When Taxes Tell Stories: A Document Cluster of Tax Registers from the Southern Fayyūm

Grabmaier, Theresa (2025): When Taxes Tell Stories: A Document Cluster of Tax Registers from the Southern Fayyūm. In: Der Islam : Journal of the History and Culture of the Middle East, Vol. 102, No. 2: pp. 427-448

Abstract

This article presents a preliminary description and analysis of four tax registers that form the core of a larger cluster of Arabic documents from the 9th– and 10th–century Fayyūm. The cluster was discovered in the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung Berlin during efforts to identify document clusters within a corpus of 1,000 unpublished documents. The four tax registers mention common names and villages, indicating they were created by a local tax administration office in the southern Fayyūm. Notably, two extensive tax ledgers (P.Berl.inv. 15070; P.Berl.inv. 15069), together housing the names of approximately 400 individual taxpayers from the villages of Shidmūh, Miqrān, and possibly a third village, are of particular interest. Both ledgers emphasize the completion of payments, suggesting they reflect the lowest stage of a tax collection cycle. The taxpayers are identified in various ways, typically by name (ism) and the father’s name (nasab) or the name of the first-born son (kunya), but also by profession, origin, or even nickname. The third and fourth tax registers (P.Berl.inv. 15073; P.Berl.inv. 15081) presented here exhibit a different layout and structure, representing a later administrative step. Collectively, this cluster offers promising opportunities for investigating village social structures and various forms of kinship.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Keywords: Arabic documents ; papyrology ; ʿAbbāsid Egypt ; taxation ; administration ; rural society
• Faculties: Cultural Studies > Department of Ancient and Modern Cultures > Near and Middle Eastern Studies
• Subjects: 900 History and geography > 900 Geschichte
• ISSN: 0021-1818
• Language: English