Dr. Lorenzo Bondioli

Biography

Lorenzo Bondioli's work investigates the political economy of medieval Islamic empires, aiming to reveal the antagonistic symbiosis between merchant and ruling classes, as well as the entanglement of subaltern elite groups. His research particularly focuses on the interplay of labor, capital, and fiscal structures in Egypt during the Fatimid era (tenth to twelfth centuries CE), a period when the country presided over an Afro-Asian empire functioning as a key engine for trade in the Mediterranean and the Western Indian Ocean. The Cairo Geniza, a collection of Arabic papyrus and paper documents, forms the bedrock of his research. His 2021 PhD dissertation, which won the Middle East Medievalists Dissertation Prize in 2022, explored the increasing commercialization of Egyptian society from the ninth to the twelfth centuries CE, describing the changing patterns of taxation, capital investment, land tenure, rural indebtedness, and proto-industrial manufacturing. He is currently collaborating on multiple projects to edit, translate, and study new Egyptian fiscal documents, while simultaneously working on articles that place medieval Islam within the longue durée of history and the role of capital in non-capitalist societies.

Research Interests