On 25th February, the Caliphal Finances team offered their second lecture in the IMES Seminar Spring 2025 Lecture Series. Noëmie Lucas and Dalia Hussein shared their respective research on the agents of Abbasid taxation, from the village to the caliph.

Noëmie and Dalia began by presenting a papyrus document, CPR XXI 40. This tax receipt, dated 839, records many names, providing details about officials involved in fiscal matters, including:

• Mina, the qusṭāl
• Two representatives (khalīfa):
  • Aḥmad b. Khālid
  • Muḥammad b. Farḥ
• Two ʿāmil/deputies or executives:
  • Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh
  • Zakī b. Yaḥyā
• One ṣāḥib al-kharāj: Sa‘īd b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān

These individuals were the focus of the lecture. Dalia and Noëmie elaborated on tax collectors, local administrators, regional fiscal directors, and finance directors. They showed that identifying their precise roles is not always straightforward. They also demonstrated how we are engaging with the remarkable source material that papyri provide and how our research interacts with other types of evidence, including literary sources, coins, and epigraphy.

The Agents of Abbasid taxation in the villages and the Egyptian districts

Dalia’s presentation addressed the question: Who was involved in the tax collection?  Using tax receipts coming mainly from Fayyūm, Ushmūnayn and unknown places between 750 and 969, she looked into the agents of the tax administration from the bottom to the top. Tax receipts show us the hierarchy of the officials involved in the tax collection process, from the tax collector up to the ṣāḥib al-kharāj, and sometimes, up to the caliph, designated as “the Commander of the Faithful.”

An example of these documents is P.GrohmannUrkunden 8 (Ushmūnayn, 223 AH/838 CE), which is the first Abbasid receipt using the term qusṭāl  to designate the tax collector. This document shows a taxpayer, Yūsuf ibn Al-Layth, paying one quarter of a dīnār to Isḥāq ibn Samʿūn the qusṭāl, in the presence of Sāliḥ ibn al-Walīd, khalīfa (deputy) of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khalaf, the ʿāmil (representative or executive) of Saīʿd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān the ṣāḥib al-kharāj and client of the Commander of the Faithful, for the kharāj of Ushmūnayn, lower Anṣīna and Qūṣ.

This document shows us four layers of the fiscal administration: (1) the qusṭāl, who collected the tax (2) the khalīfa who represented the ʿāmil, (3) the ʿāmil, who was the local tax administrator, and finally (4) the ṣāḥib al-kharāj, mentioned in this document as the mawlā (client) of the Commander of the Faithful.

The qusṭāl is the person who collected the payment, issued the receipt to the taxpayer and sealed it. Few years before the access of the Ṭulūnids to power, Dalia mentioned that we start noticing another term used in the receipts for the tax collector receiving payments: the jahbadh. This term occurred for the first time in a tax receipt from the Fayyūm, P.GrohmannProbleme 14 dated 249/863–4.  A person called Sahl ibn Dawūd is mentioned as being the jahbadh of the district of the Fayyūm.

For the Ushmūnayn, the term first appears in CPR XXI 70 (280/893–4) from Ṭūlūnid Egypt.  The shift in terminology seems to be gradual, which means that the two terms were used together for some time. Dalia presented two receipts from the same year: P.Cair.Arab III 189 (unknown origin, 287/900) using jahbadh as title for Mīnā ibn Shinūda, and the other, P.GrohmannUrkunden 11 (unknown origin, 287/900) using the term qusṭāl, as title of Yuḥannas ibn Kayl. The term qusṭāl disappeared from the documents in the latter half of second/eighth century.

While some literary and administrative sources from Iraq, like Hilal al-Sābī’s Tuḥfat al-Umarāʾ show that the jahbadh-s were important state officials working for the caliphal court and lending money to ministers and key figures in the Abbasid administration, the Abbasid Egyptian documents suggest that the jahbadh was similar to the qusṭāl: a low-level officer who is seen collecting taxes, writing, signing and sealing the tax receipts. Some tax receipts include the names of two tax collectors receiving the payment and writing the receipt.

Getting to the next level of fiscal agents attested in the documents, especially those coming from Ushmūnayn before the Ṭūlūnid period, Dalia explained that we also see a khalīfa and a ʿāmil. The khalīfa is the one representing the ʿāmil.  The documents do not show that he had a territorial scope of authority. In many receipts, the khalīfa’s name is not mentioned, while the names of qusṭāl or jahbadh as well as the name of the ʿāmil are recorded.  In many receipts, two khalīfa-s are attested to represent the ʿāmil.

The ʿāmil is repeated in the documentary sources, and it designates the agent or representative of the ṣāḥib al-kharāj for fiscal matters in the district, in other words, he was the local tax administrator. For example, P.GrohmannUrkunden 8 (Ushmūnayn, 223 AH/838 CE) shows ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khalaf , the responsible for the kharāj of Ushmūnayn, lower Anṣīna and Qūṣ.  He was working for Saʿīd ibn Abd al-Rahman, the ṣāḥib al-kharāj who had the authorities of control and supervision at the capital, Fusṭāṭ, while his ʿāmil implemented his decisions at the district level. Many documents show the presence of two ʿāmil-s as the local tax administrators working for the ṣāḥib al-kharāj.

From the corpus of tax receipts coming from Abbasid Egypt, Dalia noted that the vast majority of the names of qusṭāl and jahbadh are Egyptian Christian names, which indicates that the local Egyptian population continued to hold positions at the lower level of the tax administration. This, apparently, was necessary to guarantee the efficiency of tax collection as well as its continuity. However, the majority of the high officials, like the khalīfa, the ʿāmil and the ṣāḥib al-kharāj, had Arabic and Muslim names. This gives an important picture of personnel of the tax administration in Abbasid Egypt.

Aṣḥāb al-Kharāj in Abbasid Egypt

Noëmie shared her ongoing research devoted to the highest rank in the Egyptian fiscal administration: the head of fiscal administration, usually referred to as ṣāḥib al-kharāj by researchers. She emphasized methodological aspects of the work she is undertaking to establish a complete list of these officials and the complexities of working with the corpus, particularly the interplay between literary sources and papyrus documents.

She referred to different examples of finance directors, whether simultaneously governor of Egypt or an independent official, and highlighted how they were documented and what this documentation tells us about their role. Among the officials she referred to were:

• Muḥammad b. Hilāl was a finance director whose tenure at the beginning of Ahmad b. Tulun’s rule over Egypt was short and poorly documented. Yet a papyrus document, not associated with him until now, confirmed his role. Read about him in this blogpost: New Material on the Early ‘Tulunid’ Fiscal Administrator Muḥammad b. Hilāl
• Al-Khaṣīb b. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd was a finance director appointed during the later years of Harun al-Rashid’s reign. Even though his tenure lasted a maximum of four years, he is well documented through various materials: glass weights, inscriptions, poetry, and historical accounts. Learn more about him in this blogpost: Spotlight on al-Khaṣīb ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, a Well-Documented Ninth-Century Financial director

One of the prerogatives of the official in charge of fiscal administration was the transfer of some tax revenues collected in Egypt to the central Treasury in Iraq. Even though clear references to this process are rare in the literary corpus that Noëmie is exploring, some unique references can be found, particularly during the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid. In the last part of the lecture, Noëmie presented an example of fiscal flow between the taxpayers and the caliph, documenting aspects such as the timing of the transfer and the components of the fiscal convoy. You can read about it in this blogpost: Depiction of an Ordinary Practice? When Al-Layth b. Faḍl Brings Egyptian Revenues Personally to Hārūn al-Rashīd

 

If you want to know more about Fiscal Hierarchies in Abbasid Egypt, you can also read Uncovering Fiscal Hierarchies in Ninth-Century Egypt: Insights from Papyrus Analysis

Arabic documents are cited according to “The Checklist of Arabic Documents”.

Banner image: P.GrohmannProbleme 14 (Fayyūm) 249 AH/ 863–4 CE, currently held at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. 

Mar 11, 2025

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