© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi � �. ��63/9789004345058_0�5 CHAPTER 14 The Struggle over Water Evaluating the ‘Water Culture’ of Syrian Peasants under Mamluk Rule* Bethany J. Walker On Moral Economy and “Water Culture” In 799/1396, acting on the repeated (verbal and written) complaints by local peasants and administrators, Sultan Barqūq had his supervisor of the Jordan River Valley (mushidd al-aghwār), Amīr Iyās al-Jarkashī, arrested and killed. The man was truly despised. He was corrupt, forcing sales of “his” sugar at in- flated prices (ṭarḥ) on local residents, and tyrannical, amputating the hands of men accused of theft. Worst of all, however, he interfered in local water prac- tices by diverting communal water to his own plantations. From the local per- spective, and that of the Damascus-based historian Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba, the local economy collapsed as a result.1 Al-Jarkashī’s behavior was unethical, culturally disrespectful, and financially irresponsible. Peasants and the urban poor frequently rebelled against the Mamluk state during times of limited resources, famine, and extreme poverty.2 Urban riots and the filing of formal complaints constituted a kind of communal action that expressed the moral indignation of the marginalized and otherwise powerless against the overwhelming power of a militarized state. These forms of social protest, when the terms of fairness and justice were breached by a seemingly indifferent officialdom, were manifestations of the moral economy of local society and, as such, give us a glimpse into the social norms and political cul- ture of the non-elite. Land and water were critical flash points in encounters between Mamluk officials and peasants. Although land and water really con- stitute a single unit, and should not be conceptually separated from one an- other, limited and irregular access to water, as was the case for the dry-farmed *  The topic of this essay pays tribute to Amalia Levanoni’s 2008 article on Cairo’s water supply. Not only a fine piece of scholarship, it demonstrates the wide range of intellectual interests that this highly influential scholar has explored over the course of her career and demon- strates quite clearly the rich narratives about water systems that can be culled from the his- torical record, if one is so inclined! 1  Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba, Taʾrīkh Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba i, 630–1. 2  Shoshan, Grain riots 459–78.