The Handbook of Historical Economics

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The Handbook of Historical
Economics
 The Handbook of
Historical Economics

Edited by
Alberto Bisin
Giovanni Federico
Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier
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Contents

Merger or acquisition? An introduction to The Handbook of Historical Economics . . . . . . . . xv

Alberto Bisin and Giovanni Federico

PART 1 WHAT IS HISTORICAL ECONOMICS

CHAPTER 1 The economic history of economic history: the evolution of a field in
economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Robert A. Margo
CHAPTER 2 The two revolutions in economic history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Martina Cioni, Giovanni Federico, and Michelangelo Vasta
CHAPTER 3 History as evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Nathan Nunn

PART 2 SOURCES AND METHODS

CHAPTER 4 Historical data: where to find them, how to use them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Paola Giuliano and Andrea Matranga
CHAPTER 5 The use of archaeological data in economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Andrea Matranga and Luigi Pascali
CHAPTER 6 Ethnographic and field data in historical economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Sara Lowes
CHAPTER 7 Historical Econometrics: Instrumental Variables and Regression Discontinuity
Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Felipe Valencia Caicedo
CHAPTER 8 Historical natural experiments: bridging economics and economic history . 213
Davide Cantoni and Noam Yuchtman
CHAPTER 9 Persistence – myth and mystery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Hans-Joachim Voth
CHAPTER 10 LATE for history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Alberto Bisin and Andrea Moro
CHAPTER 11 Dynamic general equilibrium modeling of long and short-run historical
events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Gary D. Hansen, Lee E. Ohanian, and Fatih Ozturk
CHAPTER 12 Money, banking, and old-school historical economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Eric Monnet and François R. Velde
v
vi Contents

CHAPTER 13 Institutional change and institutional persistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365

Daron Acemoglu, Georgy Egorov, and Konstantin Sonin
CHAPTER 14 How institutions and cultures change: an evolutionary perspective . . . . . . . 391
Samuel Bowles, Jung-Kyoo Choi, Sung-Ha Hwang, and Suresh Naidu
CHAPTER 15 State power and conflict driven evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
David K. Levine and Salvatore Modica
CHAPTER 16 Culture, institutions, and policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini
CHAPTER 17 Phase diagrams in historical economics: culture and institutions . . . . . . . . 491
Alberto Bisin and Thierry Verdier

PART 3 TOPICS
CHAPTER 18 The economic history of commodity market development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
Giovanni Federico
CHAPTER 19 Why Africa is not that poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
Ewout Frankema
CHAPTER 20 Religion in economic history: a survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585
Sascha O. Becker, Jared Rubin, and Ludger Woessmann
CHAPTER 21 Persistent failure? International interventions since World War II . . . . . . . . 641
Matt Malis, Pablo Querubin, and Shanker Satyanath
CHAPTER 22 The ancient origins of the wealth of nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675
Quamrul H. Ashraf, Oded Galor, and Marc Klemp
CHAPTER 23 Social mobility in historical economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719
Gregory Clark
CHAPTER 24 The Industrial Revolution and the Great Divergence: recent findings from
historical national accounting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 749
Stephen Broadberry
CHAPTER 25 Attitudes, aptitudes, and the roots of the great enrichment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773
Joel Mokyr
CHAPTER 26 The interplay among wages, technology, and globalization: the labor market
and inequality, 1620-2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795
Robert C. Allen
CHAPTER 27 Debt and taxes in eight U.S. wars and two insurrections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 825
George J. Hall and Thomas J. Sargent
CHAPTER 28 Biogeography, writing, and the origins of the state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 881
David Stasavage
 Contents vii

CHAPTER 29 The wife’s protector: a quantitative theory linking contraceptive technology

with the decline in marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 903
Jeremy Greenwood, Nezih Guner, and Karen A. Kopecky

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 945
List of contributors

Daron Acemoglu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
Robert C. Allen
Faculty of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Quamrul H. Ashraf
Department of Economics, Williams College, Williamstown, MA, United States
Sascha O. Becker
Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom
CAGE, Coventry, United Kingdom
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
CESifo, Munich, Germany
IZA, Bonn, Germany
ROA, Maastricht, Netherlands
ifo Institute, Munich, Germany
Alberto Bisin
Department of Economics, New York University, New York, NY, United States
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
Samuel Bowles
Sante Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, United States
Stephen Broadberry
Nuffield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Davide Cantoni
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Munich, Germany
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
CESifo, Munich, Germany
Jung-Kyoo Choi
Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Republic of Korea
Martina Cioni
Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Siena, Siena, Italy
ix
x List of contributors

Gregory Clark
Department of Economics, University of California, Davis, CA, United States
Department of Economic History, LSE, London, United Kingdom
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
Georgy Egorov
Northwestern University–Kellogg School of Management, Evanston, IL, United States
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States
Giovanni Federico
Division of Social Sciences, NYUAD, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
Ewout Frankema
Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Oded Galor
Department of Economics, Brown University, Providence, RI, United States
Paola Giuliano
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
IZA, Bonn, Germany
Jeremy Greenwood
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Nezih Guner
CEMFI, Madrid, Spain
George J. Hall
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, United States
Gary D. Hansen
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States
Sung-Ha Hwang
Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Seoul, Republic of Korea
Marc Klemp
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen K, Denmark
Karen A. Kopecky
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, United States
 List of contributors xi

David K. Levine
Department of Economics, RSCAS European University, San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy
Department of Economics, WUSTL, St. Louis, MO, United States
Sara Lowes
UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Toronto, ON, Canada
Matt Malis
Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University, New York, NY, United States
Robert A. Margo
Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
Andrea Matranga
Chapman University, Orange, CA, United States
Salvatore Modica
Department of Economics, Business and Statistics (SEAS), Università di Palermo, Palermo, Italy
Joel Mokyr
Departments of Economics and History, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States
Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Eric Monnet
Paris School of Economics, Paris, France
Andrea Moro
Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
Suresh Naidu
Columbia University, New York, NY, United States
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States
Nathan Nunn
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Toronto, ON, Canada
Lee E. Ohanian
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States
Fatih Ozturk
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States
xii List of contributors

Luigi Pascali
Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

Torsten Persson
IIES, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
CESIfo, Munich, Germany
LSE, London, United Kingdom
NBER, Cambridge, MA, United States

Pablo Querubin
Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University, New York, NY, United States

Jared Rubin
Chapman University, Orange, CA, United States

Thomas J. Sargent
New York University, New York, NY, United States

Shanker Satyanath
Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University, New York, NY, United States

Konstantin Sonin
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States

David Stasavage
New York University, New York, NY, United States

Guido Tabellini
Department of Economics and IGIER, Università Bocconi, Milan, Italy
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
CESIfo, Munich, Germany

Felipe Valencia Caicedo

Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
IZA, Bonn, Germany

Michelangelo Vasta
Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Siena, Siena, Italy
CEPR, London, United Kingdom

François R. Velde
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
 List of contributors xiii

Thierry Verdier
Paris School of Economics, Paris, France
Ecole des Ponts-Paris Tech, Champs-sur-Marne, France
PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
Hans-Joachim Voth
University of Zurich, UBS International Center of Economics in Society, Zurich, Switzerland
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
Ludger Woessmann
University of Munich, Munich, Germany
ifo Institute, Munich, Germany
CESifo, Munich, Germany
IZA, Bonn, Germany
CAGE, Coventry, United Kingdom
Noam Yuchtman
LSE, London, United Kingdom
CEPR, London, United Kingdom
CESifo, Munich, Germany
Merger or acquisition? An introduction to
The Handbook of Historical Economics

1 Historical Economics
Economists have always looked at history for insights. Adam Smith used historical evidence so ex-
tensively in the Wealth of Nations that “on top of being the founder of modern economic thinking,
[he] could also be regarded as one of the first modern economic historians” [Manioudis and Milonakis
(2020)]. However, the study of economic history became an established academic field only about a
century later and for most of the 20th century it remained an historical discipline.
Historical Economics was born arguably in the 1960s, with the so-called Cliometric revolution;
Margo (2021). We think of Cliometrics as an acquisition of economics by history in the sense that
historians trained in economics started to use formal economic reasoning and statistical testing to
tackle big issues, such as the efficiency of slavery (Conrad and Meyer, 1958; Fogel and Engerman,
1974); or the contribution of railways to American economic growth; Fogel (1964). In the following
decades, Historical Economics spread quickly in the United States and more slowly in Europe; Cioni et
al. (2021). Now, arguably, a second revolution is unfolding, as the field is attracting the renewed interest
of economists, in turn acquiring history. It is generally difficult to identify the origins of a change of
paradigm in a field, but in this case we should certainly cite the early contributions of Douglas North
(North and Thomas (1973)) and Avner Greif (Greif, 1989, 1993) on institutions, as an inspirational
trait d’union with the pathbreaking empirical approach in e.g., La Porta et al. (1998) and Acemoglu et
al. (2001).1
The most evident novelty in Historical Economics at this turn, the sense in which we think of this
as an acquisition of history by economics, lies in the radical shift in the research questions: the Clio-
metricians studied the economic past for the sake of its knowledge, while most recently Historical
Economists often search in the past the answer to questions about current economic conditions. This
general research agenda, which is referred to as Persistence Studies, has flourished recently, tackling
on issues ranging from the effects of the colonial forced labor in Peru (Dell, 2010) to those of location
of portage sites (transshipment between different means of transportation) on urban geography of the
United States (Li et al., 2012). At the same time modern work in Historical economics is also char-
acterized by resorting to state-of-the-art econometrics to identify causal relationships and by a more
explicit relationship between empirical analysis and theoretical models. The essence of the new wave
is well represented by the work of Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson, and co-authors on the role of
institutions in economic growth. On the one hand, their pioneering study in the field, Acemoglu et al.
(2001), aims at identifying the causal effects of a past historical event (the different types of colonial
institutions) on a current outcome (GDP per capita in 1995). The Instrumental variable approach they

1 Robert Townsend’s book on general equilibrium modeling of the economy of an English manor (Townsend, 1993) can also be
considered an early gem in Historical Economics, though it arguably had less of an impact in the development of the field.

xv
xvi Merger or acquisition? An introduction to The Handbook of Historical Economics

adopt, and the clever choice of the instrument (settlers’ mortality), have been wildly popular in later
work in Historical economics.2 On the other hand, their work on institutions has been supported by a
conspicuous effort in developing theoretical models about institutional change - surveyed in (Acemoglu
et al., 2021) - which also has spurred a lot of work in the discipline.
Finally, one other perhaps less prominent but nevertheless essential feature of important aspect
of recent work in Historical Economics is the expansion of the boundaries of the discipline beyond
economic themes as traditionally intended.3 Historical Economists have dealt with political science
issues such as the effect of compulsoring voting on political participation (Bechtel et al., 2016), the
determinants of the rise to power of Nazi party in Germany (Adena et al., 2015; Satyanath et al., 2017;
Voigtländer and Voth, 2014) and of the Fascist party in Italy (Acemoglu et al., 2020), or the effects of
American bombings in Vietnam (Dell and Querubin, 2018).4
In the meanwhile, scholars have continued to pursue the more traditional post-Cliometric research
agenda. First and foremost, they have greatly enhanced our knowledge of past economies but they have
also gained new insights tackling “traditional questions” in history by exploiting suitable advances in
economics, econometrics, and computing power. For instance, Becker and Woessmann (2009) have
given a new interpretation to the Weber thesis about the positive consequences of the Reformation on
economic growth of Prussia. He argued that the Protestant ethic fostered development, while Becker
and Woessman show that the Reformation increased human capital because Protestants were asked to
read the Bible by themselves instead of relying on the clergy’s interpretation.5
In short, Historical Economics is a lively broad field of study with a glorious past and an exciting
and challenging future. This Handbook tries to present the current frontier and to serve as a guide for
future research on the field. We aim at offering a balanced view of the field, with its peculiarities, its
scientific achievements, but also its shortcomings. In the end, the specific comparative advantages of
history and economics which in our opinion the chapters distill and identify provide a forceful argument
in favor of a merger between the disciplines along these lines.
The first three chapters (Part 1 of the Handbook) outline the evolution of the discipline as sketched
out in this Introduction (Margo, 2021; Cioni et al., 2021; Nunn, 2021). Part 2 deals with Sources, Meth-
ods, and Models of Historical Economics. A few of the chapters collected here illustrate and discuss
the data sources researchers are developing and using in the field, including e.g., the new uses of tra-
ditional sources, such as censuses and maps (Giuliano and Matranga, 2021), archeological (Matranga

2 The turn of Historical Economics towards causal analysis is consistent with the recent empirical turn in economics and is
largely prevalent in the recent work, even if formal dynamical models are used as well (Nunn, 2020).
3 This is also consistent with a trend in economics - which is at times accused of an “imperialist attitude” towards social sciences
in general.
4 Some years ago, some of these Persistent Studies have been collected in a book evocatively titled The long economic and
political shadow of history, Michalopoulos and Papaioannou (2017).
5 Other interesting examples of new takes on traditional questions include: Alesina et al. (2013) who confirm Ester Boserup’s
thesis regarding the origins of gender role differences in different forms of agriculture practiced traditionally (specifically, shift-
ing and plough cultivation); Juhász (2018) who finds strong evidence for the classic hypothesis that industry protection reduces
technological adoption by studying the effects on the development of the French cotton industry of the differential effectiveness
of Napoleon’s continental blockade on the North and the South of France; Squicciarini and Voigtländer (2015) who document
a strong relationship between economic growth and endowment of high end human capital in early 19th century France (mea-
sured with the subscriptions to the Encyclopedie), as predicted by traditional growth theory in economics (Barro et al., 1995;
Acemoglu, 2012).
 2 Sources, methods, models, topics xvii

and Pascali, 2021) and anthropological data (Lowes, 2021). Other chapters in Part 2 focus on the use
in Historical Economics of statistical and econometric methods for causal analysis developed in eco-
nomics (Valencia Caicedo, 2021; Cantoni and Yuchtman, 2021; Voth, 2021; Bisin and Moro, 2021;
Hansen et al., 2021; Monnet and Velde, 2021). These chapters highlight the variety of methods suc-
cessfully exploited in the field, from causal inference (Regression discontinuity, Instrumental Variable
analysis, Natural Historical Experiments, ...) to formal structural methods. Part 2 contains also a series
of chapters on the theoretical analysis of institutional change. As we already noticed and will discuss
later in this Introduction, institutions have been at the core of Historical Economics and much empirical
work has been devoted to this issue. But the study of institutions in historical analysis is very complex -
how are they defined, how they change, how they are measured - and it requires analytical frameworks
of reference which theoretical work is attempting to provide. Five chapters in this section of the book
(Acemoglu et al., 2021; Bowles et al., 2021; Levine and Modica, 2021; Persson and Tabellini, 2021;
Bisin and Verdier, 2021) provide a careful and comprehensive survey of the different approaches and
results. Part 3 of the Handbook contains a selection of results of Historical Economics. Of course it
would have been impossible to cover all (or even most) results in the field. More modestly, the chapters
in Part 3 aim at giving a flavor of the recent work in Historical Economics. It contains, in the tradition
of the Handbook series, several surveys of some major field of research: the development of commod-
ity markets (Federico, 2021), the economic history of Africa (Frankema, 2021), the economic history
of religion (Becker et al., 2021), and the consequences of foreign intervention after WWII (Malis et al.,
2021). It also includes four interpretative essays, which build on the authors’ previous work (Ashraf
et al., 2021; Broadberry, 2021; Clark, 2021; Mokyr, 2021) and a few case studies of new research
work (Hall and Sargent, 2021; Stasavage, 2021; Greenwood et al., 2021). We have selected these lat-
ter not only for the historical relevance of the topics (respectively, the historical origins of the state,
the funding of wars in United States history, the socio-economic effects of the diffusion of contracep-
tive technology); but also as examples of the range of methodologies used in Historical Economics -
from the statistical and econometric analysis of historical series (Hall and Sargent, 2021) and spatial
cross-sections (Stasavage, 2021) to the calibration of a dynamic structural model (Greenwood et al.,
2021).

2 Sources, methods, models, topics

In this section we turn to a brief discussion of the chapters in the Handbook, to provide the reader with
a more detailed roadmap of the various contributions it collects.

2.1 Part 1: The evolution of the discipline

Margo (2021) outlines the origins and the development of Historical Economics from an institutional
point of view, stressing the consequences for the profession. The Cliometric revolution was a reaction
to the decline in standing of economic history after the mathematization of economics. Cliometricians
tried to stave off this decline by adopting the approach and the methods of economics. They wanted
to maintain the ‘economic history’ as a subfield of economics, as labor or development economics,
as such they taught it in most undergraduate and graduate programs in economics. Their success was
only temporary, and in the 1980s and 1990s the decline resumed. Nowadays, economic history as such
xviii Merger or acquisition? An introduction to The Handbook of Historical Economics

as has all but disappeared in (almost) all PhD programs in economics. In contrast, the recent wave of
Historical Economics is spearheaded by economists who deal with economic history issues, but as we
said, are not necessarily interested in historical knowledge.
Cioni et al. (2021) provide quantitative evidence with regards to this narrative. They trace the suc-
cess of the Cliometric revolution and of the new wave of Historical economics by looking at the
publication record in top field journals, measuring the status of economic history as the share of all
articles in the major economics journals. In a companion paper (Cioni et al., 2019) these authors docu-
ment the large differences between top economics and top field journals in terms of issues and patterns
as well as of citation numbers. Above all, they show that there is limited overlapping between the
new wave of Historical Economics and the more traditional (post-Cliometric) economic history, and
not only in the research questions. Even if all Historical Economists share the same methodological
approach, few of them publish in both top field and general interest economics journals.6
The chapter by Nathan Nunn (Nunn, 2021) foresees the innovation of Historical Economics as
pushing for a novel interpretation of historical phenomena. He argues that history should be inter-
preted along with a theory of biological and cultural evolution. This theory is well-developed in terms
of formal models and Nunn (2021) argues that it provides for sharp implications in terms of our un-
derstanding of human capital, innovation, gender roles, the consequences of warfare, the effects of
market competition, and more. Most generally, the theory of biological and cultural evolution has great
explanatory power with respect to the historical persistence of several socio-economic phenomena and
hence it may be useful to address at its core the fundamental question of economic development, why
is sustained economic growth often so elusive.

2.2 Part 2: Sources, methods, and models

The development and discovery of new data sources are a fundamental component of the contributions
of Historical Economics. In recent years, scholars have collected and estimated a large number of new
economic series, with a major effort to make them internationally comparable and easily available.
On-line data-bases provide data on trade by country at constant and current prices since 1800 (Fed-
erico and Tena-Junguito, 2019) and on bilateral trade at current prices since the 1830s (Dedinger and
Girard, 2017) Following the seminal work by Robert Allen (Allen, 2001) and (Allen, 2019), real wages
are now routinely expressed in welfare ratios a simple and intuitive measure which can be compared
across time and countries. Arguably, the most relevant contribution is the so called Maddison project,
which continues the pioneering work by Angus Maddison (Bolt and Van Zanden, 2014; Fouquet and
Broadberry, 2015; Broadberry, 2021) He started to collect series of national income since the 1980s
(Maddison, 1991) and later converted them in 1990-PPP dollars (Maddison et al., 1995). Economic
historians have since substantially increased the number of countries and have extended the series
back in time to the Middle Ages. The work is going on, and new or revised series are added as soon
as they available. In recent times Historical economists have widened the range of available data, as
shown in the chapter by Giuliano and Matranga (2021). First, they show how modern technology has
charged new versions of traditional sources, such as censuses and maps. Censuses have always been

6 These differences will play a central role in our critical analysis of Historical Economics as a discipline, in Section 3, where
we will explicitly make a distinction between “economic historians” and “economists” tout court.
 2 Sources, methods, models, topics xix

used as sources of aggregate data but the use of records was limited by their sheer size.7 The great
increase in computing power has all but abolished this constraint, allowing researchers to link records
from multiple U.S. censuses and trace the life pattern of individuals; see Abramitzky et al. (2019b,a).
Similarly, geo-referencing has transformed maps from a visual static help into a source of informa-
tion and variables for regression analysis. But Giuliano and Matranga (2021) show also the potential
of ‘new’ qualitatively different sources, to address new research questions. Scientific research, for in-
stance, offers a lot of new information on climate via tree rings and glaciers (Guiot et al., 2010) and on
economic activity via lead deposits in glaciers (McConnell et al., 2018, 2019), even if publication in
science journals might reduce their impact on the scholarly debate.
Matranga and Pascali (2021) provide a review of the data and the empirical methodologies devel-
oped to study the persistent effects of the very distant past on e.g., present-day living conditions and
economic prosperity. Much of recent research in Historical Economics argues that these effects mani-
fest themselves in local institutions and cultural traits which go back millennia. The scarcity of written
records, as we move back in time, has pushed Historical Economists to study archaeological and pale-
oanthropological data. In this respect, Matranga and Pascali (2021) show e.g., how archeological data
have been successfully used to shed light on Neolithic revolution, the origins of state, and long-distance
trade.8
For a number of reasons, the geographic coverage of archeological research is patchy: there are
very many sites in Europe and the Mediterranean, some in Asia, but few in the America and very few
in Sub-Saharian Africa. Furthermore, even when available, the archeological sources cannot document
a wide range of activities, institutions, and beliefs. Thus, scholars have widely resorted to ethnographic
data, as Lowes (2021) shows and discusses in her chapter. The most notably source is Murdock’s
Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock (1967)), which collects information about primitive, historical, and con-
temporary societies, mostly from Africa and Northern America. More recently, Lowes (2021) reports,
several economists working in Historical Economics have resorted to collect their own ethnographic
data, following the practice and methods of anthropologists in the field; see e.g., De la Sierra et al.
(2014), Lowes et al. (2017), and Lowes and Montero (2020).
Besides new sources, Historical Economics has brought new statistical and econometric methods to
historical analysis, borrowing them from the causal inference literature in e.g., labor and development
economics; see Angrist and Pischke (2008, 2014) and Cunningham (2021) for book treatments of this
literature. The identification of causal relationships across history is central to Historical Economics,
especially in the case of Persistence studies. The empirical focus of these studies centers, in the jargon
of the causal inference literature, on the effects of a treatment variable taken-up in the historical past but
whose effects persist in the present; e.g., high-quality norms or institutions. An exogenous historical
factor may be available that directly affects the treatment variable and can be exploited as an instrument
to identify causal effects. From the point of view of formal statistical and econometric theory and
practice, these exogenous historical factors can be studied with the use distinct methodologies; notably,
Regression discontinuity design, Instrumental Variable analysis, and Natural Historical Experiments.

7 The pioneering Gallman-Parker sample, for instance, was widely used in the early work on slavery but referred to only 405
cotton-producing counties from the 1860 U.S. Census.
8 Archeological sources are also widely used in the current revival of Roman economic history, after having long been crippled
by the disappearance of archives during barbaric invasions (Erdkamp, 2016).
 4 Conclusions xxxi

The issue of reliability of data extends to proxies, which are widely used in all Historical Economics
literature. In his chapter Federico (2021) discusses at length the potential bias from using distance
as proxy for transport costs and the ratio of custom revenues to imports as proxy for protection in
gravity model of trade. The former assumes constant transport cost, while the latter tends to understate
protection. Taken jointly, they give relatively more weight to technology than to policy decisions in
determining barriers to trade. Another example is the use of urbanization rates as proxy for GDP in
pre-industrial societies, as popularized by Acemoglu et al. (2005a). The relation was indeed positive
until 1910, but it seems rather unstable in its strength between the Sixteen and the Nineteen centuries
(Jedwab and Vollrath, 2015).20
In general, assessing the reliability of any specific set of data and keeping abreast of the fast
progress in historical research is difficult. In a seminal and unfortunately overlooked paper, Feinstein
and Thomas (2002) argued that producers of historical series should attach to their figures an explicit
assessment of margin of errors. Following this advice, Federico and Tena-Junguito (2019) estimate the
overall margin of error of their series of world trade as sum of the (independent) variance of individual
country-series. Also, Broadberry (2021) gives some examples for estimates of GDP per capita from the
Maddison project, with margin of errors ranging from the almost negligible (Netherlands 1650-1750)
to the humongous (Japan 750-1150). In our opinion any systematic effort along these lines, requiring
the joint work of economic historians and historical economists, would be extremely valuable for the
discipline.

4 Conclusions
Historical Economics is a very promising and important field. As all interdisciplinary endeavors, it
differs from its parent-fields. It differs from economic history for the breadth of research questions,
which include political and social issues, and above all for its statistical methods, which rely heavily on
causal inference and at times on structural modeling. Historical Economics differs also from economics
in that the availability of data is a serious constraint. Economists have showed remarkable ingenuity
in overcoming the constraint, but they could be more aware of the fundamental trade-off: dealing with
‘large’ issues with weak (to say the least) data vs limiting oneself to ‘small’ issues with accurate and
reliable data.
The obvious winning strategy is a merger of disciplines, putting together economists, political
scientists, and economic historians (as well as, in specific instances, anthropologists, sociologists, evo-
lutionary biologists). Good Historical Economics needs a combination of the knowledge of sources
and detailed historical events and phenomena, the capability of distilling complex historical processes
into a model to put forward alternative testable hypotheses, the statistical/econometric skills for identi-
fication, causal inference, structural estimation, and testing, the detailed knowledge of specific political
and socio-economic institutions, an understanding of the role of cultural traits, e.g., ethnic/religious,
and of their evolution.

20 The relationship has become negative after World War Two, with cities growing relatively more in poorer countries, but this
has no relevance for the use of the proxy, for pre-industrial times.
Another random document with
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The Refugees from Mecca lost 360 men, and the Citizens of Medîna
300, or nearly 700 in all; while the slaughter amongst the Bedouins,
though somewhat less, raised the gross number over 1,200, besides
the wounded. And amongst them were nine and thirty chief
‘Companions,’ or men of note, amongst the Prophet’s followers. At
Medîna there was hardly a house, whether of Refugees or native
Citizens, in which the voice of wailing was not heard.[58]
Moseilama was slain by Wahshi, the
same negro warrior who, swinging a Moseilama among the slain.
javelin, after his savage style of warfare,
round his head, had on the field of Ohod brought the sainted Hamza
to the ground. After the battle Khâlid carried the chief Mojâa, still in
chains, over the field to identify the dead. As they passed along the
field of battle, turning the bodies over one after another, they came
upon a stalwart figure. ‘Look, was this your master?’ said Khâlid.
‘Nay,’ replied Mojâa, ‘this was a nobler and a better man.’ It was the
corpse of the brave Mohakkem, who fell covering the retreat, slain by
the hand of Abdul Rahman, the Caliph’s son. Then they entered the
Garden of Death. Among the heaps of the mangled dead, they
stumbled on a body of insignificant mien. ‘This is your man,’ said
Mojâa, as he turned it on its side; ‘truly ye have done for him!’ ‘Yea,’
replied Khâlid, ‘or rather it is he which hath done for you, that which
he hath done.’
The Mussulman horse now scoured the
country, and every day brought in bands of Truce with the Beni Hanîfa.
prisoners. Aware that after their crushing
defeat his people were incapable of resistance, Mojâa bethought him
of a stratagem. He represented them as holding their forts and
fastnesses in force throughout the country, and so persuaded Khâlid
to offer them their lives if they at once capitulated. Meanwhile, by his
secret suggestion, the battlements were lined by every available
person, even by the old men and women in armed disguise; and
Khâlid’s messengers returned with the answer that they would fight
to the last. The army was wearied with the hard struggle, and most
of them anxious, after the long campaign, to return to their homes;
and so Khâlid concluded a truce, on terms more favourable than
they would have obtained but for Mojâa’s artifice. When it came to
light, Khâlid reproached him for it; but in the end excused him on the
pleaded ground of patriotism, and stood by the treaty. No sooner
was it concluded, than he received a despatch of unwonted severity
from Abu Bekr, who, to strike terror into other apostate tribes,
commanded that not a single adult male of the ungodly and
rebellious race should be spared. Fortunately the truce forbade the
bloody edict. The Beni Hanîfa, like other prostrate tribes, were
received back into the bosom of Islam, and a portion only of their
number were retained in captivity.[59]
When the campaign was ended, Khâlid
sent a deputation of the chief survivors to Deputation of Beni Hanîfa to
Abu Bekr, who received them courteously. the Caliph.
‘Out upon you!’ said he; ‘how is it that this impostor led you all
astray?’ ‘O Caliph!’ they answered, ‘thou hast heard it all; he was
one whom the Lord blessed not, nor yet his people;’ and they
repeated to him some of the things he used to say. ‘Good heavens!’
exclaimed Abu Bekr, ‘Beshrew you! What kind of words are these?
There is neither sense in them for good nor yet for evil, to have
beguiled you thus, but a kind of strange fatuity.’ So he dismissed
them to their homes.[60]
Among the killed we meet not a few
names familiar to us in the annals of the Many ‘Companions’ among
the slain. Zeid, brother of
Prophet’s life. The carnage amongst the Omar.
Readers—those who had the Corân by
heart—was so great, as to suggest to Omar the first design of
collecting the sacred text, ‘lest any part should be lost therefrom.’ At
the death of his favourite brother Zeid, who had shared with him the
dangers of the first battles of Islam, Omar was inconsolable. ‘Thou
art returned home,’ he said to his son Abdallah, ‘safe and sound; and
Zeid is dead. Wherefore wast not thou slain before him? I wish not to
see thy face.’ ‘Father!’ answered Abdallah, ‘he asked for martyrdom,
and the Lord granted it. I strove after the same, but it was not given
unto me.’ Such was the spirit of these Moslem warriors.
 Khâlid again signalised his victory by
wedding a captive maid upon the field.[61] Khâlid marries Mojâa’s
daughter.
‘Give me thy daughter to wife,’ he said to
Mojâa, the prisoner who had so faithfully defended his bride in the
hour of peril. ‘Wait,’ replied Mojâa; ‘be not so hasty. Thou wilt
endamage thyself in the eyes of thy Chief, and me likewise.’ ‘Man,
give me thy daughter!’ he repeated imperiously; so Mojâa gave her
to him. When Abu Bekr heard of it, he wrote him a letter sprinkled
with blood. ‘By my life! thou son of Khâlid’s father, thou art a pretty
fellow, living thus at thine ease. Thou weddest a damsel, whilst the
ground beneath the nuptial couch is yet wet with the blood of twelve
hundred!’ The reproof fell lightly upon Khâlid. ‘This is the work,’ he
said, as he read the epistle, ‘of that left-handed fellow,’ meaning
Omar. The sentiment, however, was Abu Bekr’s own; but the ‘Sword
of the Lord’ could not be spared.
We shall meet Khâlid next in Chaldæa, by the banks of the river
Euphrates.
 CHAPTER VIII.
CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE REBELS IN THE EAST AND SOUTH
OF ARABIA.

A.H. XI. A.D. 632–3.

Having traced Khâlid’s victorious career

from the north to the centre of Arabia, we Campaigns in the east and
shall now follow the Mussulman arms in south of Arabia. a.h. XI.
their progress from Bahrein and Omân on the Persian Gulf, along
the southern coast to Hadhramaut and Yemen, but more briefly than
before, both because the authorities themselves are brief, and also
because the interest of the story, apart from a few instructive
incidents, centres mainly in the general result, that is, the
reclamation of apostate Arabia.
Beyond Yemâma, skirting the western
shore of the Persian Gulf from Catîf to Bahrein invaded by Alâ. a.h.
Omân, lies the long tract, desert and XI. a.d. 633.
littoral, called Hejer and Bahrein. It was chiefly occupied by the Beni
Bekr, and other branches of the great Beni Rabia family. Mondzir, the
Christian chief of Bahrein, had adopted Islam, and, in
acknowledgment of the Prophet’s suzerainty, entertained a Resident
from Medîna at his court.[62] He died shortly after Mahomet, and
then the whole province rebelled. One tribe alone was kept loyal by
Jarûd, a disciple taught at the feet of the Prophet, who now preached
that, though Mahomet had gone the way of all the prophets, Islam
would not the less survive. Alâ, the Resident, who had fled upon the
outbreak, was reappointed by the Caliph, and despatched with a
force to reclaim the rebellious province.[63] This was after the brilliant
campaign of Khâlid, and the country was sufficiently near the scene
of his operations to feel its influence. As he passed along the
outskirts of Yemâma, the Beni Hanîfa, Temîm, and other tribes,
anxious to prove their loyalty, sent contingents to join the column.[64]
Thus reinforced to double his original numbers, Alâ attempted to
cross the waterless zone of Dahna, lying between him and the Gulf.
The army lost its way, and was overtaken by darkness in the very
midst of the wilderness; the water was all spent, no springs were
known of, and they resigned themselves to despair. With the sun
would arise a scorching heat, and they would all perish of thirst. But,
in answer to their earnest cries and
supplications, as morning broke, water The miraculous lake.
suddenly appeared shining on the horizon.
They hastened forward, and found it to be a lake. Watering their
camels and horses therefrom, they drank themselves abundantly,
and went on their journey joyfully. The marvel is, in the believers’
eyes, the more extraordinary, as no spring had ever been seen in the
wilderness of Dahna before, nor after the most diligent search has
the miraculous lake ever been found again.[65]
The rebellion in Bahrein had by this
time assumed formidable dimensions. Bahrein reduced.
Hotem, a powerful chief, had gathered
around him not only the backsliding tribes, but also the mixed races
of Persian and Indian parentage, who abounded on the shores of the
Gulf;[66] and they had fixed upon a scion of the house of Hîra as their
king. The faithful remnant under Jarûd, blockaded by the rebels,
were nearly succumbing to hunger, when, to their relief, Alâ
appeared. For offensive operations, however, against so great a
host, the Moslem force was still too weak. To guard their position,
they dug a deep trench in front, and for a whole month contented
themselves with single combats and indecisive skirmishing. At last,
one night, finding the enemy disordered and overcome with wine,
they made an attack from all sides, put them to flight, and killing
Hotem, took the prince of Hîra prisoner.[67]
The discomfited force fled, and, taking
ship, found refuge in Dârîn, one of the Miraculous descent on the
island of Dârîn.
numerous islets a little way off from the
mainland, and the seat of a Nestorian bishopric.[68] Thither they
were pursued by Alâ, and here again we are told of a miraculous
interposition. No boats or means of transport were anywhere at
hand. Raising, therefore, a wild invocation to the Lord of Hosts for
help, the Moslems rushed into the sea and crossed the strait as it
had been a shallow sandy beach. The enemy, taken by surprise on
their island, were put utterly to the sword, so that not one escaped to
tell the tale. A pious bard has likened the passage to that of the
Israelites through the Red Sea, and a monk is said to have been
converted by the double miracle of waters breaking out in the
wilderness, and waters drying up in the channel of the great deep.
The spoil was prodigious,[69] and multitudes of women and children
were taken captive.
While thus engaged, Alâ received
material help from loyal followers along the Bahrein reclaimed by Alâ.
coast. They secured the wavering,
protected the rear from surprise, and overawed unruly tribes ever
ready for plunder and rapine. Thus the whole region of Hejer,
reclaimed to the faith, fell peaceably under the government of Alâ.[70]
Amongst those who aided in this work was
Mothanna, a chief of great influence over Mothanna.
the Bekr clans, from one of which he
sprang.[71] Following up the victory of Alâ along the coast, this
warrior in his progress northward reached at last the delta of the
Euphrates, where he inaugurated a movement that was of lasting
importance and which will shortly engage our attention.
The campaign of Omân followed close upon that of Bahrein.[72]
Jeyfar, Prince of Omân, had a year or two before tendered his
allegiance to Mahomet. Amru was
thereupon deputed to be the Prophet’s Omân reconquered by
Hodzeifa.
Representative at his court, and the
demand of tithes from this distant province was foregone, on
condition that they were distributed among the local poor.[73]
Notwithstanding this concession, Mahomet was no sooner dead than
the whole province revolted. The rebellion was led by one Lackît,
who, to swell his influence, claimed himself to be a prophet. Jeyfar
fled to the mountains and Amru to Medîna. The task of reclaiming
Omân and the adjoining province of Mâhra was committed by Abu
Bekr to Hodzeifa and Arfaja, two converts of influence in those parts.
[74] They were assisted by Ikrima, son of Abu Jahl, who (as we have
seen) was bidden by Abu Bekr to retrieve his reputation in this
distant quarter. Arrived in Omân, they effected a junction with Jeyfar,
and were then sufficiently strong to re-occupy Sohâr.[75] An
engagement followed at Dabâ. Here the
Moslems, hard pressed, were near to Battle of Dabâ.
suffering defeat, when, at the critical
moment, a great body of Abd al Cays and other tribes recently
reclaimed in Bahrein appeared on the field and turned the battle in
their favour. The slaughter amongst the enemy was great, and their
families, which they had placed in the rear to nerve their courage, fell
a welcome prize into the believers’ hands. The mart of Dabâ,
enriched by Indian merchandise, yielded a magnificent booty, and
Arfaja was at once deputed to Medîna with the royal Fifth of slaves
and plunder.
Hodzeifa was left behind as governor of
Omân. Ikrima, having reached the Ikrima reduces Mâhra.
easternmost point of Arabia, turning now to
the south-west, pursued his victorious course to Mâhra. His army
was swelled not only by the Bahrein contingent but by fresh levies,
attracted by his success, from the tribes upon his march. Mâhra was
distracted at this moment by the quarrel of two rival chiefs.
Espousing the cause of the weakest, who at once avowed the faith,
Ikrima attacked the other and achieved a great victory. Among the
spoil were 2,000 Bactrian camels and a vast supply of arms and
beasts of burden. This quarter of the peninsula, including the islands
along the coast, was soon completely pacified. After some time
spent here in the re-establishment of order, Ikrima, with an army now
of overwhelming strength, advanced, as he had been instructed, to
join Mohâjir in the campaign against Hadhramaut and Yemen. But
before proceeding further, we must take a brief retrospect of things in
the south and west of the peninsula.
The commotion in that quarter caused
by the rebellion of Aswad, the ‘Veiled Order restored in the Hejâz,
Tihâma, and south-west
Prophet,’ had hardly subsided, when the coast.
death of Mahomet threw the land into a
worse confusion. Mecca and Tâyif, after the first excitement,
remained tolerably secure under their governors, the youthful
Attâb[76] and Othmân ibn al Aás. But in the Tihâma (coast washed
by the Red Sea), as well as in the interior, misrule and violence were
rife. A party of marauders from amongst the Beni Khozâa and other
lawless Bedouins round about the Holy City, ready as ever for
plunder and rapine, were dispersed with great slaughter by the levies
of Attâb. Order was maintained by a body of 500 men quartered
within the sacred limits, and by small pickets throughout the districts
of Mecca and Tâyif. But between them and Yemen there was
nothing save turmoil and alarm. Troops of bandit horse, remnants of
the false prophet’s army, hovered about the country to the south and
west of Najrân. They were headed by Amr ibn Mádekerib, a poet of
note and a chief of great local influence, before whom Khâlid ibn
Saîd, the governor of Najrân, fled for his life. On one occasion,
however, Khâlid, with but a small following, surprised Amr and
spoiled him of his horse and the sword Samsât, inherited from
Himyar kings and famous in Arab song.[77] The whole coast was in a
ferment, and the loyal adherents of Islam were fain to flee for shelter
to fastnesses in the mountains. Bands of the Beni Azd, occupying
the uplands, approached the sacred territory in threatening attitude,
but were dispersed by the governor of Tâyif. The whole Tihâma was
overrun by swarming bands of the Akk and Ashár tribes, who closed
the roads and barred communications with the south. Tâhir, who had
been placed by Mahomet over these tribes, was now commissioned
with a force to rally the faithful remnant on the spot, and to clear the
country of the robbers infesting it. This he did so effectually that the
roads became again impassable, but now simply from the offensive
multitude of carcases strewn upon them.[78]
In Yemen peace was not so easily restored. The false prophet
Aswad (it will be recollected) was assassinated by three of his
courtiers, who, at the bidding of Mahomet, conspired with his wife
against him.[79] These were the Arab chief
Cays ibn Abd Yaghûth, commander of his Confusion in Yemen following
the assassination of Aswad.
army, and the two ministers, of Persian
descent, Feroze and Dâdweih, who thereupon succeeded to the
government at Sanâa.[80] When tidings of these events reached
Medîna just after Mahomet’s death, Abu Bekr appointed Feroze to
be his lieutenant, with Cays and Dâdweih to help him. The Arab
blood of Cays rebelled against serving under a foreigner, and he
plotted to expel the whole Persian race. The princes of Himyar,
however, Dzul Kelâa and others,[81] would not help him, and he was
obliged to call in the aid of the brigand Amr ibn Mádekerib and his
marauding bands. Dâdweih was treacherously slain by Amr at a
feast, but Feroze escaped, and after much hardship, secured his
retreat with a friendly tribe in the hills of Khaulân. For a time Cays
carried all before him. The family of Feroze was taken captive, and
the Persian settlers, pursued in every direction, fled to the
mountains, or took ship from Aden. Feroze appealed for help to the
Caliph; but it was long before he had any troops to send. So Feroze
cast about for himself, and at length, by the aid of some loyal tribes,
put the troops of Cays to flight, regained possession of his family and
reoccupied Sanâa.[82]
But more effectual help to quell the
disordered country was soon at hand. On Mohâjir marches from
one side, Mohâjir was marching from the Medîna upon Yemen. End of
a.h. XI. Spring, a.d. 633.
north. Appointed by the Prophet his
lieutenant in Hadhramaut, he had long been detained by sickness at
Medîna, and perhaps also by the inability of the Caliph to furnish him
with a following. He was the last of the commanders sent forth by
Abu Bekr to reclaim the backsliding tribes. Passing through Tâyif and
Najrân, as late, probably, as ten or twelve months after the death of
Mahomet,[83] he was joined on the way by various loyal tribes, and
thus approached the disturbed country at the head of a substantial
force. On the other side, Ikrima, with his great and ever-growing
army, was advancing from the east. Hastening to meet Mohâjir, he,
for the present, left Hadhramaut on his right, and passed rapidly on
to Aden. Alarmed at the gathering storm, Cays ibn Abd Yaghûth and
Amr ibn Mádekerib had joined their forces to oppose Mohâjir. But
soon quarrelling, they parted, and, according to the wont of Arab
poets, abused each other in insulting verse.[84] Amr, perceiving
opposition to be now in vain, sought, by a strange expedient, to gain
his safety. He made a night attack upon Cays, and carried him
prisoner to Mohâjir; but he had forgotten a safe-conduct for himself.
Mohâjir, therefore, seized them both, and sent them in chains to
Medîna. The Caliph was at first minded to put Amr to death because
of the murder of Dâdweih; but he denied the crime, and there was no
evidence to prove it. ‘Art thou not ashamed,’ said Abu Bekr to him,
‘that following the rebel cause, thou art ever either a fugitive or in
bonds? Hadst thou been a defender of the Faith instead, then had
the Lord raised thee above thy fellows.’ ‘So assuredly it is,’ replied
the humbled chief; ‘I will embrace the faith, and never again will I
desert it.’ So the Caliph forgave them both; and his clemency was
not abused, for we find these gallant but unscrupulous chiefs soon
after fighting loyally in the Persian war.
After this, Yemen was speedily reduced
to order. The rebel horse, remnant of the Peace restored in Yemen.
false prophet’s army, was pursued without
quarter, and soon exterminated. And Mohâjir, established firmly at
Sanâa, ruled in security over the whole of that country, from Najrân
to Aden.
Mohâjir and Ikrima were now at leisure
to turn their arms against Hadhramaut, the Rebellion in Hadhramaut
under Ashâth ibn Cays.
great province which occupies the south of
Arabia, east of Yemen. There Ziâd, who held Mohâjir’s government
during his protracted absence, was hard pressed. He had, at an
early period, aroused the hatred of the Beni Kinda by harshness in
collecting the tithe; but, supported by the Sakûn, and other tribes
hostile to the Beni Kinda, he had obtained several important
advantages over them.[85] On one occasion he carried off, with great
spoil, the families of a vanquished tribe. Asháth ibn Cays, chief of the
Kinda, was moved by their cries; and, having gathered a strong
force, fell upon Ziâd, and rescued the captives. It is the same Asháth
who, when he tendered his homage to Mahomet, had betrothed to
himself the sister of Abu Bekr.[86] Thus compromised he went into
active rebellion, and roused the whole country against Ziâd, who,
surrounded by the enemy, despatched an urgent summons to
Mohâjir to hasten to his deliverance.
By this time Mohâjir and Ikrima,
marching respectively from Sanâa and Subdued by Mohâjir and
Aden, had effected a junction at Mâreb, Ikrima.
and were crossing the sandy desert of Sayhad, which lay between
them and Hadhramaut. Learning the critical position of Ziâd, Mohâjir
set off in haste with a flying squadron, and, joined by Ziâd, fell upon
Asháth, and discomfited him with great slaughter. The routed enemy
fled for refuge to the stronghold of Nojeir, which Mohâjir immediately
invested. Ikrima soon came up with the main body, when there were
troops enough both to surround the city and also to ravage all the
country round about. Stung by witnessing the ruin of their kindred,
and preferring death to dishonour, the garrison sallied forth, and
fought the Moslems at every point about the fortress. After a
desperate struggle, in which the approaches were filled with the
dead, they were driven back. Meanwhile Abu Bekr, apprised of the
obstinate resistance, sent orders to make an example of the rebels,
and give no quarter. The wretched garrison, with the enemy daily
increasing, and no prospect of relief, were now bereft of hope.
Seeing the position desperate, the wily Asháth made his way to
Ikrima and treacherously agreed to deliver up the fortress if nine
lives were guaranteed. The Moslems
entered, slew the fighting men, and took Ashâth sent prisoner to
the women captive. The list of the nine to Medîna
Bekr.
and released by Abu

be spared was presented to Mohâjir. ‘Thy

name is not here!’ cried the conqueror, exultingly, to Ashâth; for the
craven traitor had forgotten, in the excitement of the moment, to
enter his own name;—‘the Lord be praised, who hath condemned
thee out of thine own mouth.’ So, having cast him into chains, he
was about to order his execution, when Ikrima interposed and
induced him, much against his will, to refer the cause to Abu Bekr.
The crowd of captive women, mourning the massacre of their sons
and husbands, loaded the recreant as he passed by with bitter
imprecations.[87] Arrived at Medîna, the Caliph abused him as a
pusillanimous wretch who had neither the power to lead, nor yet the
courage to defend, his people; and he threatened him with death.
But at last, moved by his appeal to the terms agreed upon by Ikrima,
and by his protestations that he would thenceforth fight bravely for
the faith, Abu Bekr not only forgave him, but allowed him to fulfil the
marriage with his sister.[88] Ashâth remained for a while in idleness
at Medîna, and the Caliph was heard to say that one of the three
things that he repented having done during his Caliphate was his
weakness in sparing this rebel’s life. But afterwards Ashâth went to
the wars in Syria and Irâc, and there redeemed his name.
By these operations the rebellion in the
south was crushed, and the reign of Islam Authority re-established in
completely re-established. Mohâjir elected the south.
to remain in Yemen, where he shared the government with Feroze.
Ziâd continued to administer Hadhramaut.
A curious story is told of a lady whom Ikrima married at Aden,
and carried with him into his camp. She
had been betrothed to Mahomet, but the Ikrima marries a lady who had
marriage had never been consummated. been betrothed to Mahomet.
The soldiers murmured, and questioned the propriety of Ikrima’s
marriage. Mohâjir referred the matter to Abu Bekr, who decided that
there was nothing wrong in the proceeding, as Mahomet had never
fulfilled his contract with the betrothed damsel.[89]
I should not here omit to mention the
fate of two songstresses in Yemen, who Two songstresses mutilated
were accused, one of satirising the for profane singing.
Prophet, the other of ridiculing the Moslems, in their songs. Mohâjir
had the hands of both cut off, and also (to stay their singing for the
future) their front teeth pulled out. The Caliph, on hearing of it,
approved the punishment of the first; for, said he: ‘Crime against a
prophet is not as crime against a common man; and, indeed, had the
case been first referred to me, I should, as a warning to others, have
directed her execution.’ But he disapproved the mutilation of the
other.
 CHAPTER IX.
ENROLMENT OF THE BEDOUIN TRIBES FOR WAR BEYOND
ARABIA.

With the campaign in Hadhramaut,

opposition in Arabia was at an end. A brief Opposition beaten down in
Arabia.
review may be of use before we pass on to
the wars without.
North, east, south, and west throughout
the peninsula, the circle of victory was now Review of the military
complete. It began, we might say, with the operations
apostasy.
which crushed the

avenging expedition of Osâma, directed by

the Prophet against the Syrian border. This was followed up, more
leisurely, by the arms of Amru, who restored the prestige of Islam
amongst the Codhâa and other tribes on the Roman frontier. During
Osâma’s absence the brave Caliph, with but a scanty following, beat
back the rebel tribes which, hovering around Medîna, threatened the
heart of Islam. Then followed Khâlid’s brilliant achievements, which,
beginning with the Beni Tay on the north-east, and reclaiming the
apostate tribes as he moved south, ended with the bloody and
decisive field of Yemâma in the centre of Arabia. The flower of the
Moslem troops was engaged in this great struggle, which decided
the fate of Islam, then trembling in the balance; and while it was in
progress, operations languished elsewhere. Subsequently, the
campaign throughout the peninsula was carried on vigorously, but in
many quarters with limited resources and varying fortune; till Ikrima,
sweeping down the eastern coast, joined Mohâjir in the south, and
stamped out the last embers of apostasy.
The rebellion was totally suppressed, but the people remained
still backward and sullen. The wild and
turbulent tribes were brought back Arabia sullen, till roused by
the war-cry from without.
unwillingly. They chafed at the demand of
tithe and obedience to Medîna. It was simply force and fear that as
yet attached them to the Caliph. The question occurs, what would
have been the fortune of Islam had no grand impulse arisen from
without? It may be difficult to say, but the prospect certainly was not
encouraging. Convictions so shallow and aspirations so low as those
of the Bedouin would soon have disappeared; and force and fear
could not long have availed to hold together the repellent atoms
which go to form the Arab nation. The South was jealous of the
North; the Bedouins of the desert scorned the population settled in
towns and villages; every tribe had some cause of rivalry with its
neighbour; new feuds were ever arising out of the law of blood. Even
in Medîna, the cradle of the faith, the Beni Aus were impatient of the
Beni Khazraj, and both were jealous of the Refugees from Mecca.
The only authority recognised by a Bedouin is the authority of his
tribal chief, and even that sits lightly. To him freedom is life; and
dependence on a central power most hateful. The yoke of Islam (had
nothing external supervened) would soon have been shaken off, and
Arabia returned again to its former state. But fortunately for Islam
(sadly for the interests of humanity) a new idea electrified the nation.
No sooner was apostasy put down than, first in Chaldæa and then in
Syria, collision with the Christian tribes kindled the fire of foreign war;
and forthwith the Arabs, both town and Bedouin, were riveted to
Islam by a common bond—the love of rapine and the lust of spoil.
That the heritage of Islam is the world
was an afterthought. The idea (spite of The Moslems crusade due to
much proleptic tradition) had presented circumstances
design.
rather than

itself but dimly, if at all, to Mahomet

himself. His world was Arabia; and for it Islam was sent. From first to
last the call was made primarily to Arabs and to them alone. It is true
that, some years before his death, Mahomet had summoned certain
kings and princes to confess the catholic faith of Abraham; but the
step had not in any way been followed up. Nor was it otherwise with
the command to fight against idolators, Jews, and Christians: that
command was announced to the Arab tribes assembled in
pilgrimage at Minâ;[90] it had reference only to them, and had no
immediate bearing whatever on warfare beyond the bounds of the
peninsula. The Prophet’s dying legacy was to the same effect:
—‘See,’ said he, ‘that there be but one faith throughout Arabia.’ The
seed of a universal claim, indeed, had been sown; but that it ever
germinated was due to circumstances rather than design. Even
Omar, after his rôle of splendid victories, manifested a continual
dread lest his armies should proceed too far; and, separated by
some gulf or mountain range, should be cut off from succour and
exposed to danger. Therefore he set barriers (as we shall see) to the
ambition of his people, beyond which they should not pass.
Nevertheless, universal empire was
altogether in accord with the spirit of the The Arabs issue forth as the
conquerors of the world.
faith. ‘When a people leaveth off to fight in
the ways of the Lord,’ said Abu Bekr in his inaugural address (and, in
saying it, struck the key-note of Islam), ‘the Lord casteth off that
people.’ And so, when the Rubicon, the border land of Arabia, was
once crossed, the horizon enlarged in ever-widening circles, till it
embraced the world. Now indeed the marauding spirit of the Bedouin
was in unison with the militant spirit of Islam. The cry of plunder and
of conquest reverberated throughout the land, and was answered
eagerly. The movement began naturally with the tribes in the north
which had been first reclaimed from their apostasy, and whose
restless spirit led them over the frontier. Later on, in the second year
of the Caliphate, the exodus spread to the people of the south. At
first the Caliph forbade that help should be taken from such as had
backslidden. The privilege of fighting for the faith was reserved for
those who had remained firm in its profession. But, step by step, as
new spheres opened out, and the cry ran through the land for fresh
levies to fill up the ‘martyr’ gaps, the ban was put aside, and all were
welcome. Warrior after warrior, column after column, whole tribes in
endless succession, with their women and children, issued forth to
battle. And ever, at the marvellous tale of cities conquered, of booty
rich beyond compute, of fair captives distributed on the field—‘to
every man a damsel or two,’ and, above all, at the sight of the royal
Fifth of spoil and slaves sent to Medîna—fresh tribes arose and
went. Onward and still onward, like swarms from the hive, one after
another they poured forth, pressed first to the north, and spread
thence in great masses to the east and west.
 It must not, however, be overlooked
that though apostasy was thus condoned, Discredit still attaching to
and in the blaze of victory almost forgotten, apostasy.
a certain discredit still clung to the backslider. His guilt was not like
that of others who had committed sins, however black, ignorantly
before conversion. The apostate, having been once enlightened,
cast by his fall a deliberate slur upon Islam. And therefore no chief
who had joined the great apostasy was ever promoted to a chief
command. He might fight, and was welcome, in the ranks, and was
even allowed to head small parties of fifty or a hundred; but to the
last the post of leader was denied him.
The Arab race, thus emerging from its
desert-home, became the aristocracy of Slaves of Arab blood set
Islam. Conquered nations, even if they free.
embraced the faith, fell into a lower class. The Arabs were the
dominant caste wheresoever they might go, and it was only as
‘clients’ of the noble race that people of other lands could share their
privileges—crumbs, as it were, which fell from off their table. Yet
great numbers of the Arabs themselves were slaves, taken prisoner
during the apostasy or in previous intertribal warfare, and held in
captivity by their fellow-countrymen. Omar felt the inconsistency. It
was not fit that any of the noble race should remain in bondage.
When, therefore, he succeeded to the Caliphate, he decreed their
freedom. ‘The Lord,’ he said, ‘hath given to us of Arab blood the
victory, and great conquests without. It is not meet that any one of
us, taken captive in the days of ignorance,[91] or in the wars against
the apostate tribes, should be holden in slavery.’ All slaves of Arab
descent were accordingly ransomed, excepting only such bondmaids
as had borne their masters children. Men who had lost wives or
children now set out in search, if haply they might find and claim
them. Strange tales are told of some of these disconsolate journeys.
Ashâth recovered two of his wives taken captive in Nojeir. But some
of the women who had been carried prisoners to Medîna preferred
remaining with their captors.[92]
Before passing on to more stirring scenes, it may be proper here
to notice some domestic events occurring in the first year of Abu
Bekr’s Caliphate. In it Fâtima, the
Prophet’s daughter and wife of Aly, died. Death of Fâtima, the
She had claimed a share in her father’s Prophet’s daughter.
property. Repairing, in company with her husband, to the Caliph, she
said: ‘Give me the inheritance that falleth to me.’ Abu Bekr inquired
whether it was her portion of the household goods that she desired.
‘Fadak and Kheibar,’ she answered, ‘and the tithe lands of Medîna—
my portion therein, even as thy daughters will inherit of thee when
thou diest.’ The Caliph answered: ‘Truly thy father was better than I,
and thou art better than my daughters. But the Prophet hath said, No
one shall be my heir; that which I leave shall be for alms. Now,
therefore, the family of Mahomet shall not eat of these lands; for, by
the Lord! I will not alter a tittle of that which he hath ordained. But,’
added he, ‘if thou art certain that thy father gave thee this property, I
will accept thy word, and fulfil his promise.’ She answered that she
had no evidence excepting that of Omm Ayman, the Prophet’s aged
nurse, who had said that her father had given her Fadak.[93] So Abu
Bekr maintained his decision. Fâtima felt aggrieved, and was much
displeased. She survived but a few months,[94] leaving two sons,
Hasan and Hosein, through whom alone the issue of Mahomet was
perpetuated. Aly, who, during her lifetime, had held aloof, began
after her decease, like the rest of the chief Companions, to frequent
the Caliph’s court.
In this year Abu Bekr lost his son
Abdallah, who died from the effects of a Death of Abu Bekr’s son.
wound received at the siege of Tâyif.
As supreme judge in civil causes, the
Caliph nominated Omar; but warlike Omar Chief Justice.
operations so occupied men’s minds, that
for the time the office was a sinecure.
The presidency at the annual
Pilgrimage is always carefully recorded by The first Pilgrimage under
the annalists of Islam. The Caliph was too the Caliphate. Dzul Hijj. a.h.
XI. March, a.d. 633.
much engrossed with the commotion
throughout Arabia to proceed himself to Mecca on the first
Pilgrimage of his reign, and he therefore commissioned Attâb,
governor of the holy city, to preside in his stead.[95]
So ended the first year of the Caliphate.