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Caliphal Finances

The Finances of the Caliphate: Abbasid Fiscal Practice in Islamic Late Antiquity

Welcome!

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Welcome to the website of the Caliphal Finances project!

This website is the online space of the Caliphal Finances project to share upcoming events, collaborations and conversations with other researchers and research teams, and other exciting news. We will also regularly shine a spotlight on specific documents, objects, or issues that we are grappling with in the moment.

Where to start? Learn more about the content and goals of the project, about the members of the Caliphal Finances team, or scroll down to read our most recent posts!

Uncovering Fiscal Hierarchies in Ninth-Century Egypt: Insights from Papyrus Analysis

Next week, the Caliphal Finances team will welcome Matthew Gordon and Eugénie Rébillard to discuss their respective research and share the Caliphal Finances team’s recent work, focusing in particular on the second half of the ninth century. To prepare for this, I (PostDoc Noëmie Lucas) have been focusing on this period in my reconstruction of the list of fiscal officials in Egypt. This blog mentions one of these officials, recorded only in documents (as far as I am aware), and addresses some issues relating to the reading of papyrus that collaboration with PostDoc Eline Scheerlinck helped resolve!

Stichoi, or the “Other” Taxes

In my search for Coptic and Greek fiscal documents from Abbasid Egypt, I (Eline Scheerlinck) came across a curious ninth-century document from the monastery of Apa Apollo in Bawit (P.LouvreBawit 7). The document is of interest for various reasons, but in this post, I want to focus on the fact that it contains fiscal terminology that is out of the ordinary. At the end, I’ll present a little non-fiscal treat—but it will only make sense after reading the rest of the post!

Depiction of an Ordinary Practice? When Al-Layth b. Faḍl Brings Egyptian Revenues Personally to Hārūn al-Rashīd

“It is often assumed that the Abbasid fiscal system was centralized and that a large portion of regional revenues were sent to the capital.” This hypothesis is explored in our project, where I (Noëmie Lucas) trace how provincial revenue was moved, as evidenced in the literary corpus. In this blog post, I provide an example from the corpus and elaborate on the type of information we can gather.

Multilingual Papyri at the University of Aberdeen – a Dive into the Archives

The primary source material for the Caliphal Finances project consists of fiscal documents, excavated in Egypt and mostly written on papyrus and paper. Both Principal Investigator Marie Legendre and Postdoctoral Fellow Eline Scheerlinck have been studying previously unpublished fiscal documents in the collections where they are currently stored. The ERC grant enables us to travel to these collections to study the documents. On the blog, you can read about Eline’s research visits to the papyrus collection of the Austrian National Library in Vienna and to the Cambridge University Library. This time, we want to highlight a lesser-known collection of papyri, particularly its Coptic and Arabic papyri: the University Collections of the University of Aberdeen, right here in Scotland.

Two passports with wooden stamp on top

Tracking Movement and Taxation in Early Islamic Egypt: Insights from Umayyad and Abbasid Papyri

In this post, postdocs Noëmie Lucas and Eline Scheerlinck join forces and explore the relationship between travel and taxation in Abbasid fiscal documents, focusing on 3 tax receipts that may or may not have functioned similarly to travel permits, akin to modern-day passports, for taxpayers in 8th and 9th-century Egypt.

Research Visit in Paris

Recently, our postdoctoral researcher, Noëmie Lucas, spent a few days in Paris for research, visiting the BULAC library and meeting with colleagues. Every researcher knows how isolating research can be—endless days in libraries sifting through sources, archives, and books, or hours spent staring at a computer screen reading and writing. Fortunately, funded projects, like those supported by the ERC, enable us to work as part of a team, sharing thoughts, doubts, and questions during daily or weekly group meetings. Moreover, these grants allow us to travel, meet fellow scholars, and access resources unavailable at our home institutions.

Fiscal Matters in Private Letters

On our blog, we have explored various sources for studying Abbasid fiscal practices, including literature, inscriptions, coins, and papyrus documents from the fiscal administration. In this post, I aim to highlight a perhaps less obvious source of information on the fiscal system: private letters on papyrus. Unlike other papyrus documents—such as lists, registers, tax demands, tax receipts, writing exercises, or correspondence between administrators—private letters were not direct products of the fiscal administration. So, what traces did the fiscal apparatus leave in documents from the private sphere?

From Tax Arrears to Moral Governance: The Tale of Hārūn al-Rashīd and al-Fuḍayl b. ‘Iyād (Part 2)

This blog post pursues the exploration of one fiscal-related narrative. After having investigated the making of this khabar (Part 1), I will focus on its interpretation within the broader structure of al-Yaʿqūbī’s work.*

From Tax Arrears to Moral Governance: The Tale of Hārūn al-Rashīd and al-Fuḍayl b. ‘Iyād (Part 1)

As part of my research on Abbasid fiscal history and historiography, I examine fiscal-related narratives to understand how they inform us about fiscal practices and its history. This blog post explores one of these narrative units, known as akhbār (singular: khabar), and investigates how a better understanding of its making can impact our knowledge of fiscal history.

Research Visit: the Papyrological Institute at Leiden University

Recently, our postdoctoral researcher Eline Scheerlinck dedicated a week to research at the library of the Papyrological Institute at Leiden University in the Netherlands. One of the primary objectives of the Caliphal Finances project is to examine all fiscal documents from the Abbasid period that have been previously edited by scholars, encompassing texts in Arabic, Greek, and Coptic. These papyrological editions are frequently published in highly specialised book series and journals, which are not always accessible, even in well-endowed university libraries such as the University of Edinburgh, where our project is based.

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