New Books Network Yossef Rapoport, "Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Jan 29, 2026
Yossef Rapoport, a historian of the medieval Arabic-speaking Middle East, explores how rural communities transformed into Arab identities. He challenges migration-based stories. He examines peasants, land rights, tax records, revolts, and how claims of Arab lineage interacted with Islam and Turkish rule. The conversation traces social change from local villages to clan-based Arabness by the 15th century.
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Arab Identity Formed Locally
- The common story that Arab tribes settled and 'Arabized' the countryside is misleading and simplistic.
- Yossef Rapoport argues clan identities formed inside villages in response to political and fiscal change rather than incoming tribes.
Peasants Were Landowning Christians
- Early medieval cultivators in Egypt were mostly Christian and often owned the land they farmed.
- Papyri show villagers used Christian/Coptic names and lacked clan structures prior to later reorganization.
Iqtaʿ Reshaped Rural Social Order
- From the 11th century the Iqtaʿ system turned free cultivators into tenants under military leaseholders.
- This fiscal shift produced village headmen and cohesive clan-like groups who negotiated leases collectively.
