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A sweeping account of the evolution of early Islamic culture.

This book argues that early Islamic literature was influenced less by the Qur’an and more by the bureaucratic culture of the Diwan, the secular political system in place long before a written religious culture emerged. As Houari Touati explains, this secular Arab culture quickly outstripped written religious erudition: first, because of the diverse communities who participated in the scholarly networks of the empire; and second, because of the universalizing influence of the period’s Greco-Arabic translation movement. This process of cross-cultural fertilization, Touati recounts, flourished within Islam until the canonization of the Hadith (the official sayings, actions, and sanctions of Muhammad) began to disrupt this dynamic of interchange after the tenth century, without, however, managing to put a definitive end to it. The Fabric of Classical Islamic Culture is a wide-ranging, comparative account of the parallel development of secular and sacred culture that produced the modern Arabic world.

Textiles as sites of power, production, and rebellion in the early modern Andes.

The Fabric of Resistance: Textile Workshops and the Rise of Rebellious Landscapes in Colonial Peru documents the impact of Spanish colonial institutions of labor on identity and social cohesion in Peru. Through archaeological and historical lines of evidence, Di Hu examines the long-term social conditions that enabled the large-scale rebellions in the late Spanish colonial period in Peru. Hu argues that ordinary people from different backgrounds pushed back against the top-down identity categories imposed by the Spanish colonial government and in the process created a cosmopolitan social landscape that later facilitated broader rebellion.

Hu’s case study is Pomacocha, the site of an important Spanish colonial hacienda (agricultural estate) and obraje (textile workshop). At its height, the latter had more than one hundred working families and sold textiles all over the Andes. Through analysis of this site, Hu explores three main long-term causes of rebellions against Spanish oppression. First, the Spanish colonial economy provided motivation and the social spaces for intercaste (indigenous, African, and mestizo) mixing at textile workshops. Second, new hybrid cultural practices and political solidarity arose there that facilitated the creation of new rebellious identities. Third, the maturation in the eighteenth century of popular folklore that reflected the harsh nature of Spanish labor institutions helped workers from diverse backgrounds gain a systemic understanding of exploitation.

This study provides a fresh archaeological and historical perspectives on the largest and most cosmopolitan indigenous-led rebellions of the Americas. Hu interweaves analyses of society at multiple scales including fine-grained perspectives of social networks, demography, and intimate details of material life in the textile workshop. She examines a wide range of data sources including artifacts, food remains, architectural plans, account books, censuses, court documents, contracts, maps, and land title disputes.