ABSTRACT
Early Islamic elite culture is still something of a mystery and important questions remain to be investigated. Among the most central of these questions are the extent to which this aristocracy 2 derived its wealth and status from the ownership and exploitation of landed property. In this paper I want to argue that the early Islamic elites of the Fertile Crescent derived much of their income and prestige from the ownership of large landed estates. I also want to investigate the environment of aristocratic residence and display, or, in more concrete terms, whether the aristocrats lived on their country estates or were simply city dwellers who derived their income from properties that they seldom visited and never lived on. I shall suggest that, unusually in the history of the Middle East, the early Islamic ruling class did actually reside, for at least part of the time, on their estates and that they constructed large and richly decorated buildings on these estates to be their centres of entertainment and display.
