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Recently published (2009) in paperback Richard W. Bulliet's Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World Historyhttp://www.cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14836-8/cotton-climate-and-camels-in-early-islamic-irantable of contents:Preface1. How to Identify a Cotton Boom2. Islam and Cotton3. The Big Chill4. Of Turks and Camels5. A Moment in World HistoryIndexdescription from the book's cover:A boom in the production and export of cotton turned Iran into therichest region of the Islamic caliphate in the ninth and tenthcenturies. Yet in the eleventh century, Iran’s primacy ended as itsagricultural economy entered a steep decline. Richard W. Bullietadvances several provocative explanations, for example that theboom in cotton production paralleled the spread of Islam and thatIran’s agricultural decline stemmed from a significant cooling ofthe climate that lasted more than a century. Substantiating hisargument with innovative quantitative research and scientificdiscoveries, Bulliet first establishes the relationship betweenIran’s cotton industry and Islam and then outlines the evidence for what he terms the “Big Chill.” He then focuses on a lucrative buttemperature-sensitive industry of cross-breeding one-humped andtwo-humped camels, concluding with an unusual concatenation ofevents that had a profound and long-lasting impact not juston the history of Iran but on the development of the world.Source: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&#38;list=H-Mideast-Medieval&#38;month=1204&#38;week=d&#38;msg=sHpyeQjpdOGVHoUf6gx53w