1116–1126: Ibn al-ʿAdīm on Christian–Muslim Crop Sharing (munāṣafa) Treaties

Abstract

This article reviews descriptions of Christian–Muslim crop sharing treaties (munāṣafāt) provided by the seventh/thirteenth-century Aleppine historian Ibn al-ʿAdīm (d. 660/1262) in his chronicle “The Cream of the Milk from the History of Aleppo” (Zubdat al-ḥalab min tārīḫ Ḥalab). The reports of these agreements help to shed light on three features of Christian–Muslim interactions in the Syrian Levant of the crusading period: first, that an appreciation of the ways in which Ibn al-ʿAdīm emphasises the historical significance of his family can help us to better understand his coverage of the early decades of crusader settlement; second, that the crusader movement probably did not facilitate the transfer of diplomatic mechanisms and infrastructures of agricultural administration from the Latin-Christian sphere to the Eastern Mediterranean; and third, that a combination of workforce shortages, a reluctance among Muslim majority communities to accept Frankish rule, and ideological pragmatism shaped Frankish land-sharing policy in rural Syria.