Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 257

the narrow streets of the city, transported
by donkeys or porters. These enclosures,
set apart for a series of well-defined and
restricted commercial or industrial activi-
ties, provided governments with an easy
framework for operating fiscal levies, and
the single gate, which could be locked,
made it possible during the night to seg-
regate transients from resident citizens.
They were in fact the forerunners of cus-
toms offices. In Fusā, from the Fātimid
period onward, sales outlets specialising
in the commerce of cheese, carpets, eggs
or jewellery were leased on behalf of such
a dīwān supplying the financial needs of
Kutāmī Berber soldiers or other social
groups.
Foodstuffs harvested on the land adja-
cent to the towns, often processed in urban
or suburban workshops, were introduced
into networks of exchange covering a vast
expanse between the Atlantic and Cen-
tral Asia, while merchandise originating
from other horizons was offered to local
consumers. The sū , like the aysāriyya ,
was thus the indispensable link between
the city, its neighbouring territory and the
Dār al-Islām. What is not properly under-
stood is the mode of interaction between
these sū s and other urban commercial
institutions, and those market sites which
were temporary, mostly rural and located
outside the town. Mediaeval geographers
often refer to the rural markets of the
Ma ∞ rib; thus al-Idrīsī, describing the still
very fragmentary structure of Meknès in
the period prior to his own time, indicates
that at a certain distance from the nuclei
of population, in the process of transform-
ing themselves into a town, there existed
an ancient rural market site, still func-
tioning, called al-sū al-adīma , “a flour-
ishing market to which people come from
near and far every Thursday and where
all the tribes of the Banū Miknās are
gathered”.

Whatever may have been the impor-
tance of places of rural exchange (and it
must again be stressed that very little is
known on the subject), the Muslim trav-
ellers of the Middle Ages who describe
the towns of the Dār al-Islām define them
principally by the presence of a great
mosque and of markets. In the eyes of
the peasantry of the regions surrounding
the town, it is also, apparently, the market
which constitutes its most specific element.
Thus—outside the Arab domain—
P. Centlivres notes that the country folk
living in the villages situated in the envi-
rons of Tā ª ur ∞ ān, in Af ∞ ānistān,
refer to the town itself, in its entirety, by
the term bāzār , synonym of sū . In cer-
tain towns of the Ma ∞ rib, merchants are
forbidden to conclude, except within the
confines of the market and during its times
of functioning, any transaction with peas-
ants from the neighbourhood of the town;
this is for the economic protection of the
producer against the malice of a buyer
operating outside the normal framework
of competition.
According to their range of activity or
the circles in which they operate, it is pos-
sible to distinguish between different types
of merchants and of “markets”: Chal-
meta places in totally different categories
the shopkeeper ( awāntī ) and the major
trader ( tā ¡ ir ), corresponding to two quite
distinct economic circuits. The Fāimid-
period author al-Dima ª ī identifies the
¶ azzān , the sedentary merchant who, by
means of stocking or destocking, plays on
variations of price as influenced by space,
time and the quantities of the commodi-
ties traded; the rakkād , the itinerant trader
who owes his profits to his knowledge of
the differences in purchase and sale prices
according to the places where the trans-
actions take place; and the mu ¡ ahhiz , the
purveyor, who supplies travellers with all
that they need. Thus I. Lapidus stresses,