As of late I’ve been interested in comparing the social systems of the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds.
That basically boils down to comparing the middle east to Europe.
Europe’s middle ages are generally characterized as fedual and decentralized.
The caliphates however were much more centralized, as evidenced by the existence of a caliph
It also seems to me that the umayyads were much more arab centric than the abbasids given the whole revolution
Beyond that, I’m not super familiar with the internal organization of the caliphates. How did resources flow up to the caliph? Were there equivalents to local lords? I don’t think there were serfs, but what was it like for the average person? In short, what were the social systems of the umayyads and abbasids if not feudalism, and how did they compare to contemporary europe?
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