The Fiscal Policy of the Abbāsid State

Shimizu Makoto

doi:10.14989/148168

Analysing the finances of the Abbasid State from the socio-economic standpoint, the author probes the relationship between the State and the newly-rising middle class. The Abbasid State, moving from the period of establishment to one of stability, gained control of the grain of the Sawad, (the replacement of the misaha by the muqasama system at the end of the reign of al-Mansur) in order to sustain the mechanism of the State, and to restrain the merchants from seizing intermediate profits which they had previously taken from the peasants, who were the taxpayers, by the system of the cadastral tax in money (misaha). But the middle class, consisting of merchants, proprietors (tunna)), and others who wielded economic power, gradually came to occupy an important position in the society and to have a severe antagonism against the bureaucratic State which was working to complete its internal expansion. The antagonism, nevertheless, found a compromise in the one-step retreat on the part of the State. This retreat meant in fact the farming out of tax managements (daman) and the fosterage of the rank of purveyors through the business of public grain of the Sawad. It was indeed the presence of the complicated mechanism of the fiscal administration and the supervision by a centralized authority that permitted this excessive concession to those who, though favoured by financial capacity, were lacking in professional knowledge relative to the public fiscal economy. On the other hand, since this compromise between the State and the middle class imposed a consequent economic oppression upon the lower classes, the Abbasid State was doomed to be alienated from them, and this must be regarded as one of the fundamental causes of the internal disintegration of the State.

The Fiscal Policy of the Abbāsid State

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