Louise Blanke, The world engaged: monastic economies in late antique and early Islamic Egypt

W ramach seminarium późnoantycznego UW 15 marca 2018 r. o godz. 16.45 dr Louise Blanke (Oxford) wygłosi wykład pt. The world engaged: monastic economies in late antique and early Islamic Egypt. Spotkanie odbędzie się w Bibliotece Zakładu Papirologii, w budynku Wydziału Prawa (Collegium Iuridicum I).
Abstrakt
In Late Antique Egypt, monastic communities relied on a myriad of different types of income. Although their economies varied greatly, documentary sources and archaeological remains suggest that some monasteries were powerful landowners and important producers and consumers of material goods. With the coming of Muslim rule, the monasteries’ economic circumstances were gradually transformed. At first, it was ‘business as usual’, but from the early eighth century onwards, an imposition of new taxes coincided with confiscation of agricultural land causing a reduction in the range of income-generating activities. The results are unmistakable: by the tenth century, most of Egypt’s monasteries had either disappeared or shrunk drastically in size and only survived by finding new income streams.