Egypt’s Connections in the Early Caliphate: Political, Economic, and Cultural

doi:10.1017/9781009170031.009

Chapter 8 - Egypt’s Connections in the Early Caliphate: Political, Economic, and Cultural

from Part II - Economic Connections

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2022

Petra M. Sijpesteijn

Edited by

Jelle Bruning ,

Janneke H. M. de Jong and

Petra M. Sijpesteijn

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Egypt’s position in the caliphate has generally been considered either as loosely tributary, with its governors running the province more or less as a personal possession, granting the caliph a share of the province’s riches, as it pleased them, or as the outer rim of a radial system extending from the caliph’s capital and through which caliphal power was exercised by means of administrative control and military force. In this model – which looks from the center outwards – Egypt is located at the decision-making periphery of the Muslim empire, the recipient of directives and consumer of developments initiated at the imperial capital (first located in Medina, then Damascus, and finally Baghdad), where the sneezes that precipitated all of the caliphate’s colds occurred.

This chapter takes a different view. By examining Egypt’s relationship to the imperial center between the Arab conquest and the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate in Cairo in 969 CE, and the complex, ambiguous, and shifting processes of interdependency, caliphal ambition, and local self-assertion as they appear in the sources, I will argue that at all times Egypt’s centrality to the caliphate was a two-way relationship, in which Egypt occupied a key place in caliphal strategic thinking, and in which Egyptians saw themselves as intrinsic to the Muslim imperial project.

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean World
From Constantinople to Baghdad, 500-1000 CE
, pp. 238 - 271

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009170031.009 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

ʿAbbādī, Aḥmad Mukhtār and Sālim, al-Sayyid ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Taʾrīkh al-baḥriyya al-islāmiyya fī Miṣr wa-l-Shām. Beirut: Dār al-Nahḍa al-ʿArabiyya, 1981.Google Scholar

Abbott, Nabia. “Arabic Papyri from the Reign of Jaʿfar al-Mutawakkil ʿala-llāh (AH 232–47/AD 847–61).” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 92 (1938): 88–135.Google Scholar

Abbott, Nabia “A New Papyrus and a Review of the Administration of ʿUbaid Allāh b. al-Ḥabḥāb.” In Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Hamilton A. R. Gibb, ed. Makdisi, George, 21–35. Leiden: Brill, 1965.Google Scholar

Avni, Gideon. The Byzantine–Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.Google Scholar

Bacharach, Jere L. and Awad, Henry A.. “Rare Early Egyptian Islamic Coins and Coin Weights: The Awad Collection.” Journal of the American Research Center in Cairo 18 (1981): 51–56.Google Scholar

Bagci, Yasemin. “Coloured Ceramics of the Caliphs: A New Look at the Abbasid Pottery Finds from the Old Gözlükule Excavations at Tarsus.” PhD thesis, Leiden University, 2017.Google Scholar

al-Balādhurī, . Futūḥ al-buldān, ed. de Goeje, M. J.. Leiden: Brill, 1866.Google Scholar

Bates, Michael L. “Who Was Named on Abbasid Coins? What Did It Mean?” In Iranian Numismatic Studies: A Volume in Honor of Stephen Album, ed. Faghfoury, Mostafa, 89–99. Lancaster, PA: Classical Numismatic Group, 2017.Google Scholar

Becker, Carl Heinrich. “Arabische Papyri des Aphroditofundes.” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete 20 (1907): 68–104.CrossRef Google Scholar

Becker, Carl Heinrich. “Papyrusstudien.” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete 22 (1908): 137–54.Google Scholar

Bell, Harold I. “The Berlin Ḳurrah Papyrus.” Archiv für Papyrusforschung 5 (2013): 189–91.Google Scholar

Bessard, Fanny. Caliphs and Merchants: Cities and Economies of Power in the Near East (700–950). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.Google Scholar

Bessard, Fanny “Politics and Economics of the Early Caliphate.” In Routledge Handbook on Early Islam, ed. Berg, Herbert, 194–209. London: Routledge, 2019.Google Scholar

Bianquis, Thierry. “Autonomous Egypt from Ibn Ṭūlūn to Kāfūr, 868–969.” In The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 1: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517, ed. Petry, Carl F., 86–119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar

Bouderbala, Sobhi. “Ǧund Miṣr: étude de l’administration militaire dans l’Égypte des débuts de l’Islam 21/642–218/833.” PhD thesis, Université de Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne, 2008.Google Scholar

Bruning, Jelle. “Slave Trade Dynamics in Abbasid Egypt: The Papyrological Evidence.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 63 (2020): 682–742.Google Scholar

Combe, Étienne, Sauvaget, Jean, and Wiet, Gaston (eds.). Répertoire chronologique d’épigraphie Arabe. 18 vols., Cairo: IFAO, 1931–91.Google Scholar

Cooperson, Michael. “al-Maʾmūn, the Pyramids and the Hieroglyphs.” In ʿAbbasid Studies II: Occasional Papers of the School of ʿAbbasid Studies, ed. Nawas, John Abdallah, 165–90. Louvain: Peeters, 2010.Google Scholar

Crone, Patricia and Hinds, Martin. God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar

Dar, Alon. “Governors, Caliphs, and Provincial Elites in Umayyad Egypt: A Case-Study of One ‘Rebellion’ (91/709–710).” al-ʿUṣūr al-wustā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists, forthcoming.Google Scholar

Delattre, Alain and Vanthieghem, Naïm. “Un entagion bilingue du gouverneur ʿAbd Al-ʿAzīz ibn Marwān trouvé à Antinoé.” Chronique d’Egypte 88 (2013): 363–71.Google Scholar

Diem, Werner, “Einige frühe amtliche Urkunden aus der Sammlung Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer (Wien).” Le Muséon 97 (1984): 109–58.Google Scholar

Dixneuf, Delphine. Amphores égyptiennes: production, typologie, contenu et diffusion, IIIe siècle avant J.-C.–IXe siècle après J.-C. Alexandria: Centre d’Études Alexandrines, 2011.Google Scholar

D’Ottone Rambach, Arianna. “Arabic Glasses (Coin Weights, Jetons and Vessel Stamps) from Umayyad Syria.” In Coinage and History in the Seventh Century Near East 5: Proceedings of the 15th Seventh Century Syrian Numismatic Round Table Held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge on 17th and 18th September 2016, ed. Goodwin, Tony, 175–95. London: Archetype Publications, 2017.Google Scholar

Fahmy, Aly M. Muslim Sea-Power in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Seventh to the Tenth Century. Cairo: National Publication and Print House, 1950.Google Scholar

Foss, Clive. “Arab-Byzantine Coins: Money as Cultural Continuity.” In Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, 7th–9th Century, ed. Ratliff, Brandie and Evans, Helen C., 136–43. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012.Google Scholar

Frantz-Murphy, Gladys. Arabic Agricultural Leases and Tax Receipts from Egypt, 148–427 AH/765–1035 AD Vienna: Hollinek, 2001.Google Scholar

Garcin, Jean-Claude. “Pour un recours à l’histoire de l’espace vécu dans l’étude de l’Égypte arabe.” Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations 35 (1980): 436–51.Google Scholar

Garel, Esther. “Une demande de recensement du pagarque Rāšid b. Ḫālid: CPR IV 1 revisité.” Chronique d’Égypte 93 (2018): 187–99.Google Scholar

Garel, Esther “Lettre concernant l’envoi d’un papyrus iatro-magique et une réquisition de laine de mouton (P.Vindob. Inv. K 55).” Journal of Coptic Studies 18 (2016): 45–55.Google Scholar

Gonis, Nikolaos and Morelli, Federico. “A Requisition Order for the ‘Commander of the Faithful’: SPP VIII 1082 Revisited.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 132 (2000): 193–95.Google Scholar

Gordon, Matthew. Ahmad ibn Tulun: Governor of Abbasid Egypt, 868–884. London: Oneworld, 2021.Google Scholar

“Aḥmad Ibn Ṭūlūn and the Politics of Deference.” In Islamic Cultures, Islamic Contexts: Essays in Honor of Professor Patricia Crone, ed. Sadeghi, Behnam, Ahmed, Asad Q., Silverstein, Adam J., and Hoyland, Robert G., 229–56. Leiden: Brill, 2015.Google Scholar

“Ibn Ṭūlūn, al-Qaṭāʾiʿ and the Legacy of Samarra.” In Hundert Jahre Grabungen in Samarra, ed. Gonnella, Julia, 63–77. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2014.Google Scholar

Grabar, Oleg. The Coinage of the Ṭūlūnids. New York: American Numismatic Society, 1957.Google Scholar

Grabar, Oleg From the World of Arabic Papyri. Cairo: Maʾaref Press, 1952.Google Scholar

Grohmann, Adolf. Arabic Papyri from the Egyptian Library, vol. 2: Legal Texts. Cairo: Egyptian Library, 1936.Google Scholar

Grohmann, Adolf “Die Bauinschrift der Moschee des Aḥmad Ibn Ṭūlūn (265/879).” In Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture: In Honour of Professor K. A. C. Creswell, ed. Geddes, Charles, 84–94. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1965.Google Scholar

Grohmann, Adolf “Einige bemerkenswerte Urkunden aus der Sammlung der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer an der Nationalbibliothek zu Wien.” Archiv Orientální 18 (1950): 80–119.Google Scholar

Heidemann, Stefan. “Weights and Measures from Byzantium and Islam.” In Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, 7th–9th Century, ed. Ratliff, Brandie and Evans, Helen C., 144–47. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012.Google Scholar

Herzfeld, Ernst. Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra VI: Geschichte der Stadt Samarra. Hamburg: Verlag von Eckardt & Messtorff, 1948.Google Scholar

El-Hibri, Tayeb. “Coinage Reform under the ʿAbbâsid Caliph al-Maʾmûn.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 36 (1993): 58–83.Google Scholar

El-Hibri, Tayeb “The Empire in Iraq, 763–861.” In The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1: The Formation of the Islamic World: Sixth to Eleventh Centuries, ed. Robinson, Chase F., 269–304. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar

Hilgner, Alexandra, Greif, Susanne, and Quast, Dieter (eds.). Gemstones in the First Millennium AD: Mines, Trade and Symbolism. Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, 2017.Google Scholar

Hinds, Martin. “The Murder of the Caliph ʿUthman.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (1972): 450–69.Google Scholar

Hinds, Martin History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, vol. 3: Agathon to Michael I (766), ed. and trans. Evetts, B.. Patrologia Orientalis 5 (1910): 1–215.Google Scholar

Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, . Kitāb Futūḥ Miṣr wa-akhbārihā, ed. Torrey, Charles C.. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922.Google Scholar

Ibn Yūnus, . Taʾrīkh Ibn Yūnus, ed. ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ F, . ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ. 2 vols., Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1421/2000.Google Scholar

al-Jahshiyārī, . Kitāb al-Wuzarāʾ wa-l-kuttāb, ed. ʿal-Ṣāwī, Abd Allāh Ismāʿil. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, 1357/1938.Google Scholar

Kennedy, Hugh. The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State. London/New York: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar

Kennedy, Hugh “Egypt as a Province in the Islamic Caliphate, 641–868.” In The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 1: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517, ed. Petry, Carl F., 62–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar

Khamis, Elias. “Two Wall Mosaic Inscriptions from the Umayyad Market Place in Bet Shean/Baysān.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 64 (2001): 159–76.Google Scholar

Khan, Geoffrey. “The Pre-Islamic Background of Muslim Legal Formularies.” ARAM 6 (1984): 193–224.Google Scholar

al-Kindī, . Kitāb al-Wulāt wa-kitāb al-quḍāt, ed. Guest, R.. Leiden: Brill, 1912.Google Scholar

Kühnel, Ernst. “Tirāzstoffe der Abbasiden.” Der Islam 14 (1925): 82–88.Google Scholar

Legendre, Marie. “Landowners, Caliphs and State Policy over Landholdings in the Egyptian Countryside: Theory and Practice.” In Authority and Control in the Countryside: From Antiquity to Islam in the Mediterranean and Near East (6th–10th Century), ed. Delattre, Alain, Legendre, Marie, and Sijpesteijn, Petra M., 392–419. Leiden: Brill, 2019.Google Scholar

Liebrenz, Boris. “Eine frühe arabische Quittung aus Oberägypten.” Archiv für Papyrusforschung und Verwandte Gebiete 56 (2010): 294–314.Google Scholar

Lev, Yaacov. The Administration of Justice in Medieval Egypt: From the 7th to the 12th Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.Google Scholar

Levi della Vida, G. “A Papyrus Reference to the Damietta Raid of 853.” Byzantion 17 (1944): 212–22.Google Scholar

Mabra, Joshua. Princely Authority in the Early Marwānid State: The Life of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ibn Marwān. Piscataway: Gorgias, 2017.Google Scholar

Magness, Jodi. “Late Roman and Early Islamic Pottery from Middle Egypt and Some Palestinian Connections.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 13 (2000): 812–17.Google Scholar

Malczycki, W. Matt. “The Papyrus Industry in the Early Islamic Era.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 54 (2011): 185–202.Google Scholar

al-Maqrīzī, Aḥmad. al-Mawāʿiẓ wa-l-iʿtibār fī dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-l-āthār, ed. Sayyid, Ayman Fuʾād, 5 vols., London: al-Furqān, 2002–03.Google Scholar

Morelli, Federico. “Legname, palazzi e moschee. P.Vindob. G 31 e il contributo dell’Egitto alla prima architettura Islamica.” Tyche 13 (1999): 165–90.Google Scholar

Nef, Annliese and Tillier, Mathieu. “Introduction: les voies de l’innovation dans un empire Islamique polycentrique.” Annales islamologiques 45 (2011): 1–20.Google Scholar

Ng, Diana. “Journey to the West: The Kelsey Mulḥam in the Context of the Political Usage of Ṭirāz by the ʿAbbāsids and the Ṭūlūnids.” Bulletin 14 (2002–03): 63–81.Google Scholar

Noth, Albrecht. “Zum Verhältnis von kalifer Zentralgewalt und Provinzen in umayyadischer Zeit: Die Ṣulḥ-ʿAnwa Traditionen für Ägypten und den Iraq.” Die Welt des Islams 14 (1973): 150–62.Google Scholar

Parvérie, Marc. “Corpus des monnaies arabo-musulmanes des VIIe et IXe siècles découvertes dans le sud de la France.” Omni 7 (2013): 79–100.Google Scholar

Parvérie, Marc “Une voie d’importation méditerranéenne pour les dinars de Narbonnaise?” Omni 8 (2014): 228–33.Google Scholar

Power, Tim. The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: AD 500–1000. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2012.Google Scholar

Ps.-Sebeos, . The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos, trans. Robert W. Thomson. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.Google Scholar

Rāġib, Yūsuf. “Lettres arabes II.” Annales islamologiques 16 (1980): 1–29.Google Scholar

Rāġib, Yūsuf “La plus ancienne lettre arabe de marchand.” In Documents de l’Islam médiéval: nouvelles perspectives de recherche, ed. Rāġib, Yūsuf, 1–9. Cairo: IFAO, 1991.Google Scholar

Reinfandt, Lucian. “Administrative Papyri from the Abbasid Court in Samarra (AD 836–892): A First Report.” In Actes du 26e Congrès International de Papyrologie, ed. Schubert, Paul, 639–45. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2012.Google Scholar

Robinson, Chase. “Conclusion: From Formative Islam to Classical Islam.” In The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1: The Formation of the Islamic World: Sixth to Eleventh Centuries, ed. Robinson, Chase F., 683–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar

Sharon, Moshe. Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae (CIAP). Leiden: Brill, 1997.Google Scholar

Sijpesteijn, Petra M. “Army Economics: An Early Papyrus Letter Related to ʿAṭāʾ Payments.” In Histories of the Middle East Studies in Middle Eastern Society, Economy and Law in Honor of A. L. Udovitch, ed. Roxani, Margariti Eleni, Sabra, Adam, and Sijpesteijn, Petra M., 245–68. Leiden: Brill, 2011.Google Scholar

Sijpesteijn, Petra M. “Delegation of Judicial Power in Abbasid Egypt.” In Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies: Studies in Honour of Rudolph Peters, ed. van Berkel, Maaike, Buskens, Léon, and Sijpesteijn, Petra M., 61–84. Leiden: Brill, 2017.Google Scholar

Sijpesteijn, Petra M. “An Early Umayyad Papyrus Invitation for the Hajj.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 73 (2014): 179–90.Google Scholar

Sijpesteijn, Petra M. “A Multilingual Policy: The Early Islamic Empire and its Many Languages of Governance.” In Navigating Language in the Early Islamic World, ed. Vacca, Alison and Borrut, Antoine. Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming.Google Scholar

Sijpesteijn, Petra M. “The Rise and Fall of Empires in the Islamic Mediterranean (600–1600 CE): Political Change, the Economy and Material Culture.” In The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization, ed. Hodos, Tamar, 652–68. London/New York: Routledge, 2017.Google Scholar

Sijpesteijn, Petra M. Shaping a Muslim State: The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.Google Scholar

Sijpesteijn, Petra M. “Travel and Trade on the River.” In Papyrology and the History of Early Islamic Egypt, ed. Sijpesteijn, Petra M. and Sundelin, Lennart, 115–52. Leiden: Brill, 2004.Google Scholar

Sijpesteijn, Petra M. “Visible Identities: In Search of Egypt’s Jews in Early Islamic Egypt.” In Israel in Egypt: The Land of Egypt as Concept and Reality for Jews in Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period, ed. Salvesen, Alison, Pearce, Sarah, and Frenkel, Miriam, 424–40. Leiden: Brill, 2020.Google Scholar

al-Ṭabarī, . Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-muluk, ed. de Goeje, M. J. et al. 16 vols., Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901.Google Scholar

Taxel, Itamar, Lester, Ayala, and ’Ad, Uzi. “Two Rare Early Abbasid Paint-Decorated Ceramic Bowls from El-Khirba/Nes Ziyyona, Israel.” Muqarnas 35 (2018): 273–80.Google Scholar

Tillier, Mathieu. “Les ‘premiers’ cadis de Fusṭāṭ et les dynamiques régionales de l’innovation judiciaire (750–833).” Annales islamologiques 45 (2011): 214–42.Google Scholar

Tillier, Mathieu “Représenter la province auprès du pouvoir impérial: les délégations (wufūd) égyptiennes aux trois premiers siècles de l’Islam.” Arabica 67 (2020): 125–99.Google Scholar

Tillier, Mathieu Vies des cadis de Miṣr, 237/851–366/976. Cairo: IFAO, 2002.Google Scholar

von Karabacek, Joseph. “Erstes urkundliches Auftreten von Türken.” Mitteilungen aus der Sammlung der Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer 11 (1897): 86–108.Google Scholar

von Karabacek, Joseph Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer: Führer durch die Ausstellung. Vienna: Selbstverlag der Sammlung, 1894.Google Scholar

von Sivers, Peter. “Taxes and Trade in the ʿAbbāsid Thughūr, 750–961/133–351.” Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient 25 (1981): 71–99.Google Scholar

Whittow, Mark. “How Much Trade Was Local, Regional and Inter-Regional?” In Local Economies? Production and Exchange of Inland Regions in Late Antiquity, ed. Lavan, Luke, 133–65. Leiden: Brill, 2013.Google Scholar

Wiet, Gaston. “Review Ernst Kühnel, The Textile Museum: Catalogue of Dated Tiraz Fabrics in Syria.” Revue d’art oriental et d’archéologie 30 (1953): 342–44.Google Scholar

al-Yaʿqūbī, , Taʾrīkh, ed. Houtsma, M. T.. 2 vols., Leiden: Brill, 1883.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.