Download PDF | ( American Studies In Papyrology, 56) Lajos Berkes Christians And Muslims In Early Islamic Egypt , University Of Michigan Press ( 2022)
225 Pages
Introduction:
A Papyrological Perspective on Christians and Muslims in Early Islamic Egypt
Lajos Berkes
This volume consists of papers delivered at the workshop “Christians and Muslims in Early Islamic Egypt” held in Heidelberg on 29-30 September 2016, generously funded by the VolkswagenStiftung. It relates, primarily from a papyrological perspective, to various aspects of the relationship between Christians and Muslims in the period mainly of 640-800, with some papers discussing slightly earlier phenomena or later developments.
The second part of the 7th and the 8th century is usually considered in papyrological publications as “early Islamic Egypt.” This was a formative period in the long history of the Nile Valley: after the Arabs conquered Egypt in 642, a slow transformation began from a Christian to a Muslim society, from a mainly Coptic- and Greek-speaking country to a predominantly Arabophone population, and from a world that we regard as “late antique” to what seems to be “medieval.” These changes did not happen overnight and did not even end around 800. The beginning of the 9th century marks in papyrology, however, the end of the early Islamic period, in contrast, for example, to the Cambridge History of Egypt, which extends this period to the Fatimids (969).' The papyrological understanding of this time frame can be traced back to the tradition of the discipline, which is focused on Greek texts. Although it has recently been shown that the Greek documentary tradition extended to the very late 8th century and even to the first decades of the 9th,’ it is grosso modo true that the more than a millennium-long tradition of written Greek disappears rapidly in the 8th century, while Coptic and especially Arabic become more important.
Not only papyrological tradition, however, defines the early Islamic period as the time frame between 642 and 800. Given that the continuities with the Byzantine period in the second half of the 7th century are striking, one even may consider whether it would be more accurate to speak about “post-Byzantine” rather than “early Islamic” Egypt during these decades.’ The 8th century witnessed a period of transition from late antique to medieval structures. Even though only a fraction of the relevant preserved material has been published, one may still say that 9thcentury documents present us with very different realities than what one witnessed in the preceding 150 years. With the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in 750—whose rule is often considered to be an extension of late antiquity—major changes became apparent. In the late 8th and 9th centuries, the number of Arabic papyri increases significantly and—as noted previously—Greek finally disappears from documentary use. During the 8th century the Christian landholding elite, which is so prominent in the documentation of the late Byzantine period and even the first 50 years of Arab rule, seems to have been replaced by new Muslim landowners. As suggested by documentary sources, Islamization also seems to begin, even in the countryside.* One could also list other examples—from a papyrologist’s point of view, the late 8th to early 9th century seems clearly to introduce a new era.
Before we continue, we also need to reflect on the use of the terms “Christian,” “Arab,” and “Muslim” in this volume. Christians were not a homogeneous group in this period; both miaphysite and Chalcedonian church organizations were present in the country. However, papyri— similar to those during the Byzantine period—almost never contain hints at Christian doctrinal differences. Accordingly, the term “Christian” covers both Chalcedonians and miaphysites; however, “Copt” refers only to Egyptian miaphysites. The question of the terms “Arab” and “Muslim” is more complex. In theory, an Arab name in our sources can refer to three different identities: an Arab Muslim, an Arab Christian, and a converted Copt. Generally speaking, in most cases one can exclude the second possibility, while the presence of converts seems to be less likely in papyri from the first decades of Arab rule than from the 8th century. For instance, some authors in this book prefer the term “Arab officials,” while others discuss “Muslim ofhcials.” One can argue for both: I have respected their choices throughout and have not standardized their terminology.
A further connected problem is inferring religious affiliation from certain biblical names that were common in the Abrahamic religions, such as Abraham. In these cases, the Arab versions of these names are often characteristic: Ibrahim is not a spelling a Coptic-speaking Christian would have likely used —at least in the 7th-8th century. This connects to the question of identifying Jews in the sources. Although there are a handful of clear references to them in documents of this period, it is still difficult to identify them based on onomastics. Generally, papyrologists have assumed that people with names from the Old Testament, for example, Joseph, are Christians. This is probably true in most cases and is also the general assumption throughout this book.
The papyrological perspective of this volume naturally marks the areas that are the center of discussion. Since papyri mostly preserve administrative, economic, and other everyday documents, their most significant contribution is in the area of administrative, economic, and social history.° It goes without saying that they also provide important insights into everyday writing, documentary practices, and language choice and usage. These latter phenomena are especially interesting in nondocumentary genres such as literary or semiliterary papyri. In our period, the first category includes mainly Christian—often liturgical—texts,° while Arabic literary papyri are rare before the 9th century. The second category, however, is more elusive: traditionally, in papyrological jargon, texts that are considered to be sub- or semiliterary are those that cannot easily be labeled as “documentary” or “literary,” such as medical recipes and magical or school texts. Edward Love's contribution engages with this material, but there is clearly more research needed in this area.
Since the studies collected here focus mainly on documentary papyri, it is necessary to mention a couple of caveats. While documentary papyri—similar to archaeological sources—certainly present a more down-to-earth perspective than literary sources, it cannot be stressed enough that they nonetheless have their limitations. Even though they deal with everyday affairs of cities and villages, they mostly still represent the perspective of local elites.’ Furthermore, the picture emerging from these sources is heavily informed by what kinds of archives are preserved. It is crucial to be aware that what we possess reflects only certain aspects of everyday realities. The Greek and Arabic documentation of the 7th and 8th centuries consists mainly of administrative papers and the correspondence of government offices and monasteries. Coptic papyri—especially ostraca from the upper Egyptian village Djeme and legal documents from various sites—allow more insight into private affairs, but family archives are rare. It is not surprising, therefore, that the focus of papyrological research—and also of this volume—on this period has been on various aspects of the administration of the nascent Islamic empire as well as monastic economies.
One has to also be aware of the geographic limitation of the papyrological material: due to the climatic conditions of Egypt, barely any papyrus was found in the humid soil of the Nile Delta. However, there are only a couple of find spots even in the southern part of the country that produced large amounts of papyri (or ostraca) from the medieval period. If we start from the north, the first major source of papyri is the Fayyim, the old Arsinoite nome, and eastward to it Heracleopolis (ar. Ihnas) and its administrative territory—although there are far fewer papyri preserved from the latter region, probably due to an unfortunate fire in 1899 in Hamburg harbor, which destroyed the ship transporting many of the papyri found there.* Southward, the region of Hermopolis (copt. Shmun, ar. Ushmtin)—especially the monastery of Apa Apollos in Bawit—must be mentioned. Farther down the Nile, the monasteries of Balaizah and Wadi Sarga are noteworthy sites. Aphrodito (ar. Ishquh) and Edfu (gr. Apollonopolis Magna) have preserved important administrative archives from the early 8th century and around 660-80, respectively. Finally, the Theban region—especially the village Djeme and the surrounding monasteries—has produced thousands of mostly Coptic ostraca and some papyri. There are, of course, other find spots for this period, but the ones mentioned here have produced the most material and have consequently shaped papyrological research on early Islamic Egypt.
Although it is a papyrological truism that there are hundreds of thousands of unpublished texts that lie dormant in various collections all over the world, this is especially true for the early Islamic period. This applies to all three major languages of this period: Greek, Coptic, and Arabic. Greek papyrologists, who usually come from a background in classics, have generally avoided working on “late” papyri, but there has been a surge in interest in the documentation of the 7th and 8th centuries in recent decades. This interest manifests itself not only in the edition of sources or even entire volumes dedicated to Greek papyri from the postconquest period (Federico Morelli’s CPR 22 and 30) but also numerous studies revisiting already-published or described material. There is even more to be done in Coptic and Arabic papyrology: many areas of the documentation in these languages have only just started to be explored. Although studies on Arabic papyri have become an important part of the discourse on early Islamic history, there is still a lack of text editors who would take on the important task of publishing corpora of Arabic papyri.
A connected and important development in this field has been the increasing cooperation between specialists in these three languages as well as other fields. In the past, scholars who specialized in various languages often used to ignore each other’s work, but interdisciplinary collaboration has already become the norm in researching Graeco-Roman and early Islamic Egypt. This is especially important, since very few scholars are able to read all three relevant languages to the same level. Nevertheless, although it may seem paradoxical at first sight, Greek and Coptic papyri contribute much more than Arabic papyri to the research on the first decades of Islamic Egypt.’ The reason behind this is simple: there were only a few Arab officials and soldiers in the country who could have produced texts in Arabic, while the bureaucracy simply continued—apart from the top echelons of government (and there only partially) —in Greek.
In 642, the conquering Arabs gained control over a province of the Byzantine Empire. Egypt had only just started to recover from the brutal Sassanid occupation of 619-29 when it had to face invaders again. Our sources seem to suggest that the Arabs were less brutal than the Persians, but they were still an occupying force. Although later historical writings suggest that the miaphysite Copts welcomed the conquerors as their liberators from the Chalcedonian oppression, these accounts are certainly partisan and reflect more the concerns of their own period than the realities of the conquest.” The top layer of society seems to have fled the country to Byzantium, but the papyrological evidence suggests that in the second part of the 7th century the same locally rooted landholding elite dominated as before. Below a top stratum of Arab officials, these local aristocrats and the omnipresent monasteries were the most important factors—both economically and administratively.
The Arabs do not frequently appear in papyri of the first decades of Muslim rule. We sometimes encounter references to the governor of Egypt or other high-ranking functionaries, their servants, and their new capital, Fustat, but their occurrence is, generally speaking, a rarity. It is no surprise, therefore, that Greek and Coptic papyri of the second part of the 7th century are often difficult to distinguish from earlier Byzantine documents, since on the level of everyday bureaucracy only a few things changed. For this reason—as suggested earlier—it is perhaps apt to call this the “post-Byzantine” period. A similar point has been recently formulated by Clive Foss: “This was a country under occupation, not yet arrived at a point when there was any assimilation between the new conquering forces and the local population?"
Although the continuities are striking, naturally, change and developments can also be observed. However, they represent a particularly complex and intensely debated topic in scholarship. On the one hand, it is often difficult to determine whether new vocabulary or certain administrative changes are to be connected to the Arabs or to the period of the Persian occupation, or even to the Byzantine reorganization of the province between these periods. On the other hand, the assessment of the changes under Arab rule range from supposing a smooth and more or less unchanged continuation of Byzantine practices to envisioning major innovation.” A good example of the complexity of the topic is the poll tax introduced for non-Muslim males, the Byzantine antecedents, terminology, and sometimes even nature of which are unclear. The question of continuity and change in administrative practices is an ongoing debate that may be significantly influenced by the continuing publication of new source material.
Under the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (685-705), major reforms were introduced that were implemented in Egypt by his brother, the governor ‘Abd al-‘ Aziz ibn Marwan (in office 685-705) and his successors. These reforms aimed inter alia at creating more centralization in the administration and increasing the use of Arabic in the bureaucracy. These often-discussed reforms left a strong impression, both in the literary tradition and the documentary sources.
Some of the most significant measures were the increasing control of tax fugitives through restrictions on free movement and the abolishment of the tax exemption of monks. In addition, from this time on one finds increasingly (Arab and convert) Muslim officials at the local level, such as at the most important administrative office of the cities, the pagarchy. The (post-)Byzantine local bureaucracy was under the control of aristocrats who were more loyal to their local networks and interests than to the distant central administration. The new Muslim officials were loyal to the Arabs and were regularly transferred lest they build up a local power base.”
In the documentation of the 8th century, the Christian landowning elite so prominent in the preceding centuries almost entirely disappears. As literary sources report, a series of revolts took place in the 8th century, organized by the disenfranchised local elite. The changes are less visible in the villages: local officials and dignitaries appear to be Christians—almost without exception—throughout the century. However, the village elite and population were also faced with new realities. The traditional Byzantine system of a collectively liable village community whose leading members distributed the tax burden locally was increasingly shifted toward individual tax liability, especially after the Abbasid takeover in 750. Corvée labor for the Arab authorities also figures prominently in the documentation of the 8th century.* Workers and craftsmen were required to participate in building projects or in constructing the war fleet to be sailed against Byzantium.” These workers were sometimes required to fulfill their duties in Syria or Palestine, and some of them even served as oarsmen on Muslim warships: the psychological difficulty of this situation is illustrated by the fact that during the second siege of Constantinople in 717-18— as the Byzantine chronist Theophanes reports—the Coptic seamen serving in the Umayyad fleet betrayed their masters and defected to the Byzantine emperor."° Changes were also felt by monasteries, which were seriously affected by the heavy tax burden in the 8th century, as is well attested in the papyrological documentation.”
Christian attitudes toward the new rulers have not yet been systematically studied. The Egyptian ecclesiastical literature of the 7th to 8th century seems to be more concerned with securing the favor of the Arabs toward the miaphysite church against the Chalcedonians than with the danger of conversion to Islam. Documentary papyri sent by Arab officials in the 7th and 8th centuries often contain serious and extravagant threats against their Christian subordinates, which were sometimes recalled in the internal correspondence of local administrators as “threatening letters.’’’ These letters have been recently interpreted as a sign of the weakness of the central government, which could not impose its will on the local powerbase of Christian aristocrats,” and it is indeed difficult to assess how many of these threats were fulfilled. However, the correspondence of local administrators of the first decades of Arab rule, such as the Senouthios or Papas archives,” often conveys a stressful atmosphere in face of the approaching deadlines of fiscal demands, while traveling to Fustat apparently evoked anxiety in Copts.” However, there are also examples of cordial collaboration: for instance, sometime in the early 8th century, Zacharias, a Christian administrator in the region of Hermopolis, addressed a letter to the amir, Rashid b. Khalid, calling him his “sincere friend.” As this typically Byzantine expression from Zacharias’s letter in Coptic shows, living under new rule did not mean a sudden break with the Graeco-Roman heritage of the country. Byzantine honorific epithets (sometimes applied to Muslim officials), Graeco-Roman nomenclature, and many other markers of cultural identity were preserved well into the 8th century. It seems that there was a strong nostalgia for the period of Byzantine rule, even in remote rural areas in Upper Egypt such as the village of Djeme.”
Two topics of prominent interest in our period are “Arabization” and “Islamization.” The former term denotes the gradual linguistic shift that transformed Egypt from a predominantly Coptic- and Greek-speaking country to an overwhelmingly Arabophone one. ‘The latter expression is used to describe the process by which Christians became a minority in relation to Muslims. At the time of the Arab conquest, apart from Jews, virtually every inhabitant of the country was Christian, while modern estimates usually give a percentage of around 10 percent for the Christian population. How did this change happen? At first sight, these two processes may seem to go hand in hand—especially with regard to the special status of Arabic in Islam. But, it has to be stressed, and is apparent, that this was not the case. Parallel to the steady decline of Coptic to its eventual death sometime around the 14th century, Arabic seems to have gained significant ground even among Christians by the end of the 10th century—as is well attested by both documentary and literary sources.”
While the process of Arabization is more palpable, the case of Islamization is less straightforward. According to the traditional view, the first big wave of conversion occurred in the 8th to 9th century—at least partially due to the fiscal disadvantages for non-Muslims—and the tipping point, when Muslims became a majority, was reached as a consequence of heavy anti-Christian repressions under early Mamluk rule in the 13th and 14th centuries. However, as has been recently pointed out, this view sees conversion as the major factor in Muslims becoming the majority and ignores that Arab immigration and settlement, Muslim marriage with Coptic women, Coptic demographic decline, and other factors must also have played a significant role. Even though assessments of this phenomenon vary greatly, it may seem reasonable to assume that Islamization was rather the product of a gradual process than of watershed events that resulted in Copts becoming a minority.”
These general observations about Arabization and Islamization are certainly useful to understand the rough outlines of these phenomena, but it is also important to keep in mind that they do not necessarily reflect regional developments. For instance, Arabization seems to have progressed much more slowly in Upper Egypt than in the Nile Delta. This is one of the aspects in which the contribution of papyrology cannot be overstated. One has to keep in mind that language choice for written documents does not necessarily reflect spoken usage, but these documents still provide evidence and perspectives very different from literary sources—placing developments in a regional perspective. Both the Arabic and Coptic papyrological material of the 9th and 10th centuries can almost be regarded as terra incognita, and therefore much is to be expected of the publication and analysis of this material for the understanding of the Islamization and Arabization of Egypt.
What I have just sketched is the general background against which the studies of this volume are to be understood. The first two contributions shed light on Egypt's role in the larger context of the caliphate. Eugenio Garosi’s chapter discusses the usage of Arabic as an imperial language both at an imperial and an Egyptian level, bringing the papyrological material into a fruitful dialogue with other sources from the whole caliphate. Jelle Bruning’s contribution focuses on the organization of naval warfare in the context of the Arab-Byzantine wars and elucidates new aspects of this much-discussed topic.
The following six studies, which constitute the bulk of this book, are concerned with the development of the new Muslim administration in the 7th and 8th centuries and the relationship of the Muslim officials to their predominantly Christian subjects. Anne Boud’hors’s contribution discusses what Coptic papyri reflect on the creation of the new capital, Fustat: her close reading of the sources informs us not only about administrative realities but also about local attitudes toward the new capital. Fustat/Babylon is also the focus of the article by James Cowey, Naim Vanthieghem, and the author of this introduction and deals with Arabic-Greek tax receipts emanating from the barns of the new capital issued probably by a hitherto unknown official. Vanthieghem’s further prosopographical note on an important civic servant of the Umayyad period demonstrates the importance of reading papyri alongside literary sources.
The following three contributions focus on Arab/Muslim officials in 8th-century Egypt. Esther Garel and Naim Vanthieghem discuss the status quaestionis of pagarchs in the 8th-century Fayyum, (re)editing several papyri. Nikolaos Gonis presents a fresh study on Rashid b. Khalid, an official of the early 8th century whose career is one of the most-eminent and best-attested instances of a pagarch’s activities in the Umayyad period. Jennifer Cromwell discusses the Arab officials and their organization in the Theban region in the pre-Abbasid period. Together, these studies provide an overview of the bureaucracy of the regions from which most of our administrative sources are preserved.
The last three chapters address naming practices and language change. Jean Gascou presents a panorama of the naming practices of the Christian population of early Islamic Egypt through case studies focused mostly on Edfu. Anne Boud’hors and Maher Eissa publish a new example from the barely known genre of late Coptic letters, which are products of a period with conventions and vocabulary diverging significantly from late antique practices. Finally, Edward Love's study on bilingualism and bigraphia in magical texts scrutinizes this phenomenon in a comparative perspective from the Egyptian-Greek spells of the Graeco-Roman period to the Coptic-Arabic amulets of the Cairo Genizah.
As I have tried to outline in this short introduction, and as the many questions posed by the contributions of this volume show, the time for a papyrological synthesis on early Islamic Egypt has not come yet.”* This book does not intend to give a complete overview or even address all the relevant problems, but it aims at providing new material and perspectives for the ongoing exploration of this underresearched field. The authors do not necessarily agree with each other on everything, and I have preferred not to eliminate differences.
Last, but not least, thanks are due to the VolkswagenStiftung for generously financing the workshop that was the basis of this volume as part of my postdoctoral research project. I am also grateful to Andrea Jérdens, director of the Institute for Papyrology of the University of Heidelberg, for her support for the project, workshop, and volume; as well as to Rodney Ast, general editor of the American Society of Papyrologists Monograph Series, for offering the possibility to publish this book in the series. My gratitude also goes to Ellen Bauerle and Anna Pohlod from the University of Michigan Press, as well as Charlie Clark and the team at Newgen, who have patiently answered all my questions and supported me in many ways during the production of the book. Thanks are also due to Anne Boud’hors, Nikolaos Gonis, Sarah Kiyanrad, Edward O. D. Love, and Naim Vanthieghem for various forms of help in producing this volume.
Berlin, September 2021 Lajos Berkes
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