Work, Shops and Markets in Abbasid Cities

From the eighth through the tenth centuries, Baghdad’s streets brought together craftsmen, wage workers, peddlers, merchants, porters and household staff. The Abbasid caliphate, founded in 750, made Baghdad its capital in 762; Samarra served as the court’s capital from 836 to 892. Demand from residents, officials and the court sustained many kinds of work, while connected provinces supplied goods and skilled labour. From the tenth century, autonomous dynasties governed parts of the former empire even as Abbasid caliphs remained in Baghdad. The caliphate ended with the city’s conquest in 1258.

Workshops, shops and market quarters

Work could happen at a bench, in a customer’s home, in an elite household or near a stall where goods were sold. Some artisans made items on commission: a customer agreed on a product, and the craft worker was paid for that work. Other people sold finished goods or their labour directly. In Basra during the eighth and ninth centuries, related occupations clustered around specialized markets. Baghdad’s Attabiya quarter became known for silk production; in 985, its silk workers protested a new tax on silk manufacture. The protest shows that a levy on production could reach the people doing the work as well as the merchants selling the cloth.

A dated textile from Tinnis in Egypt shows how several skills could meet in one object. Made in 900–901, it has red silk embroidery on a linen ground and an inscription naming Abbasid caliph al-Muʿtadid and Harun ibn Khumarawayh, ruler of Egypt’s Tulunid dynasty. Linen was woven first; a worker then added the inscription with a needle. The text also names Tinnis and the year, making this an unusually precise record of place, date and courtly patronage. Such robes could be worn by rulers or given to courtiers and foreign officials.

Markets connected these workshops with customers and with one another. From at least the late eighth century, a state market inspector called the muhtasib supervised trade and industry. His duties included checking product quality and weights and measures and keeping market dealings orderly. Most wage agreements were negotiated directly between employers and workers, with little involvement from the market inspector. The Juristic prescriptions discussed standards for fair transactions, while the inspector dealt with practical conduct in the market.

Food sellers and household service

Prepared food involved several stages between grain or livestock and a meal. Early Abbasid Basra’s specialized markets included fixed sellers of bread, meat, fish, grain and vegetables; mobile vendors carried drinks, fruit and food through streets and lanes. People could buy from a shopfront or from a seller moving through the market. A tenth-century Baghdad cookbook compiled by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq describes bazmaward, a layered bread roll served in slices. The cook lays chopped vegetables on soft, thin bread, adds layers of cooked meat, sliced egg, herbs, cheese, walnuts and olives, seasons the filling, rolls the bread tightly and cuts it crosswise into discs. The recipe turns assembly, layering and portioning into visible kitchen work. Its refined ingredients and courtly setting belong to an elite cookbook; carriers and kitchen workers connected ingredients to the finished dish.

Baghdad’s location made moving food and other goods part of urban work. Most cargo moving from Siraf and other Gulf ports to Baghdad probably changed vessels at Basra or nearby Obolla (Ubullah). Seagoing ships had difficulty navigating the shallow, marshy lower rivers, so river craft and canals carried cargo north toward Baghdad. Porters then moved it through the city to buyers. Markets depended on both sellers with fixed places and people whose work began at a landing place or continued along the street.

Households and institutions employed cooks, attendants and other service workers. Their pay and authority varied. One account preserved about a future vizier describes his early career as kitchen steward to Harthama ibn Aʿyan in Harun al-Rashid’s reign. He received fifteen dirhams a month and a bread ration. After he saved his employer money on a banquet and showed him the account, Harthama offered a raise; the steward requested ten dirhams more, but received four. The episode shows how a worker’s record of expenses could become a basis for negotiating pay.

Many urban workers were free men and women, some paid wages and others selling their own products or services. Elite households also relied on enslaved people as domestic servants, workshop labourers and trade agents. These arrangements could place people in the same workplace while giving them radically different control over their labour and earnings.

Paper, copying and the book trade

By the ninth century, warraq described a paper and book worker in Baghdad. The role could include copying manuscripts, assembling books, selling books and selling paper; scholars also used this work to earn income. The book market, suq al-warraqin, became a place where readers and learned people met to exchange information about new texts. By the eleventh century, these tasks increasingly separated into specialist jobs such as copying, binding, painting, bookselling and paper selling.

Paper connected these workers to production beyond Iraq. Papermaking was already practiced in Central Asia, including Samarkand, by the eighth century. By the tenth century, Samarkand paper was known as an export, and paper had spread widely through Islamic lands.

A thirteenth-century treatise describes papermaking in Baghdad. Papermakers beat worn cotton cloth and soaked it in water until it became pulp. They placed the pulp in a mould to form sheets, set the wet sheets on reeds in the wind, then laid them against walls to dry completely for two or three days. The account shows how discarded cloth became a writing surface.

Once sheets reached Baghdad, copyists needed a text to reproduce, ink and writing tools, and time to compare their work with an exemplar. Booksellers linked the finished manuscripts to readers and patrons. The Fihrist, compiled around 990 by the Baghdad bookseller Ibn al-Nadim, catalogued authors, titles and subjects known to its compiler, reflecting the specialized knowledge surrounding this trade.