Les (inter)dépendances nomades/sédentaires des marges iraniennes et centrasiatiques de l’empire islamique au xe siècle : l’exemple des produits de l’élevage

Abstract

While imperial rhetoric in medieval Islam in the 10th century emphasises the defensive functions of the political leader in the face of the depredations of Turkic tribes and assigns a threatening dimension to nomadic identity, a regional or even local analysis of economic exchanges and daily practices testifies to the relations of dependence between 'nomads' and 'sedentaries'. In fact, in the Iranian and Central Asian margins of the medieval Islamic empire, where the official discourse disseminated by the relays of the caliphal power often associates the Turks with the infidel barbarians threatening the Islamic world, the data of the natural environment (geomorphological fragmentation, water network) and the cartography of human presence (cities, rural cantons, steppes and desert expanses) nuance this dichotomous representation. The analysis of economic practices in the textual sources, particularly trade, reveals the need for local populations to adapt to the presence of others, to share natural resources (water, pastures) in order to develop and exploit raw materials. The example of the exploitation of animal products (actors, species, spatial distribution) constitutes a central element of reflection on the question of the place of pastoral populations in the societies of Khorassan and Transoxiana, without excluding the theme of nomads' access to manufactured products.