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Caliphal Finances

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

“Please Find Attached the List”: Insights in Early Abbasid Fiscal Administration from a Coptic Letter

On our blog, we are exploring various types of papyrus documents that allow us to study the Abbasid fiscal system, as they form the core of the Caliphal Finances project’s sources. E.g., in this blog post, I, postdoc Eline Scheerlinck, focus on tax receipts, tax demand notes, and fiscal records. Those documents constitute the working papers and communications with taxpayers produced by the fiscal administration at various levels. Here, I highlight Greek scribal exercises found among the fiscal documents, which provide evidence of scribes practising phrases and numerals for use in fiscal administrative documents.

In this post, I will examine an example of another type of papyrus document that reveals information about the functioning of the fiscal system: administrative letters.

Aṣḥāb al-Kharāj in Egypt in the Abbasid Period: Spotlight on al-Khaṣīb ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, a Well-Documented Ninth-Century Financial director

We would like to shine a light on one financial director (ṣāḥib al-kharāj) of Egypt during the Abbasid period who is known to us from various sources. An overall aim of the Caliphal Finances project is to study all the actors involved in fiscal collection from the taxpayer to the caliph, including the participation of local administrators and elites in the shaping of fiscal policies. We are particularly interested in the fiscal administrative hierarchy. Noëmie Lucas (WP4 Making the Link: Fiscal Practice and the Literary Corpus) is working on gaining a clearer view of the upper-level administrators who are better documented in the literary corpus than the local ones.

Greek in Egyptian Eighth-Century Fiscal Documents

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.

Exploring Abbasid Narratives about Taxation: Highlights from the Sixteenth School of Abbasid Studies Conference

The sixteenth Conference of the School of Abbasid Studies (SAS) took place in Venice from July 9th to 13th. I (Noëmie Lucas) was among the participants. I presented my research on fiscal-related narratives with a focus on the case study of ʿUmar b. Mihrān.

Fiscal Revolts in Egypt as Crisis Response: Insights from an IMC Panel at Leeds

On Monday, July 1st, Noëmie Lucas participated in the  2024 International Medieval Congress (IMC) held in Leeds, presenting her research on fiscal revolts in a double panel organized by the SCORE team. She also chaired the second panel, contributing to a highly productive afternoon of presentations and discussions on revolts and rebellions in the Islamic world and their connection to crises.

A Father Pays Taxes for His Son: CPR IV 13

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.

« Fiscal Flows and Social Bonds: Exploring the Taxation of Medieval Islamic Egypt » – The Caliphal Finances team at the SMM Conference

The University of Edinburgh hosted the 8th International Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean (SMM) from June 24 to 27, 2024. The conference theme was “Being Human: Rhythms, Actions, Interactions in the Medieval Mediterranean.”

Research Visit: Coptic Papyri at Cambridge University Library

Earlier this week, team member Eline Scheerlinck spent three days in the Manuscripts Reading Room of  Cambridge University Library, studying Coptic papyri that are part of the library’s collections. Eline will be editing the papyri together with Manchester-based Coptic papyrologist Jennifer Cromwell, who also founded the blog Papyrus Stories. The Coptic papyri in question were part of the working archive of Egyptologist Herbert Thompson (1859-1944) and entered Cambridge University Library in 2012 and 2014. Read the whole story below!

The Paperwork of Taxation: Abbasid Fiscal Documents from Egypt

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.

Be Our Guest: The Caliphal Finances Team Spent Two Days with Cecilia Palombo

From May 26 to 28, the Caliphal Finances team had the pleasure of hosting Cecilia Palombo, Assistant Professor of Early Islamic History at the University of Chicago.

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