Wa-bi-Radhan ma bi-Radhan...: The landed property of 'Abdallah ibn Mas'ud'

Wa-bi-Radhan ma bi-Radhan...: The landed property of 'Abdallah ibn Mas'ud'

Author: 
Lecker, Michael
Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press
Date published: 
2015
Record type: 
Journal Title: 
Bulletin of the school of Oriental and African studies
Source: 
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 78, No. 1, February 2015, pp. 53-66
Abstract: 

Digitized text repositories (such as al-Jami al-Kabir, al-Maktaba al-Shamila and Maktabat Ahl al-Bayt) open new horizons in the study of early Islamic history. By employing them it was found that Abdallah ibn Mas ud had at least four courts, two in Kufa and two in Medina, and at least two estates cultivated by sharecroppers, one in Radhan near Kufa and another in Sayla in near Qadisiyya. His situation is comparable to that of a member of the pre-Islamic Sassanian landed aristocracy of absentee landlords. He also had three households in three different places. The desire for control and worldly assets is human, and those who lack it never make it to the highest echelons of power. Put differently, hagiography should not be mistaken for historiography. Whether or not Ibn Mas ud's Radhan should be linked with the Radhanite Jewish merchants remains an open question.

Language: 

CITATION: Lecker, Michael. Wa-bi-Radhan ma bi-Radhan...: The landed property of 'Abdallah ibn Mas'ud' . : Cambridge University Press , 2015. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 78, No. 1, February 2015, pp. 53-66 - Available at: https://library.au.int/wa-bi-radhan-ma-bi-radhan-landed-property-abdallah-ibn-masud-2