P.Cair.Arab III 167: A Discussion of the Akhmīm Declaration
Multilingual documents usually are of special historical interest. Their value for the study of the linguistic situation—multilingualism, linguistic inference and the process of arabicisation—in early Islamic Egypt has recently been considered in a number of studies.1 P.Cair.Arab iii 167, a trilingual declaration, written in Coptic, Greek and Arabic, is an exceptionally rich example of such documents. In the present paper, I shall bemainly concernedwith its administrative contents and what it reveals about how the new Arab administration reacted to complaints presented against certain irregularities committed in connection with the tax collection in Akhmīm and its surrounding area. Early Arab rule tended to be practical and keen to avoid any interruption in the smooth running of the administration. It was therefore consistent with the framework of their polity to allow—for at least a century—the perpetuation of two earlier practices: the Byzantine taxation system, and the use of the Greek and Coptic languages in local administration.With regard to taxation, Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam states that “ʿAmr agreed to levy the same amount of taxes as the Rūm (i.e. Byzantines).”2 Consequently, the new Arab administration in Egypt had to deal with the same causes of discontent that had troubled the Romans and the Byzantines before them. Although fiscal pressure had often caused Egypt’s tax-payers to rise in revolt already in the pre-Islamic period, the end of the first/seventh and first half of the second/eighth centuries especially saw tension rising, with more conflicts
Shaping a Muslim State: The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS NOTE ON EDITIONS, DATES, AND REFERENCES LIST OF MAPS LIST OF PLATES INTRODUCTION PART I: DISCUSSION 1. The Egyptian context: Geography and History 2. Arab Egypt: The first fifty years 3. The Second Fifty Years: Consolidation and Reform 4. Beyond Words 5. Conclusion PART II: THE TEXTS Note on the Orthography and Grammar of the Papyri Letters to 'Abd Allah b. As'ad from Najid b. Muslim Other Letters to 'Abd Allah b. As'ad Letter from 'Abd Allah b. As'ad Letters from/Related to Najid b. Muslim BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX
Eine griechisch-ägyptische Wörterliste vermutlich des 3. Jh. v. Chr. (P. Heid. Inv.-Nr. G 414)
L'auteur du present article s'interesse au papyrus 414, autrefois conserve a Heidelberg mais aujourd'hui disparu. Des cliches et fiches permettent cependant de l'analyser. Il s'agit d'une liste de mots grecs auxquels correspond la transcription en alphabet grec du mot egyptien, ce qui est d'une importance capitale pour la connaissance de la prononciation de la langue egyptienne du 3e siecle av. J.-C.