Between two Worlds: Greek Papyri from Early Arab Egypt

In the year 639 an Arab army led by the commander Amr ibn al-As, entered Egypt and, over the next couple of years took control of the whole country. From this time, Egypt shared the fate of the other southern and eastern areas of the Mediterranean world, and became part of the newly established Arab empire. However, the transition to the new political, social, religious and cultural system, took place over a much longer period. For a long time Christianity remained the religion of the great majority of the population, and Greek-Coptic culture in the broadest sense continued to be the prevailing one. Greek, and especially in certain fields Coptic, continued to be the written languages long after the conquest. From the first one and a half centuries of Arab rule a large quantity of Greek texts on papyrus have been preserved. The Viennese papyrus collection is, more than many other collections of the same genre, particularly rich in texts from the Arab period. These texts are mostly documents of public administration, such as letters, orders and communications, administrative and tax accounts, lists, etc. They illustrate like no other source, on the one hand, the ways in which the Arabs built an empire based on the previous and still functioning Byzantine administration, and, on the other, their attitude towards the Egyptian population. Above all they show the way in which the Byzantine administration and the population, cooperated with, lived together with, and reacted to the newcomers, and how this interaction gave shape to a new institutional, social, cultural and economic reality. These documents are historically extremely relevant: being the only direct testimonies from the time of the great Arab expansion, they are crucially important for our understanding of the transformation of the eastern and southern parts of the ancient/Christian world into Islamic/Arab areas. These original documents, reflecting the point of view of the subjects, at a level and in a cultural environment which is very different from the one that produced the extant historiographical sources, complement and correct the often partial pictures we have from later historiography. Of these texts, only a relatively small part has been published so far, while most remain inaccessible, unpublished and in most cases not even catalogued or explored in collections such as the Viennese one. The project aims, through the publication of a substantial number of Vienna papyri from this period with transcription, translation, commentary and historical framing, to make a significant part of this material accessible for historical research, and to contribute to a better and more thorough understanding of this epoch-making historical phase and its long-lasting consequences.

The aim of the project was the edition of Greek papyri of the early Arab period from the collection of the Austrian National Library. These documents are historically extremely important: being direct testimonies from the times of the great Arab expansion, they are fundamental for our understanding of the transformation of a part of the ancient/Christian world into Islamic/Arab areas. The main result of the project was a volume with texts, translations and interpretation of some 60 documents which touch on numerous aspects of administrative, economic and social life and bring a substantial amount of new information that corrects, supplements, clarifies, and above all greatly expands our knowledge of the changes and continuities in the life of the indigenous Christian population, the coexistence, relations and cooperation between Arabs and Christians, and how this interaction gave shape to a new institutional, social, cultural and economic reality. In our texts we observe on the one hand the persistence of the social and administrative structures that characterized the life of the Egyptian population already in the previous Byzantine period. On the other hand, the Arabs, while exercising power over the country and introducing a series of innovations, leave to the ex-Byzantine officials the implementation of the new measures, the management of ordinary administration (taxation, justice, public order), and the relations with the Christian population. Although our documents show that already in the first years after the conquest the Arabs were spread over a number of villages and settlements, they only rarely interact directly with the population. The relationships between Arabs and Christians and the persistence of the Byzantine administrative system beside the new but still undefined Arab one are core issues for future research. The texts published in the course of the project, by providing direct and unfiltered new information, will contribute to a better understanding, a better-founded and more impartial reconstruction of these major epoch-making events. The Arab conquest marks the transition of the eastern and southern shores of the ancient Mediterranean from a Christian to an Arab world, and lies at the starting point of a long history of varied relationships, resulting ultimately in the current geopolitical order. The investigation, on the basis of new contemporary and direct sources, of these key events and of their consequences, of the coexistence between Christians and Muslims and of their relationships in the first century of Islam, is a high priority for today's historiography and, more in general, for social sciences. It provides a valuable basis, beyond prejudices and misleading information, for understanding, and dealing with, crucial aspects of our own times and societies.