muqṭa‘ can be divided into two broad categories – military and non-military.
In view of the ever-present threat of war, the muqṭa‘ was responsible for the expenses of his soldiers and had to hold himself in readiness to join the regular army with his troops on every expedition.56 Against the cost of war preparations and for the payment of salaries to the ajnād (military personnel) attached to the muqṭa‘ he was entitled to collect such taxes as marā’ī and hilālī and taxes on vice.57 Apart from these taxes, he could also raise levies on agricultural produce. The right to collect some non-agricultural taxes was frequently conferred in the form of iqṭā‘ from the reign of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ayyuūbī onward until the Nāṣirī rawk58 of 1315.59 The chieftains of the bedouin tribes in Egypt were also granted iqṭā‘ against military service. They had to supply the army with auxiliary cavalry in case of emergency. Their regular duty was to guard roads, to keep highwaymen in check, and to send horses and camels as gifts to the Sultan.60
The most important non-military obligations which a muqṭā‘ had to fulfil in return for the benefits derived from the iqṭā‘ were supervision of cultivation, irrigation, distribution of best quality seeds, and certain personal services to the Sultan. According to Nuwairī, a contemporary historian, the muqṭa‘ and his associates had to distribute good quality seeds among the fallāḥīn in the iqṭa‘.61 The muqṭa‘ had to see to the maintenance of al-jusur al-baladīyah (the small irrigation dams) which were of permanent importance for the irrigation of the iqṭā’.62
In the case of greater irrigation dams (al-jusur al-sulṭānīyah) which were constructed for the benefit of the province, the muqṭa’ was not directly responsible.63 However, during the Mamluk period, the muqṭa‘ did assist the Sultan in the construction of dams by supplying men and material. Maqrīzī mentions three such big dams that were built in Sultan Nāṣir’s reign in which the muqṭa‘ took part with his ajnād and fallāḥīn.64 The muqṭa‘’s contribution in digging and cleaning some of the Nile canals is also worth mentioning. In 1310, one of Nāṣir’s governors suggested to him the digging of some canals with a view to increasing revenue by transportation of foodstuffs and merchandise, raising funds by tolls, and increasing kharāj by providing better irrigation facilities and water supplies for gardening and drinking. The muqṭa‘ and his men worked on digging these canals.65
Considering the functions of the muqṭa‘ we can say that the impact of the Egyptian iqṭā‘ system on army structure, taxation, expenditure and administration was both profound and lasting. The muqṭa‘ was directly linked to the Sultan, unlike the European fief-system where the number of links between fief-holder and king led to the development of an aristocracy.
(c) Land redistribution
Before and at the beginning of Mamluk rule, land in Egypt was divided into twenty-four parts, of which four parts belonged to the Sultan, ten were in the hands of amīrs and ten were assigned to the ajnād (military personnel).66 When Husām al-Dīn Lājīn came to power, he decided to rearrange the land and investigate the deplorable conditions brought about by those amīrs who had appropriated the iqṭā‘ of the ajnād on the grounds of protection. He wanted to prevent disorder and looting in iqṭā‘.67 For this purpose he ordered the measurement of land, which is known as the Ḥusāmī rawk. The two main principles of the Ḥusāmī rawk were that land protection was to be abolished and that the land was to be divided into four parts for the Sultan, ten parts for amīrs and ajnād together, one part set aside to satisfy complaints, and nine parts kept as reserve to be assigned in the form of iqṭa‘ to new troops.68 However, the majority of the amīrs were not satisfied with these provisions and this was one of the reasons that the Lājīn regime was overthrown. Ibn Taghrībirdī writes that this rawk was a major factor in weakening the army in Egypt as it did not benefit anyone. On the one hand, no one received an area of land larger than he had earlier, while on the other, a great portion of land remained undistributed.69
Ibn Iyās states that the Nāṣirī rawk followed the Ḥusāmī rawk.70 In ordering the survey of land in 1315, Nāṣir seems to have had several ends in view, i.e. to estimate what was or was not cultivated and so determine the yield from the different taxes; to abolish the taxes conferred in the form of iqṭā‘ upon the muqṭa‘; to cancel or decrease large iqṭā’; and to increase the Sultan’s khāṣṣ (private treasury).71
Dividing the land into twenty-four parts, Nāṣir set aside ten parts as iqṭā‘ khāṣṣ for the Sultan and reassigned the other fourteen parts to amīrs and ajnād in the form of iqṭā’72 He excluded the old and disabled ajnād from iqṭā‘ grants, and allotted each of them a pension of about three thousand dirhams annually in place of iqṭā‘ Also, a number of taxes were either abolished or reduced.73 This reform was very successful and brought a great change in the Egyptian land system. The late amīr Ṭūsūn praised it highly in his book Māliyāt Miṣr (Financial System in Egypt) where he says: ‘It was a concrete