IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0069.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Immovable capital goods in medieval Muslim lands: why water-mills and building cranes went missing

Author

Listed:
  • Bas van Bavel
  • Eltjo Buringh
  • Jessica Dijkman

Abstract

Immovable capital goods such as water-mills were in widespread use in Muslim lands in the early medieval period, just as in the Latin West. In the later Middle Ages, however, vertical windmills and cranes, then widely employed in Europe, were not introduced there, while the number of water-mills dwindled. This decline was concentrated in specific parts of the Muslim world, which rules out time-invariant and generic causes like religion. We show that it was the growing insecurity of property rights and introduction of a specific system of land tenure (ikta) that prevented application of such labor-saving capital goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Bas van Bavel & Eltjo Buringh & Jessica Dijkman, 2015. "Immovable capital goods in medieval Muslim lands: why water-mills and building cranes went missing," Working Papers 0069, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucg:wpaper:0069
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cgeh.nl/sites/default/files/WorkingPapers/CGEHWP69_VanBaveletal.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pamuk, Şevket & Shatzmiller, Maya, 2014. "Plagues, Wages, and Economic Change in the Islamic Middle East, 700–1500," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(1), pages 196-229, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van Bavel, Bas, 2016. "The Invisible Hand?: How Market Economies have Emerged and Declined Since AD 500," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199608133.
    2. Hans-Bernd Schaefer & Rok Spruk, 2024. "Islamic Law, Western European Law and the Roots of Middle East's Long Divergence: a Comparative Empirical Investigation (800-1600)," Papers 2401.14435, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    3. Anthony Edo & Jacques Melitz, 2023. "Wealth and shifting demand pressures on the price level in England after the Black Death," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 17(1), pages 91-124, January.
    4. Bas Van Bavel & Eltjo Buringh & Jessica Dijkman, 2018. "Mills, cranes, and the great divergence: the use of immovable capital goods in western Europe and the Middle East, ninth to sixteenth centuries," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 71(1), pages 31-54, February.
    5. Maya Shatzmiller, 2022. "Structural change and economic development in the Islamic Middle East 700–1500: Population levels and property rights," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 69(1), pages 4-22, February.
    6. Robert C. Allen, 2019. "Real wages once more: a response to Judy Stephenson," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 72(2), pages 738-754, May.
    7. Vincent Geloso & Peter T. Leeson, 2020. "Are Anarcho-Capitalists Insane? Medieval Icelandic Conflict Institutions in Comparative Perspective," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 130(6), pages 957-974.
    8. Fochesato, Mattia, 2018. "Origins of Europe’s north-south divide: Population changes, real wages and the ‘little divergence’ in early modern Europe," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 91-131.
    9. Adham Sayed & Bin Peng, 2021. "Pandemics and income inequality: a historical review," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(4), pages 1-17, April.
    10. Robert C. Allen & Leander Heldring, 2022. "The Collapse of Civilization in Southern Mesopotamia," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 16(2), pages 369-404, May.
    11. Maya Shatzmiller, 2015. "An early knowledge economy: the adoption of paper, human capital and economic change in the medieval Islamic Middle East, 700-1300 AD," Working Papers 0064, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    12. Ilan Noy & Tomáš Uher, 2022. "Four New Horsemen of an Apocalypse? Solar Flares, Super-volcanoes, Pandemics, and Artificial Intelligence," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 393-416, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    capital goods; Middle East; Middle Ages; great divergence;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucg:wpaper:0069. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Carmichael (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cgeuunl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.