The ERC funding allows us to actively collaborate with national and international colleagues and to cross-pollinate our ideas at academic events. On the 3rd and 4th of March, a workshop took place in Cambridge, co-organised by Marie Legendre and Hannah-Lena Hagemann, PIs of the Caliphal Finances project and the Hamburg-based SCORE (‘Social Contexts of Rebellion in the Early Islamic Period’) respectively. This “Trouble with Taxation II” workshop was a follow-up to the fruitful first workshop of the same title, held in Edinburgh in September 2023. Both the Caliphal Finances and SCORE teams participated in the workshop, as well as international specialists and colleagues from the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. The workshop also came together thanks to the generous support of the ‘Balzan Seminar on the Formation, Maintenance, and Failure of States in the Muslim World before 1800‘, directed by Michael Cook (Princeton University), Antoine Borrut (University of Maryland), and Marie Legendre.

The workshop addressed issues related to the Caliphal Finances and SCORE projects’ respective research themes: taxation and rebellion in the first four centuries of Islam. As the first workshop had already proven, there is much overlap between our projects’ interests, and this workshop again became a fertile ground for developing our ideas.

Some questions and themes emerging from the various papers and discussions at the workshop:

1. Periodisation of (tax-related) rebellions in the 8th and 9th centuries: Can we arrive at a consistent periodisation through environmental data, and narrative as well as documentary sources?
2. Tax evasion, tax resistance, tax negotiations: Both the narratives and the documentary papyri show that in some cases negotiation is possible when taxpayers complain or rebel. Indeed, many types of tax resistance, whether by groups or by individuals, can be distinguished. The responses to tax resistance in our sources also vary: can a reduction in taxes be seen as the outcome of a “successful” act of tax resistance? Noëmie’s paper showed a turn to violent suppression as a governmental response which might tie into the socio-political developments of the time.
3. What brought people to rebel? One trigger could be losing their elite status, a loss of socio-economic power. Taxation, for its part, could be a driver for changes in elite composition: e.g. by changes in who receives stipends taken from collected taxes, or changes in how tax was collected. A need for silver to pay taxes can push landowners to sell, which, in turn, creates new elites (Nik Matheou).

From the Caliphal Finances side, both PI Marie and post-doc Noëmie presented their research. Noëmie talked about revolts in Egypt, and how representations of them in the Arabic narrative sources change depending on the viewpoint of the respective authors. Marie discussed practices of survey and census, their impact on the fiscal system, and possible links with tax-related revolts. PhD students Dalia and Georgi, as well as post-doc Eline, each took a few minutes on the first day to briefly present their own research within the project. We all greatly benefited from the papers and discussions, and new plans for international cooperation between the Caliphal Finances team and certain workshop participants are already in the making.

Banner image: The workshop’s venue at Cripp’s Court, Magdalene College, Cambridge. Photo provided by Marie Legendre.

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