The Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environment in the Middle East, 500 B.C. - A.D. 1500 (I.B.TAURIS)

Ahead of its time when it was first published more than two decades ago, Christensen's path-breaking work remains foundational as an example of the integration of environmental processes into an analysis of long-term historical change. With its consideration of three distinct regions between the Euphrates and Oxus Rivers, this book sheds light on how the contingencies of irrigation, labor, disease, and technological change forged centuries of demographic and political transformation. In so doing, it offers a completely new and novel approach to the study of the Middle East. Read this book for its empirical depth, for its elegant dismantling of debates over civilization and decline, and for its fresh analysis. Powerful, magisterial, significant.' Cover Title Copyright Contents Preface to the New Edition List of Tables A Note on Transliteration and Measures Acknowledgments Introduction: Universal History, the Middle East, and the Environmental Perspective Part 1: Starting Points: Themes And Sources 1. A Melancholy Prospect 2. The Middle East, Iranshahr, and the Persian Empires 3. Sources Part 2: “The Heart of Iranshahr”: Mesopotamia and Khuzistan Introduction 4. The Twin Rivers 5. The Construction of the Transverse Canals 6. The Climax of Irrigation: Mesopotamia under Sassanian Rule 7. The Crisis of the Seventh Century: Environmental and Demographic Disaster 8. From Crisis to Continued Decline: Mesopotamia between Two Plague Pandemics 9. Khuzistan Part 3: The Oases on the Iranian Plateau 10. Environment and Irrigation Technologies 11. Early Settlement Patterns 12. Growth and Stabilization of the New Settlement Pattern: Djibal 13. Fars 14. Kirman 15. Khurasan 16. Azarbaydjan 17. Recapitulation and Comparison: Contrasting Highlands with Floodplain Part 4: Sistan 18. Environment and Early Settlement 19. The Zenith of Sistan 20. The Decline of Sistan Conclusion 21. Decline and Resilience: Patterns in the History of Iranshahr Abbreviations used in Notes and Bibliography Bibliography Notes Index "The history of the Middle East is traditionally structured around the rise and fall of dynasties and states. The widely perceived view is that after the glories of an earlier golden age the region went into a steady and prolonged decline: populations decreased, ancient cities decayed and nomadism spread at the expense of civilized culture. In this pioneering text Peter Christensen challenges this story of decline. Long out of print but now reissued with a new introduction by the author, this important work is both a foundational text in the environmental history of the Middle East and a pioneering reassessment of traditional ideas about the historical processes of Iran and the Middle East region."--Bloomsbury Publishing.