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.
Month: September 2024
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?
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.
