An important part of the Abbasid fiscal documents on papyrus are lists, accounts, and registers written in Greek, as well as exercises in which scribes are practicing Greek phrases and numerals to use in fiscal documents. We are publishing this post, written by our postdoc Eline Scheerlinck, in the context of our ongoing research into two related themes connected to the Abbasid fiscal system: the multilingual nature of the Abbasid fiscal administration and culture of accounting in the Abbasid period.
Category: Spotlight
We would like to shine a spotlight on a tax receipt from 10th century Egypt which we mentioned in our post on the Paperwork of Taxation: Abbasid Fiscal Documents from Egypt, but which has not received much scholarly attention. It documents, in a combination of 3 languages, a father paying taxes for his son. The multilingual landscape of the Abbasid fiscal administration is of special interest to our postdoc Eline Scheerlinck, who wrote this post.
The administration of taxation in the Abbasid Caliphate generated a substantial amount of paperwork. A fraction of this documentation, in the form of pieces of papyrus and paper written in Arabic, Coptic, and Greek, has been excavated in Egypt and dispersed to various collections, predominantly located in Europe and the United States. These documents provide insight into the management of taxation on the ground. In this blog, our postdoc Eline Scheerlinck provides a first look at the various types of documents that were produced in the context of the Abbasid fiscal administration in Egypt.
