Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History

by Richard W. Bulliet

A boom in the production and export of cotton made Iran the richest region of the Islamic caliphate in the ninth and tenth centuries. Yet in the eleventh century, Iran's impressive agricultural economy entered a steep decline, bringing the country's primacy to an end.

Richard W. Bulliet advances several provocative theses to explain these hitherto unrecognized historical events. According to Bulliet, the boom in cotton production directly paralleled the spread of Islam, and Iran's agricultural decline stemmed from a significant cooling of the climate that lasted for over a century. The latter phenomenon also prompted Turkish nomadic tribes to enter Iran for the first time, establishing a political dominance that would last for centuries.

Substantiating his argument with innovative quantitative research and recent scientific discoveries, Bulliet first establishes the relationship between Iran's cotton industry and Islam and then outlines the evidence for what he terms the "Big Chill." Turning to the story of the Turks, he focuses on the lucrative but temperature-sensitive industry of cross-breeding one-humped and two-humped camels. He concludes that this unusual concatenation of events had a profound and long-lasting impact not just on the history of Iran but on the development of world affairs in general.

Genres: History, Iran, Middle East, Islam

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Richard W. Bulliet is a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University who specializes in the history of Islamic society and institutions, the history of technology, and the history of the role of animals in human society.

Richard grew up in Illinois. He attended Harvard University, from which he received a BA in 1962 and a PhD in 1967.

Several of his books focus on Iran but deal also with the larger Muslim world, including The Patricians of Nishapur: a Study in Medieval Islamic History (1972), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (1979), and Islam: the View from the Edge (1994). His books on a broader view of Islamic history and society include Under Siege: Islam and Democracy (1994) and The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004). His book (1975) brings together his interest in the histories of technology, animal domestication, and the Middle East, dealing for example with the significant military advantage early Muslim armies gained from a slight improvement in the design of cloth camel saddles. He would return to the history of animal domestication with his Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (2005).

He is the writer and editor of books of more general interest as well, including The Columbia History of the Twentieth Century (editor, 1998), The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East (co-editor, 1996), and The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History (co-author, 1997). He has also written several novels which draw on his knowledge of international politics and the Middle East, and is a promoter of the validity of comics as an art form.

His first fiction book, Kicked to Death by a Camel (1973), was nominated for an Edgar for “Best First Mystery”. His other fiction includes Tomb of the Twelfth Imam (1979), The Gulf Scenario (1984), The Sufi Fiddle (1991), and The One-Donkey Solution (2011).

Bulliet’s commentaries and opinion pieces on the Middle East have appeared in such newspapers The Guardian, New York Times International, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Reviews

[Rudyard L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a genuinely good bit of academic research work. Too bad it was super boring and tedious

[Nazila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Bulliet is specialist in Iranian history during the Islamic period. In this book, he argues how the Economy impacts the Iranian conversion to Islam and how the Iranian bourgeois class took the power in first centuries after Arab Invasion.

[Dylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very academic, very short thesis on a specific issue relating to early medieval Iranian plateau economic and climatological history. If you're into that sort of thing, I think this would be a very interesting, very informative and persuasive little work. Unfortunately, not really my area of interest so mostly was glad it was short enough to breeze through. Not that there is nothing there for the more general reader, just probably not enough to justify the dry(er) but quality academic writing style employed here. Bulliet does a great job acknowledging the weakness in his sources and methodology when appropriate though which I appreciate. Too many are unwilling to hit the negatives head on in their own work.

[Edith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting ideas on how quantitative studies of history can be implemented for studying the pre-modern period where most sources are narrative sources.

[Semih · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting presentation of cultural, animal and climatic history of Central Asia.

[Caracalla · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating read essentially for a complex series of economic, agricultural and climatic phenomena that governed the growth of an urbanized and wealthy Iran (in the Sassanid period, it was primarily the Iraqi part of the empire that was urbanized) and then its decline (prior to a second growth under the Safavids). Bulliet is aware a lot of his arguments are tendentious and not firmly founded in the sources and offers generally compelling arguments (I didn't realize how unusual the Khwarezmian winters were which Ibn Fadlan wrote about and I guess that suggests I need to improve my knowledge of geography). There's a lot of interesting stuff on the origins of the Seljuqs and that's one area I'm keen to improve my knowledge (hopefully reading stuff by Findley and Golden in the near future).

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-done survey of the role of economic and political forces in shaping early Islamic Iran. The author does a surprisingly good job of putting together statistical evidence for this period, as well as untangling cultural, political, and religious currents as revealed in narrative texts, and bringing together textual and archaeological evidence in a way that makes more sense than looking at either alone could have done.

[Chloë · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am reading this for Professor Bulliet's "History of Islamic Society" class, and enjoyed this book - the layout was very clear and the presentation of data made the read much smoother. Avoid if you aren't interested in camel breeding.