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

Project Information

CALIPHALFINANCES

Grant agreement ID: 950414

DOI

10.3030/950414

EC signature date 6 October 2020

Start date 1 September 2021

End date 31 December 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 497 647,00

EU contribution

€ 1 497 647,00

Coordinated by

THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - CALIPHALFINANCES (The Finances of the Caliphate: Abbasid Fiscal Practice in Islamic Late Antiquity)

Reporting period: 2024-09-01 to 2026-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project reconstructs a view of the earliest centuries of Abbasid history that looks drastically different from that of existing research. Hundreds of papyrus documents in Greek, Coptic and Arabic written in Egypt under Abbasid rule have been published, and Caliphal Finances uses them for the first time as foundational texts for a study of Abbasid fiscal history and of the Abbasid empire as an economic entity. The project studies the organisation of the Abbasid fiscal system starting with the point of view of taxpayers and local administration, using documents in three languages from Egypt with the addition of contemporary coinage, glass weights, stelas and luxury items. Then, the project integrates this corpus into a study of Abbasid financial means in the long Late Antiquity (8th-10th century) by bringing the Egyptian material in conversation with sources about the central administration. With the overall goal of covering all levels of the administrative hierarchy involved in fiscal collection, the project uncovers how the Abbasids financed their empire and how administrators at different levels as well as taxpayers influenced fiscal policies and contributed to the movement of revenues. In a field largely dominated by religious history, this project renews our understanding of the dynamics of change in Islamicate state-structures, with a focus on the economic power and on the complexity of local agency.
The objectives of the project are:
1. to refocus the field of Abbasid history towards documentary sources, moving away from the monopoly that narratives presently enjoy as a source of the history of the Abbasids,
2. to renew our understanding of the payment of taxes, moving away from the focus on religious communities (what Muslims or Christians pay) to focus on questions of economic agency relevant to multi-confessional groups,
3. to reveal the multilingual workings of day-to-day Abbasid administration,
4. to reconstruct a micro and macro view of Abbasid fiscal administration from the taxpayer to the caliph, including the participation of local administrators and elites in the shaping of fiscal policies,
5. to bring fiscal and economic developments to the forefront of the field’s central debates concerning historical periodisation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project team started with an investigation of the published corpus of Arabic, Greek and Coptic papyrus documents from Egypt dating to the Abbasid period (750-969, c. 2,000 documents). Editions of new documents from four European and North American collections are also prepared. The focus of the investigation of this corpus has been the following:
- the payment and recording of the capitation tax,
- the meaning of kharaj and the administration of the taxation of land (land in individual ownership and state land),
- the payment of taxes in cash and kind,
- multilingualism in the Abbasid administration,
- the administrative hierarchy handling the fiscal administration and the related mechanisms of (1) delegation of tax collection and of (2) guarantee of fiscal revenues at several levels of the hierarchy.
Accounting documents in Greek, Coptic and Arabic have been one of the foci of the project team. The aim is to propose criteria for the identification of accounting documents that relate to the fiscal process, especially about the assessment and collection of taxes and about tax rates. The same survey of documents forms the basis of a study of accounting culture in the Abbasid period, including but not restricted to the system of money of account.
All of the above topics are studied on the basis of Egyptian papyrus documents and through the incorporation of data from long form sources (narrative sources, legal treatises, poetry, literary sources) and from additional types of documentary sources (coinage, glass weights, stelas, luxury items). The joint study of papyrus documents and coinage allows to integrate fiscal matters within a wider study of the economy of the Abbasid empire. For instance, the shift to taxation assessed in cash at the end of the 8th century is investigated within a wider picture of changes of economic indicators such as the disappearance of copper coinage later in the 9th century.
While extending the focus of the project beyond the Nile valley, the transfer of fiscal revenues between the Egyptian province and the central administration of the caliphate is a key topic investigated by the project team. The circulation of fiscal revenues within the province of Iraq completes the picture. The relations between the central administration and the different regions of the empire are often contentious around fiscal issues, as such fiscal revolts in Abbasid Egypt and discourses against fiscal policies are also part of the project’s scope.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Using papyrus documents from Egypt as a starting point for the history of the Abbasid period in general had never been attempted prior to this project. Here the focus is on fiscal history and by extension on the functioning of state structures and on the economy of the empire. With the incorporation of a large variety of sources contemporary to the papyrological corpus, Caliphal Finances offers a blueprint for the writing of Abbasid history from a multiplicity of perspectives.
The project calls into question the linear vision of the disintegration of the early Islamic empire and the level of centralization of the Abbasid empire which is often presented as a given in the state of the art. Using the movement of fiscal revenues as an indicator of the integration of the provinces with the imperial centre and of the province between themselves, successive moments of integration and disintegration can be identified which point to shifts in imperial logics throughout the history of the early caliphate.
The project team is producing new editions of documents in Arabic, Greek and Coptic, two monographs and two PhD dissertations in addition to journal articles. Caliphal Finances also invites scholars in the field to contribute with them to a Handbook of Fiscal History in the Early Islamic World (7th-10th century). The aim of this volume is to provide a much needed up to date resource on fiscal history that will be mainly aimed at advanced students of Islamic history as well as scholars in the field who are not specialists of taxation. In addition, at least one chapter will be aimed at a larger audience including undergraduate students.

Arabic account, verso credit: Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Papyrussammlung

Arabic account, recto credit: Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Papyrussammlung