Rural Economy and Tribal Society in Islamic Egypt: A Study of Al-Nabulusi's Villages of the Fayyum 2503575188, 9782503575186

Citation preview

Rural Economy and T ribal S ociety in I slamic E gypt

THE MEDIEVAL COUNTRYSIDE General Editor Phillipp Schofield, Aberystwyth University Editorial Board Laurent Feller, Université Paris Paul Freedman, Yale University Thomas Lindkvist, Göteborgs universitet Sigrid Hirbodian, Universität Tübingen Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Universiteit Leiden Piotr Gorecki, University of California, Riverside Sandro Carocci, Università degli Studi di Roma Julio Escalona, Consejo Superio de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid Pere Benito i Monclus, Universitat de Lleida

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book

Volume 19

Rural Economy and T ribal S ociety in I slamic E gypt A Study of al-Nābulusī’s Villages of the Fayyum by

Yossef Rapoport

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

© 2018, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2018/0095/14 ISBN: 978-2-503-57518-6 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-57530-8 DOI: 10.1484/M.TMC-EB.5.112961 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper

To the incomparable G.L.

Contents List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Measures, Weights and Monetary Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix Chapter 1. Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 2. The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Chapter 3. Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Chapter 4. Subsistence and Tribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Chapter 5. Sugar, Orchards, and Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Chapter 6. Landholding and the Regime of Iqṭāʿ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Chapter 7. Village and Tribe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Chapter 8. Christians and Muslims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Chapter 9. The Tribal Conversion of the Fayyum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Biblio­graphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

List of Illustrations Figures Figure 1. A funerary limewood panel bearing the portrait of a young man with curly hair. Hawara, ad 80–120. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Figure 2. Map of Egypt from Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb Ṣūrat al-Arḍ. Sixteenth-century copy based on a 1443–44 manu­script. . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Figure 3. Size of tax-free allowances to village officials, in feddans . . . . . . 189 Figure 4. Grandfather of Mercurios being attacked by cynocephaloi. Detail of wall painting from St Anthony Monastery at the Red Sea, 1232–33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Maps Map 1. Villages of the Fayyum, 1243 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi Map 2. Cultivated areas and major villages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Map 3. Relative village size (based on the Giza dike levy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Map 4. Distribution of land-tax on grains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Map 5. Alms-tax on small cattle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Map 6. Permanent and seasonal pasture areas, by number of grazing animals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Map 7. Network of sugar-cane presses and plantations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Map 8. Land-tax on flax and on cotton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Map 9. Land-tax on orchards and vineyards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Map 10. Alms-tax on grapes/raisins and dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Map 11. Tribes and clans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Map 12. Active churches and monasteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

x

list of iLLUSTRATIONS

Tables Table 1. Villages with largest shares of the Giza dike levy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Table 2. Fees on grain cultivation, by category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Table 3. Wheat as share of village taxes in grains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Table 4. Alms-tax on heads of livestock, by category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Table 5. Sugar-cane presses in the Fayyum, 1243 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Table 6. Wage-labourers (murābiʿūn) and tenants (muzāriʿūn) on sugar-cane plantations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Table 7. Land-tax on vineyards and alms-tax on grapes/raisins . . . . . . . . . 127 Table 8. Revenues of Madinat al-Fayyum, by category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Table 9. Estimated aggregate tax revenues in the Fayyum, by fiscal categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Table 10. Iqṭāʿ units with highest fiscal value in army dinars (single village iqṭāʿ units only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Table 11. Fiscal value of single- and multi-village iqṭāʿ units in army dinars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Table 12. Major iqṭāʿ-holders in the Fayyum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Table 13. Arrears and rates of uncollected taxes in kind (select villages) . . . . 167 Table 14. Arrears and withheld taxes in cash (select villages) . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Table 15. Tax-free land allowances, by category (excluding religious institutions and clerics) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 Table 16. Tax-free allowances to village officials in Sinnūris . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Table 17. Riders for royal campaigns, by tribal confederacies and sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Table 18. Christian population of the Fayyum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

A

Acknowledgements

s the product of some two decades of intermittent research, I  owe a multitude of debts to many scholars, experts, and friends across many disciplines and continents. I  have already separately acknowledged those who contributed to the detailed analysis, edition and translation of al-Nābulusī’s text in the companion volume, The ‘Villages of the Fayyum’: Thirteenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt, and I would like to reiterate my gratitude to all of them. Here I would like to single out a few individuals who have been particularly influential in the formation of the current volume. I was introduced to al-Nābulusī and his work by Avram L. Udovitch, and I hope this book does justice to his life-long commitment to the social and economic history of the medi­eval Middle East. Jim Keenan, who had taken an early lead in recognizing the significance of the Villages of the Fayyum for the longue durée history of the Fayyum, has shown immense support and generosity. I owe a huge intellectual debt to Dominic Rathbone, who has patiently guided me in the methods of premodern rural history, as well as through the topo­graphy of the Fayyum. I hope he will regard me as a disciple. I have also benefited from Nicolas Michel’s unsurpassable familiarity with the history of the Egyptian countryside in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. Bethany Walker has lent continuous encouragement and kept reminding me to look at the material evidence, or at least keep it in mind. Luke Yarbrough helped me piece together al-Nābulusī’s bio­graphy. At Queen Mary, I have been lucky to benefit from the company of Jim Bolton, one of the great economic historians of our time. His insights shaped much of the economic chapters of this book. The following volume would not have been possible without Ido Shahar, whose painstaking contribution to the edition and translation of the Villages of the Fayyum made this second volume possible. Our decade-long collaboration on al-Nābulusī was a source of pleasure.

xii

Acknowledgements

The maps that appear in this volume have been expertly prepared by Max Satchell, who has invested an inordinate amount of effort to familiarize himself with the Fayyumi landscape. This project was made possible by a generous research grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, held from April 2009 to April 2011. The preparation of the maps was then supported by a Scouloudi publication grant from the Institute of Historical Research, by a grant from the Isobel Thornley Fund at the Uni­ver­sity of London, and by the School of History, Queen Mary Uni­ver­sity of London. This book owes much to frequent discussions, always in good humour, with my brothers Yoav and Meron. Their intellectual imprint is everywhere in this volume. The economist and mathematician Gilat Levy had to suffer more of al-Nābulusī than she bargained for. This book would have been impossible without her love. As for the children, I always promised them a book about counting sheep.

Abbreviations EI2 

Bearman, P. J., and others, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden: Brill, 2012) [online]

HPEC 

Severus ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and others, History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church: Known As the History of the Holy Church, trans. by Yassā ʿAbd al-Masīḥ, O. H. E. Burmester Antoine Khater, and Aziz S. Atiya. 4 vols (Cairo: Société d’Archéo­logie Copte, 1943–)

Lumaʿ 

al-Nābulusī, ʿUthmān b.  Ibrāhīm, Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn al-muḍiyya fī dawāwīn al-diyār al-miṣriyya, ed. by C. Becker and C. Cahen, in Bulletin d’études Orientales, 16 (1960), 119–34 (editor’s introduction) and 1–78 (Arabic text)

VF 

[al-Nābulusī, ʿUthman b. Ibrāhīm], The ‘Villages of the Fayyum’: Thir­ teenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt, ed. and trans. by Yossef Rapoport and Ido Shahar, The Medi­eval Countryside, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018)

xiv

Measures, Weights, and Monetary Units

D

efinitions of weights and measures have changed across time and place in Egyptian history. The following is primarily based on the definitions offered by the Mamluk-era author al-Qalqashandī as interpreted by Walther Hinz1 and Eliyahu Ashtor,2 and corroborated by the internal evidence in the Villages of the Fayyum.

Dry measures (volume) ardabb = about 90 litres, holding approximately 69.6 kg. of wheat and 56 kg. of barley.3 wayba = 1/6 ardabb = 15 litres, or 11.6 kg. of wheat.4

Length dhirāʿ (also dhirāʿ al-ʿamal) = cubit/work cubit = 65.6 cm.5 qaṣaba (lit. ‘cane’ or ‘reed’) = 6 dhirāʿ = about 3.9 m.6 qabḍa (lit. ‘a fist’s width’) = 1/6 dhiraʿ = about 10.9 cm.7

1  2 

Hinz, Islamischee Masse und Gewichte. Ashtor, ‘Makāyīl’, EI2.

3  Hinz, Islamische Maße und Gewichte, p. 39; Ashtor, ‘Makāyīl and Mawāzīn’. According to an anecdote narrated by al-Maqrīzī in the fifteenth century, the ardabb of the Fayyum was 50 per cent larger than that of Cairo (al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʽiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 273). This is not mentioned by al-Nābulusī or corroborated by any other source. Note that the ardabb was conceptually defined as the volume of seed required to sow a standard feddan, in the same way one Roman artaba was required to sow a Roman aroura. 4  5  6 

Hinz, Islamische Maße und Gewichte, p. 52. Hinz, ‘Dhirāʿ’, EI2.

Hinz, Islamische Maße und Gewichte, p. 63.

Hinz, Islamische Maße und Gewichte, p. 63. More precisely, ‘from the bottom of the hand to the tip of the extended thumb’ (Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants, p. 209). 7 

Measures, Weights, and Monetary Units

xv

Square measures (area) faddān (pl. fadādīn; lit. ‘Yoke of oxen’) = ‘feddan’ = 6,368 sq. m.8

Weight qinṭār = 45 kg. = 100 raṭl.9 raṭl = 450 g. = 144 dirham.10

Monetary units Dinar = gold coin, with canonical weight of 4.233 g.11 Dirham = silver coin, with canonical weight of 3.125 g. In the Villages of the Fay­ yum, however, the low quality waraq or black dirham is always intended.12

Exchange rate The standard exchange rate used uniformly throughout the treatise is 1 dinar = 40 (waraq) dirham, an exchange rate referred to as the ‘exchange rate of Cairo’.13

Bosworth, ‘Miṣāḥa’, EI2. Borsch (The Black Death, p. 48) has recently argued that in the Mamluk era, an Egyptian feddan was equal to roughly 1.4 acres (i.e., 5,665 sq. m.). I stick with the traditional interpretation, which is based on the definition of the feddan as 400 square qaṣaba, as indicated in literary and documentary sources. This is confirmed by an eleventh-century document from the Fayyum, where a surface area of 2 feddans is measured to be 50 qaṣaba by 16 qaṣaba, i.e., 800 square qaṣaba (Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, p. 112, no. 23). 8 

9 

Hinz, Islamische Maße und Gewichte, p. 24.

10  11 

Hinz, Islamische Maße und Gewichte, p. 29. Hinz, Islamische Maße und Gewichte, p. 11.

Hinz, Islamische Maße und Gewichte, p. 29. While mostly the text refers to ‘dirhams’, without specifying the type of coin, the text contains a few references to waraq dirhams and to ‘black dirhams’, both terms designating the low quality silver coins in circulation in the Ayyubid period (Schultz, ‘The Monetary History of Egypt’, p. 332). Since the waraq dirhams mentioned are said to have the same exchange rate of 1:40 to the dinar observed elsewhere in the treatise, it is likely that all references to dirhams in the treatise are to waraq, or black dirhams. 12 

Such an exchange rate also appears in many of the Geniza documents that Goitein has analyzed. See Goitein, ‘The Exchange Rate’, pp. 23, 28, 43. 13 

Map OF THE Villages of the Fayyum, 1243

Map 1. Villages of the Fayyum, 1243

xvi

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

al-Aʿlām Abhīt Abū Ksā Akhṣāṣ Abū ʿUṣayya Akhṣāṣ al-ʿAjamiyyīn Akhṣāṣ al-Ḥallāq ʿAnz Babīj Andīr Babīj Anqāsh Babīj Faraḥ Babīj Ghaylān Babīj Unshū Baḥr Banī Qurīṭ Bāja Bamawayh Bandīq Banū Majnūn Bayāḍ Bilāla Biyahmū Buljusūq Būr Sīnarū Burjtūt Bushṭā Būṣīr Difidnū Dahmā Dhāt al-Ṣafā Difidnū Dimashqīn al-Baṣal Dimūh al-Dāthir Dimūh al-Lāhūn

E3 E2 C2 E2 C3 F2 D3 B4 B3 D3 F5 B2 C4 E3 C2 F3 D2 G3 D4 E2 D6 C2 A3 C4 D4 C4 F2 D4 F4 F3 F5

ID GRID

SETTLEMENT

Dinfāras of Jardū and Ihrīt Diqlawa Disyā Dumūshiyya Fānū Fidimīn Furqus Ghābat Bāja Ḥaddāda al-Ḥammām al-Ḥanbūshiyya Hawwāra al-Baḥriyya Hawwārat Dumūshiyya al-Haysha Hayshat Dumūshiyya Ibrīziyā Ibshāyat al-Rummān al-ʿIdwa Ihrīt al-Istinbāṭ Iṭsā Jardū Jarfis Kanbūt Kawm al-Raml Khawr al-Rammād al-Lāhūn al-Mahīmsī al-Malāliyya Maqṭūl Masjid ʿĀʾisha

SETTLEMENT 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

C3 A3 C3 E4 D2 D2 G1 E4 C5 G4 B3 E4 E4 G4 E4 F2 B2 F3 C4 D3 D4 C3 E2 B4 F6 E3 G5 E6 E3 G2 A4

ID GRID al-Maṣlūb and Kharāb Jundī Mintāra Minyat al-Baṭs Minyat al-Dīk Minyat al-Usquf Minyat Aqnā Minyat Karbīs Minyat Shushhā Miṭr Ṭāris Munshaʾat al-Ṭawāḥīn Munshaʾat Awlād ʿArafa Munshaʾat Ibn Kurdī Muqrān Muṭūl Nāmūsa and Nāmūsa (Nāmūsatayn) Naqalīfa al-Qalhāna Qambashā al-Qubarāʾ Qushūsh al-Rubiyyāt al-Rūbiyyūn al-Ṣafāwina Sanhūr Shallāla Shalmaṣ Shāna Shidmūh Shisfa Shushhā Sidmant

SETTLEMENT 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

E3 B5 F1 D3 E3 B2 D3 C4 F2 E3 D4 F2 C5 C4 H4 D2 E4 E5 E2 E3 G1 D3 D4 C1 E2 D2 G2 C5 E2 C5 E6

ID GRID 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

G2 C2 E2 F2 E4 C6 D1 C3 E3 F5 D2 C3 D6 H4 D5 D4 F2

ID GRID

al-aḥkār  al-Bārida al-Kawm al-Aḥmar al-Manẓara Babīj al-Nīla Birkat ibn Shikla Iṭfīḥ Shallā Munshaʾat Abī Sibāʿ Munshaʾat al-ʿAthāmina Munshaʾat al-Muṭawwiʿ Munshaʾat al-Wasaṭ Munshaʾat Ghaylān Qumnā Bajūsh

UNLOCATED SETTLEMENTS

Sīla Sīnarū Sinnūris Sirisnā Ṣunūfar Ṭalīt al-Ṭārima Thalāth The City (al-Madina) Ṭimā Tirsā Ṭubhār Tuṭūn Umm al-Nakhārīr Umm al-Sibā ‘ Uqlūl al-Zarbī

SETTLEMENT

Map OF THE Villages of the Fayyum, 1243 xvii

W

Introduction

e often tend to view the world of Islam as a network of urban centres, separated by deserts and steppes from which nomadic tribes occasionally emerge, overthrow the ruling dynasties and take their place.1 Yet this focus on cities and nomads leaves out the sedentary peasantry, surely the majority of the population in most areas of medi­eval Islam. In most accounts of Islamic history, the peasants are relegated to the role of passive extras, toiling in the background while the heroes of Islamic history fight it out for faith and glory. This omission — the ‘inability to imagine that under Islam peasants had a history’2 — is surely wrong. Investigating the history of the peasants is not merely a moral imperative of giving voice to the voiceless, although it can be that too. The conviction that runs through this book is that the history of the peasants — the social, economic, and religious transformations in which the peasantry were active agents of change — should be at the centre of our narrative. Without it, we simply miss out the fundamental currents that shaped Islamic history. But is such a history possible? Do we have the wealth of evidence to sustain the kind of rural history practised by scholars of medi­eval Europe? Over the past few decades, there have been exemplary studies of the Islamic countryside, mainly focusing on legal texts from Islamic Spain and North Africa;3 on excavations of village sites in Spain and Jordan;4 and, for Upper and Middle Most recently illustrated by the organization of the authoritative New Cam­bridge History of Islam, iv: Islamic Cultures and Societies to the End of the Eighteenth Century. The chapter ‘The City and the Nomad’ by Hugh Kennedy is largely devoted to the importance of nomadic or transhumant tribes in Islamic history. It is followed by ‘Rural life and Economy until 1800’ by Andrew Watson, devoted to the history of the peasantry. 1 

2 

Humphreys, Islamic History, p. 284.

The most important examples are Lagardère, Campagnes et paysans d’Al-Andalus; Voguet, le monde rural du Maghreb central. For the central Islamic lands, see the influential Johansen, The Islamic Law. 3 

For an integration of village site archaeo­logy with literary sources, see Walker, Jordan in the Late Middle Ages. For al-Andalus and North Africa, see the survey by Guichard, ‘Les Commu4 

Introduction

xx

Egypt, on small private archives meticulously reconstructed from the chance survival of documents.5 But these achievements often remain in realm of qualitative impressions, mainly due the absence of any state archive before the Ottoman surveys of the sixteenth century. Therefore, it is argued, we simply don’t have sufficient numerical data to answer the kind of research questions that ought to drive rural history: how much was produced, and how? How many people lived on the land? How much taxes did they pay? How were village communities organized? Because the archives have not survived, so the lament goes, we shall never know.6 Yet we do have one source that provides us with precisely the kind of data required to answer these questions. Dating from the middle of the thirteenth century and known to modern scholarship for over a century, Abū ʿUthmān al-Nābulusī’s Villages of the Fayyum is as close as we get to the tax registers of any rural province. Not unlike the Domesday Book of medi­eval England, al-Nābulusī provides a wealth of detail for each village which surpasses, by far, any other source for the rural economy of medi­eval Islam. It is a unique, comprehensive snap-shot of one rural society at one significant point in its history. By using a quantitative approach, the bread and butter of rural history, al-Nābulusī’s work allows us to draw a picture of the village communities, their internal organization, and their relationship with the state — an otherwise impossible insight to the way of life of the majority of the population in the medi­eval Islamic world. Al-Nābulusī was sent to the Fayyum in 1245 at the orders of the Ayyubid Sultan of Cairo al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ. He had been an official in the administration of al-Ṣāliḥ’s father, Sultan al-Kāmil, and was now called out of retirement to report on the agricultural conditions in the province. The exceptional productivity of the Fayyum was renown since antiquity, but, al-Nābulusī tells us, its fiscal revenues were now in decline. Al-Nābulusī proceeded to survey the Fayyum by going from village to village, relying on local tax and irrigation officials and paying careful attention to minute details of agricultural production. The resulting account has survived in two manu­scripts, and one of them was published by Bernhard Moritz in 1898 under the somewhat misleading nautés de base sédentaire’; Bazzana, Cressier, and Guichard, Les châteaux ruraux d’al-Andalus, and several articles in Ouerfelli and Voguet, Le monde rural dans l’occident musulman médiévale.

For mono­graphs that integrate the documentary evidence in wider studies of Egyptian rural society, see Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State; Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages. 5 

See the historio­graphical surveys in Picard, ‘Les élites rurales du monde musulman méditerranéen’; Humphreys, Islamic History. 6 

Introduction

xxi

title Taʾrīkh al-Fayyūm wa-bilādihi (History of the Fayyum and its Villages). It is now translated and edited by Ido Shahar and myself as The Villages of the Fayyum: Thirteenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt. Al-Nābulusī’s work is divided into nine introductory chapters dealing with the geo­graphy, climate, irrigation systems, and population of the province. These are followed by the main body of treatise, the cadastral survey itself, with entries for more than one hundred villages and hamlets. For each village, al-Nābulusī indicates the size of the village and the state of its habitation, its geo­graphical location, the tribal or religious identity of its inhabitants, its sources of water, and local mosques, churches, and monasteries. He also invariably indicates whether the village’s tax revenues are paid to the sultan, to a religious endowment (waqf), or, most commonly, allocated to army officers in return for military service (iqṭāʿ). The text is interspersed with anecdotal observations on local agricultural conditions, the villagers’ relations with the iqṭāʿ-holder, and organization of production. The lists of taxes levied on each village take up most of the treatise. They are divided into taxes in kind, levied on grains, and taxes in cash levied on other agricultural products, such as livestock and cash crops. The category of taxes in cash also includes the poll-tax levied on non-Muslims, mainly the Coptic population, recording with precision the number of non-Muslim men residing in each village. There is information about oxen and water buffalos, the number of chickens, and the amount of fodder. Arrears in the village payments are noted, as well as the annual provision of seeds by the sultan or by the holder of the iqṭāʿ. Miscellany levies also include auxiliary cavalry to be supplied by the tribesmen of the province and payments for irrigation works. Following its publication by Moritz in 1898, the treatise attracted some attention as a source for a study of the local geo­graphy of the Fayyum. In 1901, George Salmon published a map of the villages mentioned by al-Nābulusī based on modern place-names, as well as a nutshell paraphrase for each village.7 In the 1940s, Salmon’s map was improved by Ali Shafei, a local irrigation engineer with first-hand knowledge of the province. Shafei also provided useful technical explanation of the irrigation system described by al-Nābulusī.8 More recently, Heinz Halm had incorporated the basic details of village names and their fiscal value to his study of Mamluk Egyptian cadastral surveys.9 7 

Salmon, ‘Répertoire géo­graphique’.

Shafei Bey, ‘Fayoum irrigation’. König, ‘Die Oase al-Fayyum’, produces yet a third set of maps of al-Nābulusī’s Fayyum, comparing and correcting the earlier maps. 8 

9 

Halm, Ägypten nach den Mamlukischen Lehensregistern.

Introduction

xxii

The first to realize the potential of al-Nābulusī’s work for a social history of the Islamic countryside was the pioneering Claude Cahen. In 1956, Cahen published an article surveying most of the fiscal categories mentioned by al-Nābulusī and comparing them to contemporary administrative manuals.10 But Cahen also understood that the real value of the treatise lies in its numerical data on tax revenues, whose detailed precision, he noted, would the object of envy for any historian of medi­eval Europe. To illustrate his point, his article is accompanied by an elephantine fold-out table of the value of the taxes in each village according to the different fiscal categories. However, prior to digital spreadsheets and GIS maps, the sheer amount of data on the table made it effectively unusable. Cahen also realized that the treatise can be studied against the background of rich papyro­logical evidence from Greco-Roman and early Islamic Fayyum, a province exceptionally blessed in terms of its sources. Hundreds of thousands of Arabic and Greek papyri were unearthed in the Fayyum since the end of the nineteenth century, of which some twenty thousand have been published. It is estimated that for these periods it generates at least 30 per cent of our documentary evidence for Egypt as a whole. Given the wealth of sources, Cahen pointed out, it is uniquely possible to reconstruct the internal history of the province over millennia. At the very least, he said, it would be possible to follow changes in crops, livestock, population, and village sites in the Fayyum over the entire Islamic period. He ends his essay by asking: ‘Qui nous donnera l’Histoire du Fayyūm?’ (Who will give us a history of the Fayyum?),11 a question to which this volume is a partial, late reply. In subsequent decades, several scholars followed Cahen’s lead and incorporated the Villages of the Fayyum into broader studies of Egyptian social and economic history. Hassanein Rabie’s study of Ayyubid administration utilized al-Nābulusī to interrogate the finer details of the fiscal system.12 ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ ʿĀshūr’s article on the history of the Fayyum in the Islamic period relies heavily on the narrative chapters of the treatise.13 Nicolas Michel’s study of lands allotted to village dignitaries, the rizaq, is primarily based on the Ottoman cadastral surveys of the first half of the sixteenth century, but it includes a close reading of the relevant data from al-Nābulusī.14 The most important attempt has been 10  11  12  13  14 

Cahen, ‘Le régime des impôts’.

Cahen, ‘Le régime des impôts’, p. 30. Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt.

ʿĀshūr, ‘al-Fayyūm fī al-ʿuṣūr al-wusṭá’. Michel, ‘Les Rizaq Ihbasiyya’.

Introduction

xxiii

Tsugitaka Sato’s mono­graph on Egyptian rural society under the iqṭāʿ system, which incorporated significant amount of material on the Fayyum, especially with regard to irrigation and the spread of sugar-cane cultivation.15 None of these works, however, produced a study of the work as a whole, fully exploiting its potential for conveying a thick description of rural life. In the meantime, there have been great advances in the study of the documentary evidence from pre-Islamic and early Islamic Fayyum. We know now much more than we did fifty years ago about the demo­graphy, economy, and society of pre-Islamic Fayyum, beginning with the massive land reclamation project of the third century bc that opened up the province for cultivation. While the peak of Fayyum’s prosperity was in the second century ad, as is evident in material remains as well as in textual fragments, the province’s subsequent decline generated a debate regarding the causes for the desertion of the sites which yielded so much of our evidence. An interest in a longue durée history of the Fayyum has sparked interest in al-Nābulusī from historians of late antiquity, especially James Keenan, who in several contributions highlighted the value of the Villages of the Fayyum as a point of reference regarding toponymy and local conditions of agriculture.16 The study of the Arabic papyri from Islamic Fayyum has also moved ahead, in even more dramatic strides. By sifting through the preserved fragments, scholars have been able to gradually piece together small archives of merchants and officials. Yūsuf Rāġib published the papers of a family of textile merchants who lived in Madinat al-Fayyum in the ninth century, and the small archive of the armed protector of the monastery of Qalamūn from the mid-eleventh century.17 A landmark mono­graph by Petra Sijpesteijn follows the development of the institutions of the nascent Islamic state through the correspondence of ʿAbdallah ibn Asʿad, an official in charge of several village in south-western Fayyum sometime between 730 and 750.18 Our knowledge of Fatimid Fayyum in particular has been greatly expanded by Christian Gaubert and Jean-Michel Mouton’s Hommes et villages du Fayyoum dans la documentation papyro­logique arabe (xe–xie siècles), a study based on the most important discovery of Arabic documents in the Fayyum in recent decades, the private archive of the Banū Bifām, a Coptic family from the village of Damūya, dating from 992 to 1029.19 15  16  17  18  19 

Sato, State and Rural Society.

Keenan, ‘Fayyum Agriculture’; Keenan, ‘Landscape and Memory’; Keenan, ‘Deserted Villages’. Rāġib, Marchands d’étoffes du Fayyoum; Rāġib, ‘Archives d’un gardien du Qalamūn’. Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State.

Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages; Goubert and Mouton, ‘Présentation des archives

Introduction

xxiv

Gaubert and Mouton extended their edition and translation of the fifty documents in the Banū Bifām archive to a wide-ranging study of Fayyumi rural society in the eleventh century. The fact is that the history of the Fayyum is accessible to us in a way that is unimaginable for any other rural area of the medi­eval Islamic world, a direct result of the unique vulnerability of its irrigation system. It is the vulnerability of the local irrigation system that led to desertion of sites and archives, and to abundance of attempts to maintain it.20 As is demonstrated in Chapter 2 of this book, there is essentially a continuous stream of documentary evidence, in the form of papyri, throughout the Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods, although there is of course some uneven distribution, and some periods received more scholarly attention than others. This documentary evidence invariably comes from abandoned sites, and there is an inherent tendency to read these sources as evidence of economic decline. However, because the Fayyum has provided us with such exceptionally rich evidence — there is really nothing comparable for any other rural area in the Middle East, and perhaps even beyond — we can see beyond the desertion of one individual site, or beyond the immediate effect of a single natural catastrophe. Aspects of continuity should come as no surprise. The constants of the natural environment determined the range of agricultural possibilities, and in some ways made the Fayyum stand out from other Egyptian provinces. Its irrigation system, based on radial network of canals, was different from the basin irrigation of the main Nile Valley. It required higher degree of interdependence among local settlements, as diversion of water by an upstream settlement affected the water supply of a village further downstream.21 The force of the Nile flood waters — described in dramatic terms by al-Nābulusī — took its toll on the canals, which required constant repair. The annual flooding swelled the lake and submerged coastal lands, so that the lands on the southern shores of the lake were usually too marshy to be cultivated but were attractive for grazing.22 The proximity to the western desert meant that the Fayyum was more vulnerable to attacks than areas lying along the main branch of the Nile Valley. But, over the longue durée, it is the transformations of the province that should draw our attention. Crops changed, even if varieties of wheat always d’une famille copte du Fayoum’.

The records of the constant attempts to maintain the irrigation network of the Fayyum extend to the eighteenth-century. See Mikhail, ‘An Irrigated Empire’. 20 

21  22 

See Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, p. 17.

Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, p. 142; Haug, ‘360 Days of Summer’.

Introduction

xxv

dominated. The introduction of the waterwheel in late antiquity enabled yearround cultivation. Land was continuously reclaimed from the lake, first by the Ptolemies, then by the gradual receding of the lake to its current levels. Society also changed, sometimes dramatically. The inhabitants of the Fayyum changed their language and religion; absorbed migrants and emigrated themselves; formed associations, guilds, and tribes; sometimes worked on the estates of distant landowners and at other times on their own lands. By exploring the possibilities revealed in the very local history of the province, it will become obvious that the Fayyum visited by al-Nābulusī was not merely a product of its natural environment but represented a particular and contingent historical moment. And the moment of al-Nābulusī’s visit was a time of great changes. In 1171 Saladin took control over Egypt, bringing an end to the Fatimid Shiʿa dynasty, which ruled Egypt since 969. The arrival of Saladin led to a revival of Sunni hegemony, the establishment of Sunni madrasas in all major cities, and the demise of Ismaʿili Shiʿa influence. After Saladin’s death, power passed to a confederacy of his descendants and clan members, known as the Ayyubids, who shared between them Egypt and Greater Syria. Over the next few decades, power increasingly concentrated at the hands of the private slave army of the most powerful Ayyubid prince, the ruler of Egypt. By 1250, less than a decade after al-Nābulusī’s visit, the Egyptian throne would pass to Shajar al-Durr, the slave concubine of al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ, and by 1260 Sultan Baybars would establish the Mamluk slave dynasty that would rule Egypt and Syria until 1517. From the perspective of the villagers of the Fayyum, the most important change was Saladin’s systematic introduction of the landholding regime of iqṭāʿ. The iqṭāʿ was a temporary grant of agricultural tax revenues to army officers as reward for their military service, replacing the cash payments to troops that were common in earlier periods. While iqṭāʿ grants are attested in the later Fatimid period, Saladin and his heirs extended the iqṭāʿ regime to practically all Egyptian lands. At first, Saladin granted entire provinces to senior amirs, who enjoyed significant degree of autonomy as effective governors. Under Saladin’s heirs, however, iqṭāʿ units were gradually reduced and fragmented, and the rights of the iqṭāʿ-holder turned strictly fiscal rather than political. In Egypt, this shift in the landholding regime was accompanied by the appearance of a new term, fallāḥ, the Anglicized fellah. Nicolas Michel has shown that the term fallāḥ is used from the twelfth century onwards to indicate the sub-group of solvent tenants who were personally responsible for the collective payments of the village.23 Baber Johansen and Yehoshua Frenkel argued that the introduction of the iqṭāʿ transformed the peasant from a land23 

Michel, ‘Devoirs fiscaux’.

Introduction

xxvi

owner to a rent-paying tenant working on state lands, and therefore reduced his freedom and agency.24 In the fifteenth century, al-Maqrīzī explicitly identifies the coming of the iqṭāʿ as the reason for the transformation of the Egyptian peasant into a fallāḥ, who is an abject slave to the iqṭāʿ-holder.25 One of the tasks of this book is to challenge this prevailing view of decline and oppression, at least as far as Ayyubid Fayyum was concerned. Al-Nābulusī’s treatise is itself an indirect product of the shift in the landholding regime, which entailed a new genre of administrative literature. The peasants of medi­eval Islam often come to light at times of change of dynasties and political and economic orders, when the new governments order fresh land surveys, with the Ottoman surveys of the sixteenth century the most striking example.26 In similar fashion, the Ayyubid rolling out of the iqṭāʿ regime was accompanied by some of the most detailed accounts of state administration, written by al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil (d. 1200), Ibn Mammātī (d. 1209), and al-Makhzūmī. Al-Nābulusī’s treatise is part of this emerging administrative literature. But while other authors are interested in establishing the general norms, the Villages of the Fayyum is about recording the specific fiscal obligations of the province’s villages. Al-Nābulusī’s aim, as set out in the introduction to his work, was ‘that there be no difference between the knowledge of the Fayyum possessed by its inhabitants and that of one who has never seen it, but has read this book’.27 To a degree, the present book adopts and adapts al-Nābulusī’s aim. The following chapters aim to distil the realities of economy and society in medi­ eval Fayyum from al-Nābulusī’s account, and especially from his numerical data. They cover the size of the cultivated area, the water supply, the size of the population, the different economic sectors and their relative importance, as well as the power of the state, the structure of the village communities, and their religious make-up. Like al-Nābulusī, I hope that the reader of this book will come out with an understanding of the texture of Fayyumi society, and with a sense of familiarity that spans the eight centuries and the techno­ logical and mental revolutions that separate us from the peasants that form the object of this study. 24  25 

Johansen, The Islamic Law; Frenkel, ‘Agriculture’. Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 230.

Picard points out other examples of such changes in dynasties leading to new cadastral surveys, such as the aftermath of the Christian Reconquista in Spain or the detailed named lists of villagers working the lands of the Monreale monastery in Norman Sicily (‘Les élites rurales du monde musulman méditerranéen’). 26 

27 

VF, p. 32.

Introduction

xxvii

But can we trust al-Nābulusī? After all, he was a visiting tax official from Cairo, a typical member of the urban elites who viewed the local rustics with contempt and ridicule, of which we will see quite a few examples. We obviously need to filter through his biases and adjust to what Nicolas Michel has called the ‘fiscal logic’ of tax lists. Luckily, we can do that because know quite a bit about al-Nābulusī himself. Two other treatises he wrote have survived, including an anti-Coptic pamphlet which has been very recently published by Luke Yarbrough (one awaits eight centuries for critical editions and translations of al-Nābulusī’s works, then two come along).28 Al-Nābulusī’s complete oeuvre gives us a rounded view of his ideo­logical tendencies and professional aspirations. Moreover, in the Villages of the Fayyum he also explains in detail how he collected the fiscal data and for what purposes. Of course, the tax registers in themselves can be misleading, and it is in the nature of any claim about taxation that it is subject to manipulation by both peasants and tax-collectors. But, in some ways, the treatise as we have it serves us better than a cache of documents, precisely because it is a literary source and not an archive. Al-Nābulusī’s framing narrative helps us better place the tax lists in their administrative and social contexts. When read with care, his explanations about the manner of collecting the data and his brief narrative at the beginning of each village entry guide us through the tax lists rather than obscure them. That is not to say that al-Nābulusī didn’t have his blind spots, often imposed by the nature of the society he was observing. His registers are replete with tens of thousands of chicken, sheep, and goats, but he never mentions women, either as individuals or as a collective group. They were either immaterial to the type of data he was collecting, or hidden from the gaze of a foreigner.29 Because he collected fiscal data for entire village units, he tells us almost nothing about social stratification within the village communities. Nor was he interested in the quality of the soil or in the schedule of the opening and closing of the irrigation canals. Finally and crucially, al-Nābulusī mainly gathered data about the taxes that should have been paid, not about actual payments. When he does provide incomplete information about tax arrears, these suggest that tax liabilities could be no more than bargaining positions, later to be negotiated with reluctant village communities.

28 

Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough.

The economic and social activities of women in the rural and tribal communities of the medi­eval Maghreb are discussed in several of the legal responsa edited and translated by Élise Voguet in Le monde rural du Maghreb central, pp. 329, 384. 29 

xxviii

Introduction

While the recreation of thirteenth-century Fayyum from its tax lists is important in and of itself, this book also makes three broad arguments about the nature of economy, society and religion in the countryside of Islamic Egypt. First, I argue the rural economy of the Fayyum was diverse and complex. Selfsubsistence strategies included not only wheat and barley, the predominant crops in the Fayyum, but also small cattle, draught animals, poultry, and palmdates. At the same time, the introduction of government-owned sugar-cane plantations commercialized the economy of the Fayyum to a degree that was probably unknown in earlier periods and required a network of oxen- and water-powered sugar-presses, plantation supervisors, and a partially migrant labour force of share-croppers and wage-labourers. Yet this was not a monoculture economy. Most of the traditional cash-crops survived, including flax, onion, and garlic; vineyards; and orchards of pears and apples, exported all over Egypt. Self-subsistence economy still accounted for well over half the value of local production. Sugar-cane transformed and diversified the economy of the Fayyum but did not rip it apart. My second argument concerns the tribal identity of the cereal-growing village communities. The Villages of the Fayyum makes it plainly clear that in the vast majority of the Fayyum’s villages and hamlets, the peasants held on to a tribal identity. Each village was identified with a clan or tribal section. Each clan was usually present in a cluster of villages, and a number of clans joined together to form wider territorial tribal confederacies. These segmentary clan structures, I argue, fulfilled specific social and political functions. In villages subject to collective taxation, the right to cultivate the arable lands was dependent on membership in the local clan. In that respect, tribal indetities were particularly linked to the predominant self-subsistence strategies. Tribal structures were also a mechanism for settling disputes over water between nearby villages that belonged to the same clan or confederacy. Most importantly, clans and tribes provided protection, both against other rural communities and against the tax-collectors and the iqṭāʿ-holders. Thus, tribal identity reflected the autonomy of village peasant community in managing its rights of cultivation and irrigation, and its autonomy vis-à-vis the state. My third argument, perhaps the most unsettling for modern audiences, links the tribal identity of the peasants of the Fayyum with the conversion of the bulk of the population from Coptic Christianity to Islam. In thirteenth-century Fayyum, Arab Muslim tribesmen were in the majority, while non-tribal communities of Christian Copts formed an urban or semi-urban minority. This was a dramatic shift from the situation two centuries earlier, when documentary evidence shows the province to be majority Christian. I argue here that this transformation could not have been a result of a sudden influx of nomadic

Introduction

xxix

tribal populations into the Fayyum, and that the indigenous Coptic population was not replaced by transhumant settlers. Instead, I propose here that Coptic communities took upon themselves tribal ideo­logies as well as Islamic identities in response to changing political and economic circumstances. I identify the collapse of the Fatimid state, the collective taxation that came with the iqṭāʿ regime, and rises in the rates of the poll-tax on non-Muslims as the main causes for this change. This explanation does not exclude the possibility of limited migrations and intermarriage, but it fundamentally regards the pervasive tribalization a result of internal transformation: the Coptic peasants of the Fayyum made a decision to convert to Islam and to become tribal. Each of the three arguments above is grounded in the specific quantitative and qualitative evidence coming from al-Nābulusī’s Villages of the Fayyum, meaning that it is based on a single snap-shot of one province at a particular year. But, as argued by other historians of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Egypt, the Fayyum was idiosyncratic, but not exceptional. It is true that the Fayyum’s radial canal network was different from the basin irrigation of the main Nile Valley, and that the repair of the canals was more labour-intensive. The Fayuum may also have been more exposed to attacks from the western deserts. Developments could follow a different pace: Arabic, for example, took hold more rapidly here compared to other areas of Upper Egypt. Yet, by and large, the province is not at odds with the evidence from other regions.30 What happened in Ayyubid Fayyum, I would argue, occurred also in the rest of Egypt. The focus of this book is a uniquely rich and detailed text which originates in a province that happens to be blessed by the most extensive documentation surviving for any region of the Islamic world. This combination offers a great opportunity for opening a new chapter in the history of rural societies in medi­eval Islam, and a new way of looking at village communities. Yet the book is at the same time a celebration of the harmonious poetry found in numbers and taxes, The numerical sections of the Villages of the Fayyum, including the lists of taxes for each village, have been keyed into Excel spreadsheets and made available through a dedicated webpage hosted by the School of History at Queen Mary University of London (). The calculations, maps, and tables that follow do not require any specialized mathematical knowledge, but they are the beating heart of this mono­graph: the value of al-Nābulusī’s treatise is, first and foremost, in its unparalleled breadth of numerical data. It is numbers that best tell the history of the peasants of the Fayyum. 30 

See the discussion in Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, p. 31.

Chapter 1

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum He — may God the exalted grant him victory! – ordered that I be summoned, by means of a note attached to the wing of a bird, from the divinely protected Cairo to the company of his noble entourage. Thus I hastened in obedience and obediently hastened, and when I was honoured by being received in audience, he further honoured me with the finest of discourses and the most appealing of responses, and he ordered that I take up residence in the Fayyum for a while, until the region shall bring good tidings.1

I

n 642/1244–45 the Ayyubid sultan al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ left his capital of Cairo and was travelling in the Fayyum. Once there, he summoned the experienced financial administrator ʿUthmān ibn Ibrahīm al-Nābulusī and ordered him to inspect the fiscal and agricultural conditions of the province. Al-Nābulusī, fifty years of age and with twenty-odd years of service in the various bureaux of the Ayyubid civil service, had first-hand knowledge of the complex governance of agriculture, from registration of lands, through taxcollection and transportation, to the accounting of the revenues. He was also a typical representative of the emergent Muslim elite of Cairo under the Ayyubid descendants of Saladin. He was Sunni, Shafiʿī, and avowedly anti-Christian, of Palestinian heritage but also proud of his Egyptian birthplace. He navigated the Kurdish and Turkic military elite for networks of patronage, not always successfully. Above all, he closely identified with the apparatus of the Ayyubid administration and saw the development and functioning of this apparatus as his lifetime vocation.

* This chapter expands on the introduction to the edition and translation of the Villages of the Fayyum. Here I deal in more detail with al-Nābulusī’s methods and aims in composing  

the work. 1 

VF, p. 31.

2 Chapter 1

Our independent sources for al-Nābulusī’s life are meagre. A short bio­ graphy compiled by ʿAbd al-Muʾmin b. Khalaf al-Dimyāṭī provides us with al-Nābulusī’s full name, the date of his birth and the date of his death, a chain of Hadith transmission of which he was part, and a short poem he composed. He is described as a litterateur (adīb) and as a bureaucrat (kātib), but the details of his career in the civil service were of no interest in this context.2 Al-Yūnīnī (d. 726/1326) provides a shortened version of this entry in his Dhayl mirʾāt al-zamān.3 Al-Ḥusaynī al-Dimashqī (d. 695/1296) briefly notes that al-Nābulusī rose in the ranks of the administration, and that he heard Hadith in Damascus. This information is repeated by al-Dhahabī.4 Al-Maqrīzī gives a short account of the Madrasa al-Nābulusiyya established by al-Nābulusī’s father, and states that his son, ʿUthmān, served as director of the Ayyubid administration (nāẓir al-dawāwīn).5 In another context al-Maqrīzī also cites two verses celebrating the tomb of al-Shāfiʿī,6 and two short passages from a historical treatise by al-Nābulusī which has not survived.7 Ibn Duqmāq cites a longer passage from the same lost work, a discourse on the favourable temperate climate of Egypt in general and Cairo in particular.8 These brief bio­graphical entries aside, most of what we know about al-Nābulusī comes from two works he authored himself. The earliest of the two is Tajrīd sayf al-himma li-istikhrāj mā fī dhimmat al-dhimma (Unsheathing Ambition’s Sword to Extract What the Dhimmīs Hoard), a treatise targeting the dishonesty of Copts employed by the Ayyubid administration.9 The second treatise, Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn al-muḍiyya fī dawāwīn al-diyār al-miṣriyya (A Few Luminous Rules for Egypt’s Administrative Offices), outlines key problems in the fiscal administration of Ayyubid Egypt and sets out recommenLumaʿ, p. 120; al-Dimyāṭī, Le dictionnaire des autorités, ed. by Vajda, p. 146, corresponding to MS Tūnis 912, 75r–v (I wish to thank Luke Yarbrough for very generously providing me with a photocopy of this manu­script). 2 

3 

Al-Yūnīnī, Dhayl mirʾāt al-zamān, i, 504. The entry by al-Yūnīnī has the date of birth.

Al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-Islām, ed. by al-Tadmurī, volume of wafayāt 651–60, pp. 420–21; al-Ḥusaynī, Ṣilat al-Takmila li-Wafayāt al-Naqala, ed. by Maʿrūf, i, 470. 4 

5  6  7  8 

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. Sayyid, iv, 678.

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. Sayyid, iv, 912–14.

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. Sayyid, ii, 112; i, 231. Ibn Duqmāq, Kitāb al-Intiṣār, i, 117–19.

Edited and translated by Luke Yarbrough as The Sword of Ambition: Bureaucratic Rivalry in Medi­eval Egypt. Here and elsewhere, I follow his elegant translations of the titles of al-Nābulusī’s works. 9 

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

3

dations for increased efficiency and the prevention of abuse by officials. The personal tone of these two works is very marked and allows us to reconstruct al-Nābulusī’s career prior to his Fayyum mission. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn, Abū ʿAmr, ʿUthmān ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Khālid al-Qurashī Ibn al-Nābulusī was born in Cairo on the nineteenth of Dhū al-Ḥijja 588 AH (26 December 1192).10 His father, ʿAlam al-Dīn, was probably a professional witness, although al-Nābulusī claims he held the title of a qāḍī.11 The geo­graphical nisba suggests that the father’s family originated from Nablus, and al-Nābulusī tells us that his father still held properties in Syria, worth several thousands of dinars.12 As Luke Yarbrough argues, the fact that al-Dimyāṭī and others refer to our author as Ibn al-Nābulusī suggests that his father was a recent migrant.13 ʿAlam al-Dīn was sufficiently well off to endow, in Rabīʿ al-Awwal 607/August– September 1210, a Madrasa for Shāfiʿī jurists. The Madrasa al-Nābulusiyya, as it became known, was located in the alleyway leading to the famous Khānqāh al-Ṣalāḥiyya. By the fifteenth century, it was known as the Dār al-Amīr ʿAlam al-Dīn Kurjī al-Asadī.14 Al-Nābulusī’s maternal grandfather, a Ḥanbalī preacher from Damascus called Zayn al-Dīn al-Anṣārī, migrated to Egypt during the vizierate of Ṭalāʾiʿ ibn Ruzzīk (1154–61), and then served under Saladin.15 This grandfather was a source of social and material status for al-Nābulusī, and he misses no opportunity to evoke his name.16 In Villages of the Fayyum al-Nābulusī quotes a conversation between his grandfather and Saladin regarding the untrustworthiness of the people of Alexandria.17 According to al-Nābulusī, Saladin bestowed on Zayn al-Dīn four thousand dinars and a share in prime real estate in Cairo, by the Nile. The building, known as Dār al-Mulk or Dār al-Malik, passed on to al-Nābulusī’s father, who purchased the remaining shares and added an upper floor.18 10  11  12  13  14  15  16 

For the bio­graphy of al-Nābulusī, see also Yarbrough, ‘Introduction’, pp. xix–xxiii. Lumaʿ, p. 68; al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, iv, 678.

Yarbrough, ‘Introduction’, p. xix; al-Nābulusī, Tajrīd, ed. by Cahen, p. 74. Yarbrough, ‘Introduction’, p. xix.

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, iv, 678.

Yarbrough, ‘Introduction’, xix; Lumaʿ, p. 120 (editor’s introduction), pp. 27, 43 (Arabic). Catlos, ‘To Catch a Spy’, p. 101.

In the entry for the village of Akhṣāṣ al-Ḥallāq: ‘When he [i.e., Saladin] asked my maternal grandfather, Zayn al-Dīn the preacher, may God have mercy on him, about the port of Alexandria, the latter told him: “Alexandria is a porcelain dish with a crack (?, ṣayr) in it”’ (VF, p. 78). 17 

18 

Lumaʿ, p. 43. I have not been able to identify this building in al-Maqrīzī’s Khiṭaṭ.

4 Chapter 1

Al-Nābulusī was initially trained as a religious scholar, but once he joined the Ayyubid administration, he advanced rapidly and gained the personal trust of Sultan al-Kāmil (r. 1218–38).19 When narrating an anecdote from his early life, he states that in 611/1214–15, while in his early twenties, he was still dedicated to religious knowledge and lived in isolation in a madrasa, probably his own family’s.20 A few years later, he entered government service, holding various middling positions in the administration. He mentions being in charge of the Dār al-Ḍiyāfa, the Royal Guest House, and purchasing sheep and goats for the kitchens.21 In 621/1224–25 he was asked by al-Kāmil to survey lands in Ḥawf Ramsīs left vacant after the provincial iqṭāʿ-holder had fled for Syria.22 At some point he was also the financial administrator of the prosperous province of al-Qalyūb23 and of al-Sharqiyya and al-Gharbiyya.24 By 627 or 628, al-Nābulusī became a chief financial advisor to al-Kāmil and participated in his daily private council, together with the amir Fakhr al-Dīn ʿUthmān, who was then in charge of all government bureaux and taxation.25 In 630/1232–33, al-Nābulusī suggested to al-Kāmil a restructuring of the financial administration of the Egyptian provinces, with two newly appointed officials taking control of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively. A month later the Sultan appointed al-Nābulusī himself as the administrator of the southern regions, Old City of Miṣr (Fusṭāṭ), Giza, and Iṭfīḥ.26 Al-Nābulusī kept his position at the top of Egyptian administration until his arrest in 634/1236–37. A fall from grace was nearly inevitable in the career of any Ayyubid and Mamluk bureaucrat, but al-Nābulusī was unforgiving. He vividly dwells on the details of a conspiracy led by the Amīr Nūr al-Dīn, son of al-Nābulusī’s colleague and friend Fakhr al-Dīn ʿUthmān.27 According to al-Nābulusī, Nūr al-Dīn set his eyes on al-Nābulusī’s house in Cairo and contrived to get al-Nābulusī arrested and his assets subject to expropriation. He 19  20 

On al-Kāmil, see Gottschalk, ‘al-Malik al-Kāmil’.

Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, pp. 127–29.

Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, p. 59; Owen, ‘Scandal in the Egyptian Treasury’, p. 80. 21 

22  Lumaʿ, p. 58; Owen, ‘Scandal in the Egyptian Treasury’, p. 79. Contemporary chronicles date this event to 622H (Lumaʿ, p. 58 n. 26). 23  24  25  26  27 

Lumaʿ, p. 49; Owen, ‘Scandal in the Egyptian Treasury’, p. 73.

Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, p. 129. Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, p. 131.

Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, pp. 37–38. Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, pp. 39–44.

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

5

did so by sullying al-Nābulusī’s reputation before the sultan; when al-Nābulusī became ill and was unable to attend council, Nūr al-Dīn told the sultan that al-Nābulusī is shirking his duties and passes his time by teaching in the family madrasa. The sultan ordered al-Nābulusī to be incarcerated in the Citadel for thirty-seven days. During this period, the family house was expropriated and sold, for a rock-bottom price and in a fictitious sale, to an anonymous female buyer acting for Nūr al-Dīn. Nūr al-Dīn’s own downfall occurred after the death of al-Kāmil, and al-Nābulusī does not hide his satisfaction at his rival’s misfortune.28 Al-Nābulusī was now left outside the corridors of power and also, according to his own testimony, without any source of revenue. In his anti-Coptic treatise, written during these years in the political wilderness, he says that he used to have as many as ten slaves and sixteen good riding animals. But following his dismissal, al-Nābulusī’s financial situation deteriorated so that he owned only two Greek slaves, worth less than 30 dinars, and three weak mounts. The members of his extended household — including fifty-two children, grandchildren, and other dependents — had to rely on the property endowed by his late father, which produced little rent and in which they had no spare funds to invest.29 With time on his hands, al-Nābulusī turned to writing as means of currying favour with the new sultan, al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ (r. 637/1240–647/1249). His first major work was The Sword of Ambition, composed shortly after al-Ṣāliḥ came to power, probably in 640/1242, and in connection with anti-Christian decrees promulgated by the new ruler.30 The treatise, which has been the subject of an excellent study by Luke Yarbrough, calls upon the sultan to remove Coptic bureaucrats from the administration and investigate the sources of their wealth. As such, it is the earliest extant example of a corpus of texts calling for the dismissal of all non-Muslim officials. Although the work is not cited in subsequent polemical literature, it is likely that it was used by anti-Christian authors of the following century.31 Al-Nābulusī was seeking to reinstate himself in the royal administration, while also articulating an anti-Christian ideo­logy that went beyond his per-

28  29  30 

The house was sold after al-Kāmil’s death, in 637H (Lumaʿ, p. 40 n. 13).

Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, p. 189. Yarbrough, ‘Introduction’, p. xxiii.

Yarbrough, ‘Islamizing the Islamic State’; Yarbrough, ‘al-Nābulusī’; al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough. 31 

6 Chapter 1

sonal circumstances.32 Al-Nābulusī’s hatred of Christian ‘dogs’ who constantly conspire against Islam is ideo­logical as well as instrumental. He takes aim not only at those Coptic officials at the top of the pyramid but at all levels, from the petty accountants in the government bureaux, to the secretaries of military governors and provincial tax-collectors. They are all treacherous by nature, even after superficial conversion to Islam; they interfere with Muslim religious institutions and humiliate those unable to pay their taxes (an interesting statement coming from al-Nābulusī, a fiscal administrator by profession).33 Thus, as el-Leithy demonstrated, The Sword of Ambition should be seen as an early example of viciously anti-Coptic popular piety, fuelled by the suspected wealth of Coptic tax-collectors and monasteries.34 In The Sword of Ambition — and, as we shall see, also in Villages of the Fayyum — al-Nābulusī’s anti-Christian ideo­logy is coupled with a deep contempt for the people of the countryside, the ahl al-rīf. Both lowly Copts and Muslims of the countryside speak and write poor, colloquial Arabic, not befitting the art of administration.35 While Copts should not be employed in the administration because of their inherent treachery, rustics should not be employed because they are irretrievably stupid and spineless, their stupidity ingrained in them by virtue of growing up in the midst of cattle and fields. As a wise vizier once said, the commonness of the peasant can never be washed off.36 Al-Nābulusī recalls Sultan al-Kāmil explicitly comparing the Coptic and rustic administrators: When the Copts become rich, they betray the Muslims and collude with the Franks. Similarly, when rural people become rich, their wings must be clipped. Of course, they will pay no attention to this. They just go on sowing as they did before. They keep getting richer, their udders flow copiously, their beasts bear young, their gardens produce fruit. The only thing to do is to confiscate the property by means of which they act wrongfully.37

Al-Nābulusī’s third surviving treatise, Lumaʿ al-qawānīn, is firmly based in the praxis of Ayyubid administration.38 It was probably written in 643/1245, 32  33 

Lumaʿ, pp. 73–74.

Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, pp. 141–43, 149.

El-Leithy, ‘Sufis, Copts, and the Politics of Piety’; see also Catlos, ‘To Catch a Spy’, and Yar­brough, ‘al-Nābulusī’. 34 

35  36  37 

38 

Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, pp. 167–73. Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, p. 121. Al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, p. 135.

This treatise has been edited by Becker based on the Gotha and Cairo manu­scripts.

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

7

shortly after Villages of the Fayyum or even simultaneously with it. The two works bear a very similar dedication to al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ and contain telling thematic and stylistic overlaps. In some ways, the Lumaʿ complements Villages of the Fayyum; whereas the latter is primarily a formalistic list of the taxes that should be paid, the main focus of the Lumaʿ is the minor and major cracks in the fiscal system, which allowed for inefficiencies, tax-avoidance and misappropriation of funds. Through the Lumaʿ we learn that much of the recorded tax liabilities were never paid, and that a significant amount of the taxes that were paid never reached their lawful destination. The Lumaʿ also sets al-Nābulusī’s recommendations for wide-ranging reforms. Beyond his exposition of fraudulent practices and corrupt individuals, the treatise is driven by an almost axiomatic belief in the ability of the central government in Cairo to manage every aspect of Egyptian economy and, specifically, its agriculture. The Lumaʿ is informed by al-Nābulusī’s visit to the Fayyum and appears to have been written shortly after the Villages of the Fayyum, or concurrently with it. Cahen argued that since the Lumaʿ ends with al-Nābulusī pleading with the sultan for a position,39 it must have been written before al-Nābulusī’s was reinstated as the special envoy to the Fayyum. However, we have no evidence that the survey of the Fayyum led to long-term re-employment, nor do we have any information about the financial remuneration al-Nābulusī received for his Fayyum mission. Given that al-Nābulusī refers in the Lumaʿ to his stay in the Fayyum as an event in the past,40 it is quite likely that, despite his efforts in compiling the Villages of the Fayyum, al-Nābulusī was again left without a permanent position in the Ayyubid administration. Seen in this light, the Lumaʿ, written after coming back from the Fayyum, appears as another attempt to impress the Sultan. The Lumaʿ shows how al-Nābulusī applied knowledge and experience he gained in the Fayyum to circumstances elsewhere in Egypt. In the Lumaʿ, al-Nābulusī explains that the Alexandria Canal was once paved, and lead culverts were accurately placed so that silt was carried off by the force of the His edition was published posthumously, with corrections by Cahen based on the Strasbourg and Yale copies, in 1960 (Lumaʿ). In 1955 the Journal of Near Eastern Studies published a photocopy of the Gotha manu­script and a very good translation of one chapter by Owen (Owen, ‘Scandal in the Egyptian Treasury’). Owen’s Uni­ver­sity of Chicago dissertation apparently includes a full translation. Cahen also published a French resumé in 1948, which was, by his own admission, unsatisfactory (Cahen, ‘Quelques aspects’). 39 

Lumaʿ, pp. 65–66.

Lumaʿ, p. 655: fa-lammā tawajjaha al-mamlūk ilá al-Fayyūm; 656: lammā warada al-mamlūk min al-Fayyūm. 40 

8 Chapter 1

water and taken out to the Mediterranean Sea. Yet these culverts have been neglected and a large shoal now blocks the escape route. The silting also meant that the Nile, which used to flow into the Alexandria Canal eight months a year, now enters for a short period and only at high levels. Al-Nābulusī mentions that several solutions were tried, including submersion of boats in front of the opening of the Canal in order to divert its water, and that it would be best to order the people of Alexandria to clear the culverts.41 As we shall see, al-Nābulusī reports a gradual silting of the al-Manhā Canal — the canal feeding the Fayyum — in precisely the same terms, and discusses the results of very similar efforts by a local iqṭāʿ-holder to reverse the process. Before discussing Villages of the Fayyum, a mention should be made of other treatises by al-Nābulusī. One work mentioned by al-Nābulusī in both the Lumaʿ and Villages of the Fayyum, but known to us only by title, is Ḥusn al-sulūk fī faḍl malik Miṣr ʿalā sāʾir al-mulūk (A Seemly Demonstration of the Superiority of Egypt’s King above All Others).42 Another treatise, of which we have a few fragments quoted in other sources, is Ḥusn al-sarīra fī ittikhādh al-ḥiṣn bi’l-jazīra (The Excellent Idea of Establishing the Island Fortress). This treatise celebrated alMalik al-Ṣāliḥ’s construction of a new citadel on the Rawda Island, in the middle of the Nile, opposite Fusṭāṭ. This massive building project began in 1240 or 1241 and lasted at least until 1243, when al-Ṣāliḥ was able to move in with his retinue.43 Al-Nābulusī must have composed it during these years, which marked the peak of his short-lived literary activity. Al-Maqrīzī cites two short passages from Ḥusn al-sarīra, one concerning the Tulunid maydān and another on the revolt of the Fatimid commander Shāwar in 557/1162.44 A passage cited by Ibn Duqmāq argues that Egypt has the most temperate location on the globe, and that within Egypt the Island of Rawda is the most suitable place for constructing a new capital. This is a garbled adaptation of Hippocratic material, adapted from the medical treatise of ʿAlī Ibn Riḍwān (d. 453/1061), On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt.45 Al-Nābulusī’s fascination with the link Lumaʿ, p. 55; Owen, ‘Scandal in the Egyptian Treasury’, p. 77. On the Alexandria branch, see also Cooper, The Medi­eval Nile. 41 

Lumaʿ, pp. 31–34; VF, p. 44. The Sword of Ambition mentions another work of al-Nābulusī, a scriptural exegesis which attempted to demonstrate the illegality of befriending non-Muslims (Yarbrough, ‘Introduction’, p. xxii). 42 

On the history of the construction, see Rabbat, The Citadel of Cairo, pp. 86–88 (and the date of 1240); Richards, ‘al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ’, EI2 (where the date is Shaʿbān 638/February 1241). 43 

44  45 

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, ii, 112; i, 231.

Ibn Riḍwān, Medi­eval Islamic Medicine, trans. by Dols, pp. 79–82, 104 ff.

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

9

between climate and temperament also informs much of his perceptions of the local population in the Fayyum.

Villages of the Fayyum In 642/1244–5, eight years after his forced retirement from government service, al-Nābulusī was called from Cairo to attend al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ, who was travelling with his entourage through the Fayyum. The chronicles for this period are relatively sparse, and we have no independent testimony of such a royal visit to the province, or firm idea of its purpose.46 Al-Ṣāliḥ took control of Egypt in Dhū al-Qaʿda 637/June 1240, following a bloody succession struggle with his brother al-ʿĀdil.47 He set about building a new citadel in the Island of Rawda, mentioned above, and also recruited a private regiment of military slaves, a regiment later famously known as the Baḥriyya. Both actions testify to his consolidation of power during these years, as well as his distrust of the elites he had inherited from his father. In Jumādā I 642/October 1244 his troops saw off a coalition of Ayyubid princes from Syria in the battle of Farbiyā, near Gaza. Over the following year they made advances in Palestine and besieged Damascus, finally taking it in Jumādā I 643/October 1245.48 Al-Ṣāliḥ appears to have remained in Egypt during that time, and he was probably in the Fayyum during the winter or early spring of 642/1244–45. According to al-Nābulusī, when al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ passed through the Fayyum and inspected it, he noticed that the province has been less prosperous than it had been: ‘He — may God preserve his kingship! – said that the local officials have been careless with this region until its neglect has become apparent.’ It was then that he decided to call al-Nābulusī out of retirement and appoint him to survey the province and its cultivation. Al-Nābulusī was ordered to reside in the Fayyum for a while, and to proceed ‘in a fashion that is both just and firm, and cleanse it of all traces of injustice and iniquity’.49 Al-Nābulusī’s mission was to increase the prosperity of the Fayyum, not to fill the coffers of the Sultan. The sultan was acting ‘according to his good nature, for the cultivation of the land and the benefit of the humankind’, and al-Nābulusī was given the task of finding ways of developing the local economy. 46  Richards, ‘al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ’, EI2. See Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-Kurūb, v, 323–47; Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Shāma, Tarājim, ed. al-Kawtharī, pp. 168–74. 47  48  49 

Richards, ‘al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ’; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, p. 264. Richards, ‘al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ’. VF, p. 32.

10 Chapter 1

The need for such a mission arose because ‘attention to its development has often slackened, and the negligence of its supervisors has persisted until its situation had deteriorated’.50 Since the vast majority of the villages of the Fayyum were distributed as iqṭāʿ to various military officers, most of the fiscal revenues of the Fayyum did not go directly to the Sultan, but to members of his army. The role of the Sultan was to co-ordinate the resources of local tax-officials, military commanders and civil servants in order to increase productivity. Raising taxes, or even improving tax collection, were not the primary motivation. During his tour of the Fayyum, al-Ṣāliḥ also took concrete steps to develop the local irrigation system. Al-Nābulusī reports that al-Ṣāliḥ ordered renewed works to deepen the al-Manhā Canal, the branch of Nile which carried water to the Fayyum, and commissioned plough-animals and local officials for this task. Al-Nābulusī expresses the hope that these extra resources, put in place after a long period of no central investment, would increase the flow of water into the province and ensure higher yields. While this royal action is commended by al-Nābulusī, he does not seem to be involved in either the decision-making or in allocating the resources. Following his appointment by the sultan, al-Nābulusī spent more than two months51 in the Fayyum. This was in the spring of 1245, almost certainly from March to May. The exact time of his stay is referred to only once, when he mentions the number of waterwheels in operation in the Fayyum at the time of writing, which is ‘the month of Dhū al-Qaʿda of 642’, corresponding to 31 March–29 April, 1245. In other instances, he refers to 642 as the current year. He states, with regard to the large village of Minyat Aqnā, that ‘in years of lower inundations, its lands are exposed and are sown by the villagers. Its revenues then increase, as happened this year, which is the year [6]42’.52 Al-Nābulusī also personally witnessed the garlic harvest of 642, which would have taken place in March or April of 1245.53 He is also told about a cold wind that swept through the province during the winter of 642, before his visit.54 The construction of Muḥraqa Dike in the district of Giza was ordered at the end of 642 (May 1245), and is discussed at the end of Villages of the Fayyum.55 50  51  52 

VF, p. 31. VF, p. 37.

VF, p. 212.

VF, p. 61. On the season of harvesting garlic, see Ibn Mammātī, Qawānīn al-Dawāwīn, ed. ʿAṭiya, p. 263. 53 

54  55 

VF, p. 213.

VF, pp. 243–45.

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

11

He also notes that a sugar-press in Fānū broke down some years ‘prior to this date, i.e., [6]42’.56 There is also a sole reference to an event in 643, a year that started on 29 May 1245.57 Villages of the Fayyum ends with a sentence stating that the work was written in 641, a statement found in both the Ayasofia manu­script and in Moritz’s edition. This is surely a mistake, but a mistake that is linked to the data al-Nābulusī was collecting. Although al-Nābulusī was in the Fayyum at the end of 642, April to May 1245, Villages of the Fayyum is a survey of the tax obligations in the province for the fiscal year 641. Al-Nābulusī explicitly states that: I prepared this for the year 641 — this was the year following which I received my orders to undertake the survey of the Fayyum (fa-innahā al-sana allātī umirtu bi’l-naẓar fī al-fayyūm baʿdu-ha). I composed this book thereafter, and the circumstances did not change in the years [6]42 and [6]43, save for a minor increase in the revenues.58

For al-Nābulusī, collecting the data for the previous fiscal year was simpler than collecting the data for the current year. This was presumably because the tax registers for the current year were still work in progress. As al-Nābulusī states, after collecting the data for 641, he added some details regarding developments that occurred in 642, and, as mentioned above, even a sole reference to an event in 643. The question of the dating of the fiscal data is complicated by the dual calendar of the fiscal system. Agricultural taxes were collected according to the solar year, known as the kharājī year, which followed the Coptic calendar. For commercial and other non-agricultural taxes, the state used the Islamic lunar calendar, which was eleven days shorter. The resultant gap between the kharājī year and the lunar hijrī year was redressed by occasionally disregarding, or passing over, one solar year, a method called taḥwīl. We know that such an adjustment occurred under Saladin, who ordered to disregard the kharājī years 565 and 566 to make them coincide with the lunar year 567. We do not know of any other adjustment taking place in the Ayyubid period, so we do not know the extent of the gap between the two calendars at the time of al-Nābulusī’s visit.59 It should be noted that al-Nābulusī does not refer to 56  57  58 

VF, p. 191. VF, p. 191. VF, p. 33.

Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt, p. 133 (citing Ibn Mammātī, Qawānīn al-Dawāwīn, ed. by ʿAṭiya, p. 358; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-Arab, i, 164–65; al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ, xiii, 54). In an 59 

12 Chapter 1

the term kharājī year and — as seen above — occasionally mentions the lunar months of the hijrī year 642. All in all, it therefore seems that while he visited the province in person in the final months of the hijrī year 642, corresponding to March to May 1245, the fiscal data he was using was from the hijrī year 641, corresponding to 1243–44. During al-Nābulusī’s stay in the Fayyum, he lived in Madinat al-Fayyum, the provincial capital, but spent most his time travelling through the villages and hamlets. He states that he took residence in the Fayyum for more than two months, ‘in a tall building with a spacious courtyard exposed to the winds from all four sides’.60 But he made a point of going through the province village by village and acquainting himself with the local conditions. He managed a lot during these two months. His survey includes records for about 125 different settlements, and from the description of the villages’ appearance, he must have visited them all. This was probably tiring but not impossible. From his records we know that no village was more than half a day’s ride from the provincial capital, and the vast majority three hours ride or less. It is likely that he made mostly one-day journeys; he gives no indication of staying overnight in any of the villages. The purpose of the visits was primarily to collect information, not to oversee any tangible improvements. As far as we can tell, his only contribution to the management of the Fayyum in this period was that he ordered the villagers of Minyat Aqnā to rebuild a bath house from their own expenses, and they solemnly promised him that they would do so.61 Most of the time, al-Nābulusī simply recorded the tax obligations in each settlement, collecting fiscal documents from local tax-officials. As he explains, there were three types of tax-officials he had to deal with, depending on the fiscal status of the village. For villages held as part of the private domain of the sultan (khāṣṣ), the revenues went to the sultan and his household, and the tax obligations were reported by the agents of the central government. For villages endowed as charitable waqf, the fiscal liabilities were set by the administrators (nuwwāb) of the endowments. For villages held as iqṭāʿ for the benefit of military officers — and this was the vast majority of the villages in the Fayyum, over 90 per cent — the tax obligations were recorded by the clerks (kuttāb) working in the private service of the military officer or officers entitled to the iqṭāʿ. example from Fatimid documentary evidence, we find poll-tax receipts for the kharājī fiscal year of 412 issued in the hijrī year 414 (Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, 16). 60  61 

VF, p. 37.

VF, p. 212.

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

13

But when the clerks of iqṭāʿ-holders were not in situ, al-Nābulusī had to investigate the village headmen. In some villages there was no resident tax-official, most probably because the local revenues were too insignificant to justify a permanent administrative presence. In these smaller villages al-Nābulusī had to rely on the testimonies of the local headmen regarding their tax liabilities, even though they had an obvious interest in under-reporting. It seems likely that the villagers were not simply reporting orally but must have had duplicate copies of the tax they were obliged to pay. Moreover, al-Nābulusī certainly believed in the power of the oaths he exacted from headmen, and the latter may well have been in awe of a top-ranking bureaucrat showing up in their village. It is impossible to say how many villages belonged to this category. During his time in the Fayyum, al-Nābulusī was accompanied by the provincial irrigation official, the khawlī al-baḥr (Overseer of the Canal), who furnished him with information about the complex irrigation system and on local history. Although al-Nābulusī does not identify him by name, he reports a conversation they had and states that the irrigation official is a reliable person, whom ‘I have never caught lying from the time of my arrival at the province until now, when this book is being prepared’.62 There is no indication of direct contact with the governor of the province, the qāḍī of the city, or any of their deputies. During his stay, al-Nābulusī remained exclusively within the realm of the administrative apparatus, with little interaction with the military and judiciary arms of the Ayyubid state. The information he gathered locally, in the villages, was sometimes complemented by accessing the records of the central government in Cairo. It is unlikely that al-Nābulusī travelled to the capital especially for this — one has to assume that copies of the relevant registers were held at Madinat alFayyum, or that al-Nābulusī obtained copies when finishing the book off in Cairo, after returning from the Fayyum. He repeatedly refers to records or permanent files kept at the Dīwān, sometimes called the al-dīwān al-maʿmūr or al-dīwān al-sulṭānī (Royal Bureau). All three terms are used interchangeably and refer, by default, to the Treasury (Dīwān al-Māl).63 Examples of his reliance on the records of the central bureaux include the levies of hay destined for the Royal Stables, where al-Nābulusī drew on the relevant, but incomplete, Dīwān register, last updated in 633 (1235–36).64 Further information came from dīwān al-juyūsh al-manṣūra, or Ministry of the 62  63  64 

VF, p. 213.

On the Ayyubid Dīwāns, see Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt, pp. 146–49. Arabic: al-ʿamal al-mukhallad bi’l-dīwān.

14 Chapter 1

Army, which kept records of the nominal fiscal value (ʿibra) of each village, as well as the names of the iqṭāʿ-holders.65 The records of dīwān al-aḥbās, the Ministry in charge of endowments, were used for the dues to be paid on religious institutions.66 Al-Nābulusī had at his disposal particularly up-to-date and complete information on villages which belonged to the private domain of the sultan and on the network of sugar cultivation. For those villages that belonged to the royal domain — the three large villages of Sinnūris, Fānū, and Miṭr Ṭāris — he was able to consult the tax registers for 642, which also included a record of the seed advances for 643. In the same three villages, and in Madinat al-Fayyum, he was also able to record the amount of unpaid and withheld payments at the end of 641, information that he could only have found in the tax registers for the following year. In general, the quality of the fiscal information for these three villages, and for the city, is consistently higher than the quality of information for villages assigned as iqṭāʿ. The information with regard to sugar is also updated for 642; it is likely that al-Nābulusī had access to a central register of the sugar plantations, which were under a state monopoly. A similar access to the registers of the Ministry of the Army allows him to report the withdrawal of iqṭāʿ-holders from three villages at the end of 641, stating that for 642 these villages’ revenues were awaiting re-allocation to new iqṭāʿ-holders.67 The striking omission from al-Nābulusī’s records is the actual payments made by the villagers. By and large, al-Nābulusī recorded only the tax obligations as established throughout the year, not the balance of payments at its end. Information on unpaid or withheld payments is given only in seventeen villages, and these villages invariably either belonged to the royal domain in 641 or had been part of the royal domain for any period of time in the previous decade, since 629. Naturally, these were mostly debts owed to the private domain of the sultan, and only rarely to iqṭāʿ-holders. Whatever the explanation, the absence of a record of actual payments gives Villages of the Fayyum its idealized tone: it is essentially the record of what should have been paid, not of what was. After compiling the records for individual villages, based on local and central registers, al-Nābulusī then aggregated the total tax obligations for the province. His calculations are generally accurate, no more than a 2–3 percentage points above or below the numbers we would expect from adding up the 65  66  67 

The Ministry of the Army is mentioned in the villages of ʿAnz, al-Ṣafāwina and Ṭubhār. VF, p. 53.

The villages of Khawr al-Rammād, Dumūshiyya, and Hawwārat Dumūshiyya.

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

15

taxes in the individual entries. For example, al-Nābulusī’s aggregate total of taxes in wheat in the province is 72,403 3/48 ardabbs, while the taxes and fees in wheat found in the individual village entries amount to just over 71,820. His total of the alms-tax in the province is 1,795 2/3 1/48 1/72 dinars, while the alms-tax in the village entries adds up to over 1,848 dinars. Al-Nābulusī did not aggregate certain categories of local fees, such as the levy of chickens, probably because these payments were not relevant to the assessment of the overall productivity of the province. The compilation and aggregation of fiscal information was the bread-andbutter of the work of a bureaucrat, and a mission that would have been familiar to al-Nābulusī. It was not uncommon for a bureaucrat from Cairo to be sent to one of the provinces to audit the local accounts, as we learn from references in al-Nābulusī’s Sword of Ambition.68 Perhaps this was what al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ had in mind when he appointed him to the Fayyum. But in al-Nābulusī’s own eyes, the mission had taken a much more ambitious turn. After arriving at the Fayyum and examining its administration, al-Nābulusī set himself to write a detailed geo­graphical and historical account of the province, which will correct the mistakes of previous historians: I was determined to offer to the treasuries of our lord the Sultan — may God make his rule mighty! – a book I would compose about it, a compilation that may be of benefit both in the present day and in days to come. I removed from it the falsehoods of past accounts and the distortions wrought by historians in their descriptions of past nations.69

More than a history book — and only a minor part of Villages of the Fayyum falls under the discipline of history as understood in medi­eval Islam — this was to be a book that will truthfully represent every detail of life in the Fayyum. Al-Nābulusī aims to recreate every aspect of the Fayyum, to make it come to life for those who have not been there. This includes both geo­graphical and demo­graphic information: I aspire that there be no difference between the knowledge of the Fayyum possessed by its inhabitants and that of one who has never seen it but has read this book; and that by means of this book, both those near it and those far away from it may gain equal knowledge of its circumstances. Moreover, I aspire that anyone inquiring about any aspect of the Fayyum, posing questions that are 68  This is an example of an official sent to audit Damietta (al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition, ed. and trans. by Yarbrough, p. 131). 69 

VF, p. 32.

16 Chapter 1

typically asked about similar provinces, would find his query addressed in my account, whether it concerns layout, physical appearance, location, distance from Madinat al-Fayyum and the cardinal direction in relation to it, the region’s inhabitants, their numbers and to which lineage does their section belong.70

The fiscal survey is thus a part of the detailed description of the province. The minute fiscal detail — the tax obligations in total and by category, in cash and in kind, the water quota, local fees, the amount of labour required for the sugar plantations — are all part of a larger, ambitious attempt to capture the Fayyum in its entirety. For al-Nābulusī, the main purpose of the treatise is not to provide information about taxation, even if most of Villages of the Fayyum is eventually taken up by such data. The treatise aims to bring together every bit of information about the Fayyum that may be useful to fellow officials in Cairo, who, hopefully, will never have to bother to visit the province themselves. Al-Nābulusī also wanted to list the number of inhabitants in each village. He mentions that he wanted to conduct his own census but eventually decided against it, fearing the reaction of the local population: ‘Were it not for my fear of them noticing, I would have counted them.’71 It is unclear by what means he would have made the census, and how realistic was his plan. In practice, he is only able to distinguish between small, medium, and large villages. However, as we shall see, some tax officials must have had a reasonable estimate of the number of households in each village, for they apportioned a labour levy for irrigation works according to the villages’ relative size. The chapters of the treatise support the ambitious project of describing the province in its totality. The first chapter sets out the Fayyum’s location and topo­graphy, a depression below the level of the Nile. The second and third chapters look at the impact of location and topo­graphy on the temperament (mizāj) and health of the inhabitants, and on the quality of the water and air. The fourth chapter examines the structure of water system of the Fayyum, explaining the annual cycle of the Nile inundation, and the role of the dam at al-Lāhūn in regulating it. Demo­graphy is covered in the fifth chapter, which lists the different tribal groups that occupy the Fayyum, each in their own cluster of villages. The sixth chapter picks up the topic of water supply, setting out the causes of its deterioration and previous attempts to revive it. The seventh chapter lists the names of all the settlements in the province in alphabetical order, and the eighth chapter lists all the religious institutions, both Muslim and Christian. The fiscal section begins in the ninth chapter, in which 70  71 

VF, p. 32

VF, p. 42.

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

17

al-Nābulusī provides the aggregate taxes of the province. The tenth and final chapter, which takes up about 80 per cent of the treatise, lists the tax obligations of the individual villages and hamlets by alphabetical order, but beginning with Madinat al-Fayyum. The introductory chapters allow al-Nābulusī to develop lines of arguments about history and medical theory, forming a background to the fiscal data. In terms of history, al-Nābulusī’s main bone of contention is to refute the link between the Qurʾānic Joseph and the Fayyum. While ‘other historians’ have said that Joseph was sent to the Fayyum in order to drain its waters and prepare it for cultivation, al-Nābulusī argues that this was not so, as the Qurʾān is comprehensive with regard to the life of Joseph: ‘had that event taken place, it would have been recounted in his [Joseph’s] stories that are found in the Qurʾān’.72 There must have been a wise man who designed the water supply of the Fayyum through Divine Guidance, by digging the al-Manhā Canal and building the al-Lāhūn dam just at the right level, but this was not necessarily Joseph. Instead, al-Nābulusī links this engineering achievement to Egypt’s tradition of science, brought about by the constant need to harness the Nile for cultivation. He states that he had already developed this theme in his (now lost) treatise on the history of Egypt, Ḥusn al-Sulūk, and he uses Villages of the Fayyum to further his argument for the important place of science in general, and engineering in particular, in Egyptian history. This is also the rationale for the rhyming title he gave to the treatise, Iẓhār Ṣunʿat al-Ḥayy al-Qayyūm fī Tartīb Bilād al-Fayyūm (Demonstrating the Everlasting Eternal’s Design in Ordering the Villages of the Fayyum). The title is supposed to convey both the ingenious design of the irrigation of the province and the alphabetical listing (tartīb) of the village entries. The second argument developed by al-Nābulusī relates to the highly deleterious impact of the Fayyum’s topo­graphy on the physical and mental health of its inhabitants. Building on the Hippocratic theory linking climatic conditions and well-being, al-Nābulusī argues that as a depression, the Fayyum is dominated by excessive heat and dryness. The air in the Fayyum is foul because it is mixed with the noxious vapours rising from the soil and from the putrid water, while the surrounding mountains prevent the foul air from escaping. The water of the Fayyum is vile, stagnant shallow water, mixed with the waste of the local population and the foul underground seepage, which itself resembles urine. The effects of this combination of excessive heat and dryness, foul air and vile water are devastating, especially on mental health: 72 

VF, p. 32.

18 Chapter 1

[It] endows the people of the Fayyum with a certain deficiency of reason caused by dryness, as well as base nature, worthlessness, weariness, discontent, impatience, lack of ambition and aspiration, stupor in both word and deed, disturbance of the vital pneuma, deficiency in natural desires, a corruption of psychical inclinations, wickedness of thoughts, and sadness during both day and night.73

Melancholy is the dominant temperament of the local population. The Greek author Rufus, considered the foremost authority on melancholy, is cited as saying that ‘the head of a person living in a low altitude is never spared from melancholy’.74 Black bile predominates in their bodies, due to the decay around them. In Madinat al-Fayyum, the inhabitants are entirely lacking in sociability, overcome by gloom and apathy, like ‘beasts in human form’. Throughout al-Nābulusī’s time in the city ‘never did I hear a wedding party or a social gathering; no one passed on its roads singing, nor was anyone overcome by good spirit to the point of chanting or humming’.75 He feels loneliness among them and ends the treatise with the desire to return home, and be separated from ‘those with whom I kept company but who were not of the same breed (min ghayr al-jins)’.76 This state of mind is not their fault but a result of the climatic conditions. Al-Nābulusī even witnessed how a foreigner who came to live in the Fayyum gradually acquired the stupor of the indigenous population. The air and water in the Fayyum are so foul as to pose a medical puzzle: how do the people of the Fayyum survive in such conditions? Al-Nābulusī offers two possible answers. One is that they have become accustomed to the foulness of the air and water, and so developed some immunity. The second explanation is that the water in the Fayyum is not completely stagnant and is cleansed by its flow and interaction with the vegetation on the canal banks. Neither explanation is adequate when considering the situation of those who live on the tail-ends of the canals, because the waste of the entire province ends up in their villages; and, indeed, al-Nābulusī reports that the inhabitants of these villages frequently suffer from bloating, dropsy, and kidney problems. 73 

VF, p. 39.

On Rufus and his reputation in the Islamic world, see Pormann, Rufus of Ephesus. This may actually be an adaptation of a passage in Ibn Riḍwān, where Hippocrates is cited to the effect that the air in low-lying places is worse than in elevated places, and Rufus is cited as saying ‘If you enter a city and see that it has narrow alleys and tall buildings, flee from it because the city is contaminated’ (Ibn Riḍwān, Medi­eval Islamic Medicine, trans. by Dols, p. 105). It is the only reference to Rufus in Ibn Riḍwān’s treatise. 74 

75  76 

VF, p. 37.

VF, p. 245.

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

19

The quality of water in Madinat al-Fayyum, at the higher part of the province, is also a cause for concern. Most latrines flow into the canal, and even the private wells of the upper classes are contaminated by nearby latrines oozing into them. Al-Nābulusī is adapting here Ibn Riḍwān’s On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt, a work which emphasizes the heat and dryness predominating Egypt, and the foul condition of the water of the Nile. Moreover, Ibn Riḍwān specifically singles out the inhabitants of the Fayyum as being more vulnerable to disease than any other region in Egypt because their water is stored up over the year. When the Fayyum water is released, there is an observable change in the taste and colour of the Nile.77 Ibn Riḍwān, however, argues that the health of the population of Egypt is not affected by these circumstances as much as would be expected, partly because they become accustomed to them.78 Much of al-Nābulusī’s account has the unmistakable aura of condescending elitism by a Cairene urbanite encountering the extreme poverty of a remote corner of the Egyptian countryside. Their cloth is of low quality, their meat is dry, their milk doesn’t coagulate, ‘their bread is extremely flabby, but if it is left a day and a night it becomes dry, and resembles a hard biscuit entirely devoid of pleasant taste. A desire for brevity keeps me from saying more on this topic’.79 Local irrigation works are supervised by villagers from al-Lāhūn without any formal knowledge of the art; he repeatedly refers to them as the ‘so-called engineers’. Local claims to religious knowledge are similarly ridiculed. The peasants of Akhṣāṣ al-Ḥallāq, a village that had a Sufi lodge, started wearing ṭaylasāns, the distinctive garment of Muslim scholars, and ‘are being called jurists and judges, without possessing either jurisprudence or judgment’.80 Al-Nābulusī’s contempt of the peasantry is paired with his distrust and loathing of Coptic Christians, although this is less apparent in this work than in his Sword of Ambition. Al-Nābulusī’s record of monasteries and churches in the province is to ensure that no new Christian places of worship will be 77 

Ibn Riḍwān, Medi­eval Islamic Medicine, trans. by Dols, p. 110.

Ibn Riḍwān, Medi­eval Islamic Medicine, trans. by Dols, p. 87. Compare also the observations on the phlegmatic nature of Egyptians, and the poor health of the residents of Upper Egypt, made by the traveller and physician al-Baghdādī, who visited Egypt around 600/1200 (al-Baghdādī, The Eastern Key, p. 25 [6r]). 78 

79 

VF, p. 37.

VF, p. 78. Al-Nābulusī also repeatedly refers to the use of the ṭaylasān by converts and upstarts in The Sword of Ambition (pp. 165–67). 80 

20 Chapter 1

built in the future (and thus overstepping their rights to use only existing churches). There is always the danger that ‘one of the ignorant and conceited Christian Copts, who do not fear the consequences, may build a church or a monastery, claiming its antiquity’.81 In the tax register, some of the terms connected with the collection of taxes from the Christian minority are nonstandard and obscure, and may represent derogatory terms. The term quṣṣāṣ, literally ‘story-tellers’ or ‘shearers’, is used for a group of Christian officials, perhaps a pejorative nickname for qusūs (priests). The officials in charge of collecting the poll-tax are called ṭarrādūn al-waḥsh, literally ‘the chasers of beasts’, a term which may have been intended as a pun. The overall question that hangs above Villages of the Fayyum is its purpose. We have seen that al-Nābulusī was commissioned with investigating the development of the Fayyum, yet he offers no practical recommendations. We would expect some suggestions for reform in the chapter dealing with the deterioration of the water supply in the province, yet even there al-Nābulusī confines himself to recounting past attempts to increase the volume of water. Al-Nābulusī is also reluctant to make any recommendations regarding individual villages. Only once does he suggest increasing the tax-burden.82 It is not that al-Nābulusī was lacking in ideas. His Lumaʿ is brimming with ambitious recommendations for reform of the administration. But the Villages of the Fayyum was conceived as a work of fact-finding and description, not as a work of counsel. The desire to bring a region to life through detailed description belongs to the discipline of geo­graphy, and several earlier medi­eval geo­graphers included fiscal data in their accounts. This is especially true of the Abbasid great geo­graphers, such as Ibn Khurradhādbih and Qudāma b. Jaʿfar, the latter specifically cited in the Lumaʿ as a model of inspiration.83 But the similarities more or less end there. The Abbasid geo­graphers were interested in the imperial and the global, and their works are far removed from this micro-study of one individual province. Villages of the Fayyum has a closer match with the genre of historical topo­graphy, which later culminates with al-Maqrīzī’s fifteenth-century account of Egypt and Cairo, the Khiṭaṭ. An early representative of this tradition is a younger contemporary of al-Nābulusī, ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād (d. 684/1285). Ibn Shaddād had a career reminiscent of al-Nābulusī, 81  82 

VF, p. 33.

He recommends increasing the land-tax on garlic in the entry for Akhṣāṣ al-Ḥallāq.

See the discussion in Heck, The Construction of Knowledge, pp. 111–23; Silverstein, ‘The Medi­eval Islamic Worldview’. 83 

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

21

serving the administration of various Ayyubid rulers, a service that occasionally included a financial audit of an individual province.84 His historical topo­ graphy of Syria and the Jazīra, known as al-Aʿlāq al-khaṭīra, composed in the 670s/1270s for the Mamluk sultan Baybars, similarly contains summaries of tax revenues and numbers of troops, although it lacks the minute detail at the level of the individual village.85 Villages of the Fayyum has traditionally been considered as part of the uniquely rich administrative tradition of the Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties, and its study was often ancillary to the study of administrative manuals.86 There is no doubt that the Ayyubid period has seen the rise of a novel cluster of administrative texts, and it is surely not a coincidence that Villages of the Fayyum was composed in that period and in reference to it. The first work in this cluster, the administrative manual of al-Makhzūmī, kitāb al-minhāj, was composed in 565/1169–70, towards the end of the Fatimid period and revised c. 581/1185. The surviving sections of this work deal with military organization and the regulation of international trade.87 In the Lumaʿ, al-Nābulusī notes that he consulted al-Makhzūmī’s work.88 The next administrative text in this cluster was Qawānīn al-dawāwīn, composed by the chief administrator Ibn Mammātī (d. 606/1209). This work, of which a complete manu­script survives, is especially valuable for its explanation of agricultural taxation.89 Unlike Villages of the Fayyum, however, both works are prescriptive in nature, manuals of the procedures to be followed, not records of actual taxes. Thus, Villages of the Fayyum fits no familiar genre in medi­eval Arabic literature, and there is no obvious model al-Nābulusī was trying to emulate.90 It D. Sourdel, ‘ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād’, EI2; Ibn Shaddād, al-Aʿlāq al-Khaṭīra, ed. by ʿAbbāra, p. 16. ʿIzz al-Dīn states that he was sent to Harran in 640 to survey it (li-akshifha-hā), and mentions its tax revenue at the time as two million dirham. 84 

The work was written towards the end of his life, between 671/1272–73 and 680/ 1281–82, so could not have been an inspiration for al-Nābulusī (Humphreys, Islamic History, p. 174; Ibn Shaddād, al-Aʿlāq al-Khaṭīra, ed. by ʿAbbāra). 85 

Humphreys, Islamic History, chap. 7, ‘The Fiscal Administration of the Mamluk Empire’. It was Cahen’s work on al-Nābulusī’s text that led to his discovery of al-Makhzūmī’s treatise (Cahen, Makhzūmiyyāt). See also the discussion in Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt, pp. 16–17. 86 

87  88  89 

Cahen, Makhzūmiyyāt. Lumaʿ, p. 10.

Ibn Mammātī, Qawānīn al-Dawāwīn, ed. by ʿAṭiya; Cooper, Ibn Mammati’s Rules.

One could note also similarities to the cadastral survey of Egypt by Ibn Jīʿān towards the end of the fifteenth century (Halm, Ägypten nach den Mamlukischen Lehensregistern) and the thirteenth-century Yemeni almanacs (Vallet, L’Arabie marchande). 90 

22 Chapter 1

not only incorporates detailed tax registers for individual villages, but embeds them in a personal and literary framework. Al-Nābulusī recites some of his own — quite mediocre — poetry about his loneliness in the Fayyum: ‘I longed for people there, so much so/that I had cried out in desire for company.’91 The sight of peasants tilling the lands of another village evokes two lines from a classical poem by Ibn Harma (d. c. 170/786) about ostriches that abandon their own eggs.92 The fiscal data is occasionally peppered with rhymed prose. Thus, Miṭr Ṭāris is ‘a bride, whose trees are adorned by fruits like necklaces, and whose plantations show its merchants the path to profits’.93 The beauty of Fayyum’s orchards is likened to the Ghuta of Damascus; the date palms of Abū Ksā resemble those of the Hejaz; Akhṣāṣ al-Ḥallāq is compared to the fertile province of Qalyūb.94 It is evident that al-Nābulusī saw Villages of the Fayyum not as a tax register but as an opportunity to impress the sultan al-Ṣāliḥ. His career flourished under al-Kāmil, al-Ṣāliḥ’s father, but since his fall from grace he was unable to regain his position. When he was summoned to the Fayyum, this may have been his first appointment under al-Ṣāliḥ. By now he considered himself a litterateur, an adīb, as well as an administrator, a kātib. When setting out to perform his duties, he was not content with a simple audit of the finances. He hoped the sultan would appreciate his erudition as well as his meticulous record-taking. We do not know that Villages of the Fayyum made any impression on al-Ṣāliḥ. In the Lumaʿ, composed after coming back from the Fayyum, al-Nābulusī again complains about his penury and asks for royal favour. Villages of the Fayyum survived in two manu­scripts but is not cited by any medi­eval author. The same goes for his Lumaʿ: there is no evidence that it had any impact on Ayyubid and early Mamluk administrative practices.95 But we must be very grateful for al-Nābulusī’s literary pretensions. Without them, his mission to the Fayyum VF, p. 36. Another example: ‘Whereas the one who had long lived in the Fayyum said/“I found a home but I found no neighbour”/I, for myself, since my arrival there have found no one/who is it who said “neither home nor neighbour.”’ (VF, p. 36). 91 

92  93  94 

Pellat, ‘Ibn Harma’, EI2. VF, p. 217.

VF, pp. 78, 88.

Neither work was a manual. Later authors of encyclopaedic works probably did not find it as useful as the works of Ibn Mammātī and al-Makhzūmī. See the comments by Cahen in his introduction to Lumaʿ al-Qawānīn, ed. by Cahen and Becker, pp. 123, and 129 (a list of manu­ scripts of the Lumaʿ); and by Sayyid in al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 231 n. 3. 95 

Al-Nābulusī and the Villages of the Fayyum

23

would have produced a mundane fiscal report, which would have been lost together with the Ayyubid and Mamluk archives. It is precisely because the fiscal material was embedded in a literary framework that it has survived. We have no further information about al-Nābulusī’s career after the composition of Villages of the Fayyum and the Lumaʿ. It is unlikely that he had regained his position in the administration. The bio­graphical dictionaries tell us that he died in Cairo about twenty years later, on 25 Jumādā I 660/17 April 1262, and was buried in the Muqattam Cemetery.96

96 

Al-Dimyāṭī, Le dictionnaire des autorités, ed. by Vajda, p. 164.

Chapter 2

A

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

yyubid Fayyum had a long and unique history that stretched back to antiquity, visible to al-Nābulusī in ancient monuments and abandoned sites, many of which survive to this day. The exceptionally rich evidence coming from the Fayyum allows us to reconstruct its evolution, in quite a bit of detail, up until the time of al-Nābulsī’s visit. The dramatic starting point for this narrative is the Ptolemaic land reclamation of the third century bc, which shaped the fundamentals of the agricultural regime of the Fayyum in the premodern period. Since then, water reached the depression of the Fayyum by a branch of the Nile called Baḥr Yūsuf or al-Manhā Canal. A dam placed in al-Lāhūn, at the entrance to the depression, regulated the amount of water entering the province and prevented excessive flooding during the high summer Nile. Upon reaching the provincial capital (called Crocodilopolis, Arsinoe, or Madinat al-Fayyum, depending on the ruling dynasty), the Nile water was distributed to the villages of the depression through a radial network of irrigation canals. The need to maintain water supply through the dam at al-Lāhūn and the radial canal network is a constant element in the history of the Fayyum, the primary challenge facing all those involved in agricultural production. But beyond the constraints of the natural environment, there is much to be gained by looking back into the deep history of the province and tracing economic, social, and religious transformations. The following overview of the history of the Fayyum, from the Ptolemaic to the end of the Fatimid period, should put to rest any lingering stereotypes of the timeless, unchanging Egyptian countryside. Nor is it a narrative of Greco-Roman flourishing followed by an Islamic-era decline, and the periodization of the history of the province does not neatly match dynastic changes. The Ptolemaic land reclamation was followed by a Roman age of prosperity, only to be disrupted by the Antonine Plague of ad 166/67. The retraction of the Roman Empire in the late third century saw a shift towards collective taxation of arable village lands, and the rise of large aristocratic estates specializing in cash-crops, especially

Chapter 2

26

vines. Christianity followed, leading to the emergence of the desert monasteries in the fifth and sixth centuries. Most of the following chapter will be devoted to the history of the Fayyum in the Islamic period, under the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid dynasties. I will argue here that Islamic rule led to the arrival of new cash crops, particularly rice, and that the Fatimid period in particular was a period of boom and bust, with high degree of commercialisation and investment followed by severe economic and agricultural contraction. During the first century of Fatimid rule, from 969 to 1068, the Fayyum went through an age of renewed prosperity and close integration into the Mediterranean flax trade, supported by central investment in the irrigation system. Arabic became widespread, but not Islam, and Coptic village elites spent their money on renovating churches and lavish manu­scripts. That prosperity appears to have come to an end with the Civil War under the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir in 1068–74, which led to a considerable shrinking of the cultivated area, a deep crisis from which thirteenth-century Fayyum was just beginning to recover.

Ptolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine Fayyum The history of the Fayyum as an agricultural province begins with the major land reclamation project undertaken under Ptolemy I and II in the early third century bc. In earlier times, most of the province was submerged by excess flood waters of the Upper Nile that drained there through a canal dug via the Lahun Gap by the pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty (c. 1991–1783 bc). The name Fayyum comes from the New Kingdom name P3-jm, or in later Coptic Phiom, meaning ‘The Lake’, which is what the Fayyum was when Herodotus purportedly visited it around 450 bc. Herodotus also saw some of the buildings erected by the ancient Egyptian kings, including the Pyramid complex in Hawara, which he called the Labyrinth, and the monumental statues in Biyahmū.1 The Ptolemies, using Greek engineers, drained the lake by erecting a massive dam at the entrance to the province, near al-Lāhūn, and by excavating canals along the desert edges of the depression. A massive dike in the south blocked off water from draining into the Wadi Nezla, and these excess waters flowed to the Gharq basin in the south-west.2 Draining the lake that covered most of the Fayyum must have been a long process, and it is thought that the 1 

Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 128.

Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 142. The dike is still visible and carries the modern road across the southern section of the Wadi Nezla. 2 

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

27

flow at the Lahun Gap was cut off for twenty or forty years before the land could be put to agricultural use. The result was that the level of the lake was dramatically reduced, and the cultivable area rose dramatically from 450 sq. km. to around 1200 or even 1500 sq. km.3 The new lands, named in 267 bc the nome of Arsinoe, were settled by several thousand Greek soldiers, and retained a high proportion of military personnel for several centuries, even if the majority must have been Egyptians from other provinces.4 The new villages established in the Fayyum had a distinctive grid plan, still visible in Philadelphia in the north-east. Philadelphia is also the origin of the Zenon archive, consisting of two thousand documents belonging to a Greek emigrant who managed the estate of Apollonios, the finance minister of Ptolemy II, around the middle of the third century bc. They depict the world of the first generations of settlers, experimenting with growing vine and olives, and creating typically Greek institutions such as the bath house and the gymnasium.5 But it was under the Romans that the Fayyun enjoyed a period of unparalleled prosperity. For the second century ad in particular, we have more evidence than we have for any other period, with thousands of papyri originating in villages on the edges of the depression. The Romans may have been aided by a favourable climatic macro-cycle, with no evidence of consecutive Nile failures.6 By the mid-second century, the density of population in the Fayyum was about 120 persons/km2, and the total population may have reached 150,000, before a decline caused by the Antonine Plague of ad 166/67.7 Theadelphia, a village in north-west Fayyum, is a well-documented example of the peak of Roman prosperity.8 Originally established by the Ptolemies, it cultivated in the second century about 6,500 aroura (18 km2), of which 7–8% were devoted to vineyards and garden plots, and the rest was arable land. Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 128; Rathbone, ‘Villages, Land and Population’, p. 111. 3 

Manning, Land and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt, p. 38; Rathbone, ‘Villages, Land and Population’, p. 113 (estimates that by mid-third century bc there were thirty thousand adult males in the Fayyum, of which 6,500 were Greek colonists). 4 

5  6 

Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 135. Rathbone, ‘Roman Egypt’, p. 700.

Rathbone, ‘Roman Egypt’, p. 699; Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 128. 7 

The following is based on Sharp, ‘The Village of Theadelphia’. The archaeo­logical remains, including cisterns and floors of bath houses, wine presses, and remains of a Ptolemaic temple, are summarized in Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 141. 8 

Chapter 2

28

It had over two thousand inhabitants and a significant professionalization, with sellers of oil, wine, and vegetables, a butcher, a tailor, a goldsmith, a woolcarder, a weaver, and a physician. About a third of arable land was in private ownership, a great increase over the situation under the Ptolemies, but still less than in other Egyptian provinces. The state lands were apportioned to associations of peasant tenants, known as pittakia. The tenants redistributed land periodically, with individual rights conceived of as shares in the village lands.9 Arable land was subject to crop rotation, with lentils grown every other year. A register of ad 164/65 has 40% of arable land sown with wheat, 22% with lentils, 16% with fodder crops, and another significant proportion with barley. The vineyards and garden plots were held as private property, often by absentee owners, and as often as not by women. The high mortality of the Antonine Plague of ad 166/67 transformed the local economy.10 The land abandoned as a result of the Plague was sold off to private estates of absentee landowners, which became an important feature of the Fayyum countryside. The best documented example is the Appianus estate, whose head office in the provincial capital supervised holdings in forty different villages of the Fayyum. The estate was run with a core of permanent staff, seasonal hired labour, and few slaves. The rise of the private estates meant a marked shift towards cash crops, especially viticulture. In our model village of Theadelphia, the share of the land cultivated by vineyards and orchards increased to 29% by ad 216, while the amount of arable land shrunk by nearly half.11 The extension of viticulture was facilitated by the introduction of the cattle-powered waterwheel, the mechane (later Arabic sāqiya), the most important techno­logical innovation in the history of premodern Fayyum, which allowed for summer irrigation and for cultivation of elevated lands.12 9  A contract from Theadelphia, dating to the Roman period, shows a tenant subleasing his cultivation rights over one aroura of arable land. The contract makes it clear that the rights do not involve a specific plot of land, but refer to a surface of one aroura from the tenant’s share of the village lands. Were the village lands to be redivided, the lessee will choose his one aroura from whatever the lessor receives by lot (Ƙƛƞρωται). See Monson, ‘Communal Agriculture’; Monson, ‘Royal Land in Ptolemaic Egypt’; Rowlandson, ‘The Organization of Public Lands in Roman Egypt’.

10  Rathbone, ‘Villages, Land and Population’, p. 185; Rathbone, ‘Roman Egypt’, p. 699 (sug­gests 20–30 per cent population loss); Rathbone and Bagnall, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 128.

Rathbone, ‘Roman Egypt’, pp. 699–700; Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, p. 148. See also Rathbone, Economic Rationalism, for the study of the Appianus estate. 11 

Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, p. 18; Rathbone, ‘Roman Egypt’, 700; Hickey, ‘Aristo­cratic Landholding’. 12 

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

29

Roman taxation of this period relied on rather heavy bureaucracy at the village level. The burden of taxes in the villages was apportioned by local officials known as komarchs, registered by village clerks, and collected by two separate officials, one for taxes in kind and one for taxes in grain. Kephalaiotai, literally ‘headmen’, were responsible for collecting and transporting the taxes of sub-groups of about ten households.13 Above the level of the villages, the Fayyum was divided to two or three quasi-independent administrative subdivisions, called merides.14 Arable land was assessed in kind, with variable fixed rates according to the quality of the land and the type of holdings; the average rate appears to be 3–3.5 artabas per aroura, which normally translated into a third of the expected crop.15 Gardens and vineyards were assessed in cash. Craftsmen paid a fixed sum per person or workshop. In addition, a poll-tax was levied on adult males; in the rest of Egypt it amounted to 16 silver drachmas, but the evidence from the Fayyum suggests it was set locally at the much higher rate of 40 drachmas.16 This was augmented by corvée labour, which mostly consisted of compulsory maintenance of the local irrigation system.17 The remains of Roman Fayyum show a flourishing rural society. The Ptolemaic temple in Tebtynis, in the south of the province, expanded in the first and second century ad, while the monumental bath house was completed prior to ad 100.18 Prosperity extended to the afterlife: village cemeteries of the Roman Fayyum show an extraordinary range of grave goods. Even the simplest burials were accompanied by jewellery, and well-to-do villagers had their mummies painted or covered with gilded masks.19 It is this period that left us the most enduring images of its inhabitants. The naturalistic mummy portraits, such as this one from Hawara (Fig. 1), capture Roman Fayyumis — men and women — as wealthy individuals, fully integrated into imperial culture. We know so much of Roman Fayyum because those villages that supply us with the majority of the evidence were wholly or partially deserted during the fourth century ad. Phila­delphia and Karanis, both along the eastern desert canal, witnessed increasing water shortages and dwindling prosperity; they appear to have been completely abandoned by the sixth century. Theadelphia 13  14  15  16  17  18  19 

Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, pp. 133 ff.

Derda, ‘From Ptolemaic Ἀρσινοΐτης νοµός to Three Arsinoite Merides’. Rathbone, ‘Roman Egypt’, pp. 704, 716. Rathbone, ‘Roman Egypt’, p. 716.

Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, pp. 135 ff.

Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, pp. 131, 147. Rathbone, ‘Roman Egypt’, p. 713.

Chapter 2

30

and Dionysias (Qasr Qarun), which lay at the extreme end of the western desert canal, were abandoned as agricultural settlements. The documentary evidence makes it quite clear that these settlements declined because their water supply dried up. Prior to its abandonment, the villagers of Theadelphia repeatedly accused upstream villages of taking their water, a natural result of the interdependence ingrained in the Fayyum canal system.20 The reasons for the drying up of the canals along the edges of the Fayyum are not entirely clear. Some historians see it as an essentially localized phenomenon, a natural and perhaps inevitable result of increasing salinization in the lands reclaimed by the Ptolemies.21 Haug notes that Figure 1. A funerary limewood panel bearing the sites closer to the main water portrait of a young man with curly hair. Hawara, supply at the Lahun Gap, such ad 80–120. London, British Museum, EA 74711. as Tebtynis and Narmouthis © Trustees of the British Museum. in the Tuṭūn basin, were not deserted at this time but much later, in the Islamic period. Fragments of alphabetical lists of villages dated to the late Byzantine or early Islamic period suggest the province had about 145 villages and hamlets, comparable with the numbers estimated for the Ptolemaic period.22 However, the desertion of villages on the edges of the depression must 20  21 

Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, p. 141. Haug, ‘360 Days of Summer’.

Keenan, ‘Byzantine Egyptian Villages’, p. 227. It has also been argued that other regions of the late antique and Byzantine Middle East witnessed an expansion of rural settlement 22 

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

31

have meant some contraction of cultivation, and the drying up of the canals at least suggests less rigorous maintenance of the irrigation system.23 The taxation system was overhauled by Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305), bringing about a shift from individual to collective liability. Diocletian’s fiscal changes sought to simplify the tax system by setting quotas for each village, calculated on the basis of flat rates in kind.24 This has led to the virtual disappearance of the village bureaucracy that has been such a distinctive feature of earlier Roman Fayyum. Instead, several documents of the fifth and sixth centuries mention village lands held by the koinon, the village community. While some historians see it as purely fiscal category, responding to the new ways taxes were levied, others see the koinon as indication of increasing collectivization of production.25 At the same time, and in other sites, some of the owners of the large aristocratic estates appear to have taken up much of the administrative responsibilities, including the collection of taxes.26 The other major change was the conversion of the Fayyum to Christianity, a process completed by the fifth century. Most Roman temples were already out of use by the fourth century, or turned into defensive forts, as happened in Diyonsias in the north-west. The central areas of the Fayyum saw the intensive building of churches, with eight excavated in Narmouthis alone. The provincial capital had many more.27 The Fayyum and its surrounding deserts, secluded from the main branch of the Nile Valley but also sufficiently close to agricultural communities, were particularly amenable to the growth of monastic institutions. The wealthiest and most prominent was the Monastery of Gabriel, on the mountain of Qalamūn in the deserts to the south of the depression. There is documentary evidence for its existence already in ad 444. In Coptic hagio­graphy, its fame is associated with the bio­graphy of the seventh-century monk Samuel, who originally resided in the Naqlūn Monastery, located between the Tuṭūn basin and the Lahun Gap. Naqlūn was active at least since the fifth century, and had a population of 120 monks and 200 lay occupants in the seventh century.28 By the eighth century, a century after the from the fourth to the seventh centuries (Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity, pp. 20–22).

Rathbone, ‘Villages, Land and Population’, p. 124; Rathbone, ‘Towards a Historical Topo­ graphy of the Fayum’; Rathbone, ‘Mapping the South-West Fayyum’. 23 

24  25  26  27 

Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, p. 156; Rathbone, ‘Roman Egypt’, p. 716.

Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, p. 137; Keenan, ‘Byzantine Egyptian Villages’, pp. 230, 238. Sarris, Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian.

Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, pp. 143, 152.

Abbot, ‘Monasteries of the Fayyum’, pp. 73–96; Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 154. 28 

Chapter 2

32

Muslim conquest, the Fayyum had perhaps thirty-five monasteries, which exerted considerable influence over the hierarchy of the Coptic Church.29

Umayyad and Abbasid Fayyum According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam’s history of the Muslim conquest of Egypt, the Arab forces were not aware of the existence of the isolated Fayyum oasis; its greenery was suddenly revealed to them as they passed through Upper Egypt. According to another version, they were informed of the Fayyum’s existence and then spent some time looking for it.30 This is undoubtedly apocryphal, as the Fayyum has always been well integrated to the main Nile Valley. It is also known that small groups of ‘Saracen’ or Arab tribesmen lived in pre-Islamic Fayyum, acting as herdsmen and guards at toll stations. It is possible that these pre-Islamic Fayyumi Arabs were nomads from the eastern desert or the Sinai Peninsula; their names are not distinctly Arab, and it is difficult to know precisely what their Arab identity entailed.31 During the first fifty years after the Arab Conquest, not much changed in the Fayyum.32 The Byzantine structure of administration was kept in place, with almost all official documents written in Greek. The taxes were still levied collectively on village communities and were imposed and distributed by a pagarch, recruited from among the local Christian landholding elite. There is no mention of confiscation of land. The oikoi, the large estates of Byzantine Fayyum, continue to be mentioned as fiscal units in Christian ownership.33 Arab presence in the countryside was minimal. While Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam reports that Arab tribes were allocated spring grazing areas, including in the Fayyum, the documentary evidence has only a couple of seventh-century references to Arab merchants, and no Arab cultivators prior to the eighth century.34 29  Abbot, ‘Monasteries of the Fayyum’, p. 163ff; [Abū al-Makārim], The Churches and Monasteries of Egypt, trans. by Evetts and Butler, p. 53.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ Miṣr wa’l-Maghrib, pp. 196–97; al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 674. 30 

A neighbourhood of ‘the Arabs’ is attested in the capital Arsinoe in the third century ad, and an ‘Arab’ village is also mentioned in the pre-Islamic period. See Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, pp. 54–55, 168–71, and the references there; Power, ‘“You shall not see the tribes”’. 31 

The following is based on Sijpesteijn, ‘Landholding Patterns’; Frantz-Murphy, ‘First Five Centuries of Islamic Rule’. 32 

33  34 

Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, p. 153.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ Miṣr wa’l-Maghrib, p. 168 (on a tribal group, the Ṣadaf, settling

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

33

The first Arab Muslim pagarch of the Fayyum, ʿAṭīya ibn Juʿayd, was appointed in 694, and more are attested from the 720s.35 The working of the Umayyad rural administration has been preserved in the correspondence of Nājid ibn Muslim, the pagarch of Fayyum c. 730–50, with his subordinate official ʿAbdallāh ibn Asʿad, who was in charge of a sub-district (ḥayyiz) in south-western Fayyum.36 His sub-district consisted of several villages (sing. qarya, from Greek, chorion), which in turn could include a few hamlets. Local Christian headmen (māzūt, ṣāḥib al-qarya) were responsible for the payment of taxes; they were the ‘solvent’ peasants who collected the taxes and acted as guarantors for complete payment by the village.37 Indications of the village acting collectively, not only for the purpose of tax collection but also owning land and taking loans, led Chris Wickham to argue that these villages in Umayyad Fayyum and elsewhere in Upper Egypt are the best-documented examples of active rural communities from late antiquity and early Islam.38 But within a century the fiscal regime changed, with liability moving from the collective community back to the individual. The poll-tax, abolished by the Diocletian tax reform of the late Roman Empire, was re-introduced within a generation after the Arab Conquest and applied to non-Muslim adult males.39 The amounts fluctuated, apparently according to the economic conditions of the tax-payer. But it was a heavy imposition, and the largest item in the tax burden of the eighth-century monastic communities for which we have records, even if the monks were mostly exempt. A lively example is taxdemand issued by the Arab pagrach of the Upper Ashmūn to Ioannes son of Isidoros, of the monastery of Apa Apollo, in 136/753. The pagarch informs Ioannes that his personal poll-tax is two gold coins for the Islamic year, which he needs to pay in six instalments to the tax-collectors of his village. The pagarch also advises Ioannes not to pay more than that, to get a receipt, and offers to hear complaints against excessive collection.40

in the Fayyum); al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, iv, 48 (the Fayyum was the grazing area of the Lakhm and the Murād). 35 

Sijpesteijn, ‘Landholding Patterns’, pp. 126 ff.

Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, pp. 117–44. On the early Islamic period, see also Mikhail, From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt, pp. 146–49. 36 

37  38  39  40 

Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, pp. 155–59.

Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, pp. 427–28.

Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, pp. 72–73, 108, 179. Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, p. 179.

Chapter 2

34

The process of individuating the tax regime was completed with the Abbasid introduction of lease contracts. The first agricultural contracts of this type date to 159/776 and are issued by the representatives of the state to individual farmers, for a set amount of land in return to a fixed rent.41 At the same time, the new term kharāj, brought by Abbasid administrators from the Persian provinces, replaced the earlier jizya and ḍarība as the umbrella name for land-tax, whether in kind or in cash.42 A century later, the lease contracts were being issued by a tax-farmer or contractor, called mutaqabbil. The lease contracts were now known as ‘registrations’ (sijill), with the earliest document carrying this sense of the word dating from the 880s.43 As collective fiscal responsibility was superseded by individual accountability, tax-farmers replaced the headmen as the intermediaries between the village communities and the Muslim administration.44 The majority of the inhabitants remained Christian, but rural Egypt under the Abbasids was increasingly Arabicised and its landscape Islamicized. In the documentary evidence, Coptic documents become rare after 900 and are replaced by Arabic as the exclusive language of administration and law. Legal documents pertaining to Muslims and non-Muslims were executed according to the requirements of Islamic law, before a Muslim official, and in the presence of appropriate Muslim witnesses.45 Mosques are attested in the Egyptian countryside from the ninth century, and Islamic courts appear in the district capitals of Upper Egypt in the Tulunid period (868–905).46 In the villages of the Fayyum there is evidence of Islamic legal procedures and a judicial hierarchy from the ninth century onwards, perhaps somewhat earlier than other districts further to the south.47 The Fayyum was also integrated into the narrative of Islamic history. The Conquest of Egypt by Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam (d. 871) transforms the Ptolemaic land reclamation of the Fayyum to a narrative about the wisdom of the biblicalQurʾānic Joseph.48 According to his version, broadly repeated in Villages of the 41  42  43  44 

Grohmann and Khoury, Chrestomathie, nos 66–70.

Frantz-Murphy, ‘First Five Centuries of Islamic Rule’, pp. 245 ff. Frantz-Murphy, ‘First Five Centuries of Islamic Rule’, p. 258. Sijpesteijn, ‘Landholding Patterns’, p. 129.

Richter, ‘Greek, Coptic and the “Language of the Hijra”’, p. 421; Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, p. 111. 45 

46  47 

48 

Tillier, ‘The Qāḍīs of Fusṭāṭ–Miṣr under the Ṭūlūnids and the Ikhshīdids’. Grohmann and Khoury, Chrestomathie, i, 84, 146.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam’s text actively sets out to create local Egyptian Arab identity. He

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

35

Fayyum, the Pharaoh decided to test the abilities of his ageing vizier by ordering him to drain the Fayyum, which used to be a reservoir for excess flood waters. Joseph took on the project by cutting three drainage canals, including the two encircling desert canals. He managed to achieve in seventy days what the Pharaoh thought would take a thousand days — allowing Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam to introduce the Arabic alf yawm as a new etymo­logy for the name of the province. Joseph’s land reclamation was followed by settlement of peasant households from all over Egypt. The first village to be built was Shāna, home to the Pharaoh’s daughter.49 Al-Masʿūdī, who visited Egypt in 330/941–42, provides another version of the Joseph’s foundation myth.50 The parallels with the actual history of the reclamation process are striking, suggesting they are based on the living memory among local informants, dressed with Islamic legend. Umayyad and Abbasid documents mention wheat and flax as the main crops of the Fayyum. Flax in particular appears to be associated with the Fayyum in the Muslim period, in contrast to the Roman concentration of flax in the Delta.51 By the late ninth century, the Fayyum was also known for its high quality wheat (al-qamḥ al-mawṣūf) and the production of canvasses (khaysh).52 The importance of the textile industry in this period is well attested in the correspondence of a family of merchants based in Madinat al-Fayyum. The Banū ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, active in the ninth century, traded in flax, canvasses, and finished textiles, and operated a sophisticated transport network from the provincial capital.53 What most impressed visitors to the Fayyum in the Abbasid period was the year-round irrigation, even in years of low Nile. The Persian geo­graphers Ibn al-Faqīh and al-Iṣṭakhrī know of the Fayyum as a site of perennial irrigainscribes a familial and spiritual bond between his own elite group and the Egyptian Christians, and emphasizes the protection and good treatment that should be awarded to the local Copts. See Omar, ‘“The crinkly-haired people of the Black Earth”’, with reference to Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam’s account of the Fayyum in pp. 166–67. Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ Miṣr wa’l-Maghrib, pp. 34–36; See also Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-Buldān, ed. by Wüstenfeld, III, pp. 934–35. 49 

Al-Masʿūdī, Murūj, ed. by Pellat, ii, 72 (no. 783), ii, 79 (no. 797). In his very detailed account, al-Masʿūdī has Joseph digging the canals for al-Rayyān b. al-Walīd. He also built al-Qanṭara al-Yūsufiyya in the interior of the Fayyum, and the square pillar, ‘one of the marvels of the world’ — probably referring to the statues of Biyahmū. 50 

51 

Mayerson, ‘The Role of Flax’.

Al-Yaʿqūbī, Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. de Goeje, p. 331. Al-Yaʿqūbī (d. after 292/905) spent the last few decades of his life in Egypt. 52 

53 

Rāġib, Marchands d’étoffes du Fayyoum.

Chapter 2

36

tion in summer and winter, and note the abundance of fruits.54 Faḍāʾil Miṣr, a treatise on Egyptian geo­graphy and history, also highlights its constant water supply even in years of low Nile. In a year of inadequate flooding, each of the Fayyum’s 360 villages — the number should not be taken literally — was able to feed the rest of Egypt for one day. The variety of crops was ‘impossible to count’, with seventy categories of wild edible plants alone.55 Al-Masʿūdī, more cautiously, says that in the past the Fayyum and other low regions had been irrigated even when the Nile flood reached only nine cubits. This was apparently not the case at the time of his visit.56 Since the mid-ninth century, the Fayyum is also mentioned as a battleground between the central authorities in Fusṭāṭ and rebellious forces coming from North Africa or Alexandria. In 253/867 the rebel Jābir b. al-Walīd al-Mudlijī camped in al-Baṭs, in eastern Fayyum, after fleeing from his base in Alexandria. He was forced to fight off local Arab tribes (aʿrāb) in Tanhamat, the endpoint of the western desert canal, then defeated between Tanhamat and Aqnā by an Abbasid governor coming from Fusṭāṭ.57 In 307/919 Berber forces loyal to the newly established Fatimid state in North Africa took al-Ashmūnayn and the Fayyum. They camped there for two years, until they were defeated in the eastern village of Dhāt al-Ṣafā. They were forced out from Madinat al-Fayyum towards the western edges, between Tanhamat and Aqnā, before finally retreating to Barca.58 Despite these occasional skirmishes, the province was prospering. In 355 or 356 AH (965–66 or 966–67) the entire Fayyum was given as iqṭāʿ — the first time we hear of this term in connection with the Fayyum — to Fātik al-Majnūn (‘the Mad’), a Greek companion of the Egyptian ruler Kāfūr (r. 966–68). According to a report preserved in a number of later medi­eval sources, the fiscal value of the province at the time exceeded 620,000 gold dinars, comparable to the revenues from major cities, like Ramla, Tiberias, or Damascus.59 Since the 54  Ibn al-Faqīh, Mukhtaṣar Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. de Goeje, p. 67; al-Iṣṭakhrī, Kitāb al-Masālik wa’l-mamālik, ed. de Goeje, p. 50. 55  56  57 

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 675; Ibn al-Kindī, Faḍāʾil Miṣr, pp. 33–34. Al-Masʿūdī, Murūj, ed. Pellat, ii, 71 (no. 782). Al-Kindī, Wulāt Miṣr, ed. Naṣṣār, pp. 234–35.

Al-Kindī, Wulāt Miṣr, ed. Naṣṣār, pp. 293–95; also al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ al-Ḥunafāʾ, ed. by al-Shayyāl, p. 98. Another Fatimid raid on the Fayyum is reported in 323/935, when they held off an Egyptian army arriving by boats (al-Kindī, Wulāt Miṣr, ed. Naṣṣār, pp. 304–05). See also discussion in ʿĀshūr, ‘al-Fayyūm fī al-ʿuṣūr al-wusṭá’, pp. 328–29. 58 

59 

The report is attributed to the high-ranking bureaucrat Ibn Zūlāq (d. 996). See [Abū

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

37

entire agricultural revenues of Egypt collected by the Fatimids in 359/969–70 are reported to be 3.4 million dinars, the sum quoted for the Fayyum alone — 620,000 dinars — is too high to represent actual revenues, and is probably a nominal fiscal value for the purpose of iqṭāʿ allocation. Still, this figure contrasts very favourably with the figures from the Ayyubid period. Fātik the Mad, by the way, wanted to take residence in the Fayyum but could not stay there because of the unhealthy quality of the air, a complaint that al-Nābulusī would repeat a couple of centuries later.60

The First Fatimid Century (969–1068) The first century of Fatimid rule, from 969 to 1068 or 1070, provides us with the most diverse evidence for Islamic Fayyum prior to al-Nābulusī’s survey. We have not only rich documentary and material evidence from the Fayyum itself, but also the records of the Cairo Geniza and accounts of perceptive geo­ graphers and administrators who had first-hand knowledge of the province. The wealth of evidence from this first Fatimid century is not a coincidence. It represents a closer integration of the Fayyum within international, and especially Mediterranean, commercial networks, a closer attention by the central authorities to the upkeep of the irrigation system, and attests to prosperous local Coptic elites who used surplus revenues to decorate their churches and pay for manu­script production. Travellers who visited the Fayyum at the beginning of Fatimid rule emphasize the predominance of rice, and suggest its cultivation is key to local prosperity. Rice was grown in Iraq from the ninth century but became widespread in the Islamic Mediterranean only in the tenth.61 Ibn Ḥawqal notes that the rice of the Fayyum was a summer crop, found in the Fayyum and the Wāḥāt (Oases) to its west, but not in the main Nile Valley.62 He also notes the remnants of a monumental wall known as the Wall of the Old Woman. That wall, he claims, used to encompass the entire oasis and its villages. In line with his upbeat tone, he explains that the wall is in disrepair as Islam brought peace and security, and made the wall redundant.63 The only negative aspect of the al-Makārim], The Churches and Monasteries of Egypt, trans. by Evetts and Butler, p. 52; al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 675; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-Buldān, ed. by Wüstenfeld, iii, 935. 60  61  62  63 

Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. by ʿAbbās, iv, 21.

Waines, ‘al-Ruzz’, EI2; Canard, ‘Le riz dans le Proche Orient’.

Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb Ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. by Kramers, pp. 137, 154 (Wāḥāt).

Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb Ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. by Kramers, p. 159; Ibn Hauqal, Configuration de la terre,

Chapter 2

38

Figure 2. Map of Egypt from Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb Ṣūrat al-Arḍ. Sixteenth-century copy based on a 1443–44 manu­script.

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 2214, fols 11v–12. By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

39

Chapter 2

40

Fayyum is its foul air: it is not pleasant, nor is it agreeable to the one who frequents it or the foreigner who resides there.64 Ibn Ḥawqal was also the first carto­grapher to literally put the Fayyum on the map. His maps of Egypt prominently depict the Fayyum to the west of the Nile, indicating its growing commercial importance (Fig. 2). Al-Muqaddasī, a contemporary of Ibn Ḥawqal, also associates the Fayyum with the cultivation of high-quality rice, along with flax. 65 In a statement found in one of the surviving copies of his work, the land-tax of the province is said to be 1,000 dinars a day, of which the tax-collector (ʿāmil) takes a dinar, a load (ḥiml, probably of flax), and a wayba of barley. While the figures are rounded, they are not unrealistic.66 Al-Muqaddasī then moves to explain the opening and closing of the dam at al-Lāhūn, the key to the Fayyum’s water supply. He notes that the boats carrying the taxes of the Fayyum, for which he uses the archaic term jizya, go over the dam when the waters are high. He finally mentions the warmness of the water of the Fayyum, which are left for a long time over the rice fields.67 The Andalusian geo­grapher Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī (d. 1094) left us a rich, even if somewhat confused, account of the Fayyum at this time of prosperity. According to al-Bakrī, the unique feature of the Fayyum is its double-cropping regime. Since the Fayyum can be irrigated by a Nile level of only 12 cubits, they sow their lands in the summer. Al-Bakrī states that when the Nile rises, the dam at al-Lāhūn is blocked with a heavy sycamore tree — in fact, as we shall see, he gets it wrong, as the dam was blocked when the Nile water level started to recede. Al-Bakrī explains that the blocking of the dam allows the peasants of the Fayyum to harvest their summer crops when the rest of Egypt has not yet ploughed. After the Nile subsides, they start a second cycle of irrigation, sowing wheat, barley, and rice (mentioned here as a winter crop).68 Al-Bakrī also mentions the official celebrations associated with the blocking of the dam. The placing of the sycamore tree over the dam is done in the presence of the governor of the province, engineers (ahl al-handasa) and proed. by Wiet, p. 157. According to Ibn Ḥawqal, the Wall of the Old Woman encompassed the entire Nile Valley as far as Nubia. 64  65 

Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb Ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. by Kramers, p. 160.

Al-Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm, ed. by de Goeje, pp. 201, 203. The flax is called al-dūn.

Al-Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm, ed. by de Goeje, p. 213. This report only appears in a thirteenth-century copy of the treatise. 66 

67  68 

Al-Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm, ed. by de Goeje, p. 208.

Al-Bakrī, al-Masālik wa’l-mamālik, ed. by Van Leeuwen and Ferré, i, 515 (no. 866).

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

41

fessional witnesses. The attendance of the latter was needed to testify that the dam was blocked at that date, in order to prevent future complaints about water supply. The act is accompanied by drummers and musicians supplied by the governor of the Fayyum, who then sends a message to Cairo to inform the authorities of the successful closing of the dam.69 The involvement of the state in the regulation of water supply to the Fayyum is uniquely attested by an irrigation schedule coming from the pen of a Fatimid administrator. In Jumādā II 421 AH (June to July 1030 ce), a Fatimid official called Abū Iṣḥāq, who is otherwise unknown, compiled a document of regulations (dustūr), based on a survey (kashf) of the main branches of the canals in the Fayyum. The report included a thorough technical explanation of the structure and function of the dam at al-Lāhūn, the locations of the main canals, the water rights (shurb) of each village unit (ḍayʿa), and the schedule of opening and closing of the main canals. His account reached us in abbreviated form, through a summary by al-Makhzūmī in the late twelfth century, itself reproduced by al-Maqrīzī in the fifteenth.70 More will be said of this account in the next chapter, as we explore the irrigation system in Ayyubid Fayyum. For our purposes here, it is worth emphasizing that even in its abbreviated version, Abū Iṣḥāq’s is still the most comprehensive account of the local irrigation system that has come to us from any period in the premodern history of the Fayyum. What is important to stress here is that this document reflects unprecedented level of attention by the central authorities to the functioning of the irrigation system and an attempt to control it. While there are a couple of eighth-century documents showing the involvement of the pagarch and its officials in the allocation of water to the Fayyum’s villages, and possibly even setting water quotas,71 the dustūr of Abū Iṣḥāq goes well beyond these. Together with the contemporary report by al-Bakrī, it indicates that during the first half of the eleventh century the Fatimids were closely involved in the mapping and regulation of the entire canal network.72 69  70  71 

Al-Bakrī, al-Masālik wa’l-mamālik, ed. by Van Leeuwen and Ferré, i, 514 (no. 856). Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 669 ff.

Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, pp. 28, 134.

Further evidence of Fatimid control over local irrigation system comes from an eleventh-century document, where a certain Fāris al-Dawla Faḍāʾil al-Ṭawāshī is said to be in charge of building works (al-ʿamāʾir) in the province of the Fayyum, possibly based in al-Lāhūn (Diem, Arabische Briefe, pp. 63–69, no. 35). This officer was accused of arresting a villager, probably from Naqalīfa. This fragmentary letter may be referring to a Fatimid official in charge of recruiting villagers to local irrigation works. 72 

Chapter 2

42

At the same time, the Fayyum was also drawn into a wider Mediterranean web of commerce in flax, vividly documented in the papers of the Jewish merchants preserved in the Cairo Geniza. Over two generations, first in the 1020s and 1030s through the house of Ibn ʿAwkal, and later in the 1040s and 1050s, under the leadership of Nahrāy ibn Nissīm, Jewish merchants travelled every August from Fusṭāṭ to the market town of Būṣīr Qūrīdīs, just outside the Fayyum.73 There they bought high quality flax from the retailers in Būṣīr, or sometimes went to the surrounding villages to purchase the retted fibres directly. Merchants such as Nahrāy then oversaw the processing and packing of flax. The labelled bales were sent to Fusṭāṭ, where commercial associates stored them and subsequently transported them to Alexandria or Tinnīs. From there other associates would ship the bales all over the Mediterranean, principally to Mahdiya, Sicily, Tyre, or Latakia.74 Indeed, al-Bakrī, writing in Spain, says the high quality of Fayyumi flax is second only to that grown in the mountains of Iberia.75 The volume of local trade in flax is staggering. There are references to at least five hundred bales of flax purchased by Ibn ʿAwkal in Būṣīr, with each bale weighing 170–225 kg, and valued at 40–50 dinars.76 Not all of this flax came from the Fayyum, but it is frequently mentioned as a destination for Geniza merchants, where money is changed and commodities bought. The international demand for flax must have moulded the agricultural landscape of the Fayyum, probably at the expense of wheat. Nothing on this scale has been reported for the Roman period, leading Mayerson to argue that the volume of Fatimid flax trade put the staple supplies of grains at risk.77 In terms of our understanding of rural society, the Geniza letters are most interesting when the merchants go out of Būṣīr and into the villages. One letter makes a distinction between the coins accepted by ‘vagabonds’ (ṣaʿālīk) and artisans (ṣunnāʿ) and those accepted by farmers (muzāriʿūn) and owners of big estates (wusiyya = ūsīya, Gr. ousia). The same letter also describes the flax of the farmers as inferior.78 Another letter mentions a sum of 200 dinars to be Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, p. 56; Gil, ‘The Flax Trade’; Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, i, 104–05; Udovitch, ‘International Trade’; Mayerson, ‘The Role of Flax’. 73 

74  75  76  77 

Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, p. 101.

Al-Bakrī, al-Masālik wa’l-mamālik, ed. by Van Leeuwen and Ferré, ii, 895 (no. 1497). Udovitch, ‘International Trade’, p. 275; Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, p. 277. Mayerson, ‘The Role of Flax’.

Gil, Be-malkhut Yishmaʿel, iv, 123 (no. 640; TS 12 fol. 793, ll. 7–12). For another reference to the ṣaʿālīk, see iii, 278 (no. 379), l. 25. See also Udovitch, ‘International Trade’, p. 276. 78 

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

43

paid to the farmers in a village called Dandīr.79 There are specific references to the Christian farmers who grow flax, which is said to be of the highest quality.80 This level of monetization and commercialization does not seem to have a precedent in the Islamic period. Our knowledge of the Fayyum in this first Fatimid century is complemented by a wealth of documentary and material evidence originating in the southern Fayyum. The most spectacular find is the orderly archive of the Banū Bifām, stored inside a jar unearthed in the Naqlūn Monastery in 1997. It contains about fifty documents on paper and parchments, placed together in a leather bag, dealing mainly with property and taxation. All the documents relate to the Banū Bifām, a Coptic family of farmers (called muzāriʿūn, the same term we find in the Geniza) from the nearby village of Damūya (in Villages of the Fayyum called Dimūh al-Lāhūn). The documents date from 992 to 1029, with the majority from the 1020s.81 The documents reveal a predominantly Christian society, with a Muslim minority having a privileged role in legal administration. The vast majority of those buying and selling property have Coptic names, while the witnesses are exclusively Muslim with Arabic names.82 The Coptic character of the village is confirmed by sale deeds of houses and of fields, where not only the properties subject to sale are nearly always owned by Christians but also the adjacent properties. The sole exception is a cluster of Muslim-owned properties surrounding the masjid, the neighbourhood mosque.83 Mouton concludes that the village was probably 90 per cent Christian during the 1020s.84 There are also receipts for payment of the poll-tax, which appears as a non-uniform tax collected by Christian officials.85 79  80 

Udovitch, ‘International Trade’, pp. 275–76. Gil, ‘The Flax Trade’, p. 88.

Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages; Goubert and Mouton, ‘Présentation des archives d’une famille copte du Fayoum’. 81 

Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, p. 21 (most sale documents in the archive are written by the Friday preacher in al-Lāhūn). See also Livingstone, ‘Fāṭimid Subjects’, p. 27. 82 

In Buljusūq, howver, there is a reference to a property owned by a Christian next to the congregational mosque (Livingstone, ‘Fāṭimid Subjects’, pp. 32, 37). 83 

Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, pp. 239 ff; Gaubert and Mouton, ‘Présentation des archives d’une famille copte du Fayoum’, pp. 513, 515. 84 

85  One member of the Banū Bifām collected the poll-tax for his ‘companions’ (aṣḥāb) in the village. The instalments of this collective payment range between 1 and 3.5 dinars. The clerk who signed the receipts has a Christian name, Manṣūr b. ʿAbd al-Masīḥ (Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, no. 30).

Chapter 2

44

The evidence from Damūya fits in with similar documents from other villages of southern Fayyum such as Tuṭūn and Buljusūq, and with the evidence from other regions of Fatimid Upper Egypt, which suggests that the rural population remained predominantly Christian. These areas of southern Fayyum retained a Christian majority into the eleventh century and supported a wealthy, self-confident, and literate Coptic elite, which spent its money on decorating local churches and on producing lavish religious manu­scripts. Dozens of religious texts found all over Upper Egypt, as far away as Suhag, are signed by scribes working in the village of Tebtynis (Tuṭūn) in the ninth and tenth century, at least up to 940.86 In the Naqlūn Monastery, new churches were built in the ninth century and then renovated and repainted in the 1030s, as attested by long foundation inscriptions.87 Recent excavations also unearthed monastic account books in Coptic, interspersed with many Arabic loanwords, which come from the same decade.88 Pieces of monumental lintels with dedicatory inscriptions in Coptic, part of church decorations, have been dated to the tenth or eleventh centuries, and may come from Buljusūq.89 A cluster of lavish textiles in ṭirāz style, found in south-western Fayyum and in the Naqlūn Monastery, appears to come from a workshop in Tuṭūn, active c. 1000.90 Excavations in Abbasid and Fatimid Tuṭūn take us into the villagers’ homes. These were rectangular structures, with no courtyard. A staircase led to the roof, which was used for domestic tasks usually associated with the courtyard in other contexts. At the front of the building was a relatively large reception area, opening up to smaller rooms, their size limited by the length of the palm-trees used for roofing. The windows were high up, close to the ceiling. No latrines were found in these residential structures (the absence of latrines will greatly exercise al-Nābulusī during his later visit). The village has shifted towards the north and the east in the Islamic period, and its Byznatine site was partly deserted. Generally, however, Rousset and Marchand conclude that the houses of the Islamic period continue the patterns of domestic architecture known in the Fayyum since the classical period.91 Richter, ‘Importance of the Fayoum for Coptic Studies’; Björnesjö, ‘Toponymie de Tebtunis’; Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 151. 86 

87  Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, pp. 153–54; Van der Vliet, ‘Reconstructing the Landscape’, p. 82. 88  89 

Van der Vliet, ‘Nekloni (al-Naqlūn)’.

Van der Vliet, ‘Reconstructing the Landscape’, p. 82.

Van der Vliet, ‘Reconstructing the Landscape’, p. 86; Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, p. 224 ff. 90 

91 

Rousset and Marchand, ‘Secteur nord de Tebtynis (Fayyoum)’, pp. 462–64; Gaubert and

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

45

A typical eleventh-century village had, apart from residential structures, a press (miʿṣara), a storehouse (khizāna), and a mill (ṭāḥūna).92 In Damūya, the three landmarks for orientation were the church, the mosque, and the mill, all located on the margins of the village. The village itself was well dispersed, encompassing open un-built spaces, called ʿarṣa, as well as gardens and orchards.93 Buljusūq was divided into quarters, one called qabīlat al-ghassāl (the section/tribe of al-Ghassāl), and another the neighbourhood (ḥāra) of al-kallābīn/al-kilābiyyīn, either referring to dog-handlers, or more likely, to the tribe of the Banū Kilāb.94 Even small Fatimid villages had some resident artisans and traders. The small village of Damūya had a wine grower, a salt-merchant, and two potters.95 In Bul­jusūq and Tuṭūn the owners of the press and of the mill stand out. Apart from them, there is mention of fishermen, a cow-driver (baqqār), and two journeymen.96 In Tuṭūn there are also deeds relating to Nubian slave-girls, dated from the second half of the tenth century.97 Levels of literacy were, as expected, low. In Damūya, only three of the twenty-five witnesses signed their own names.98 In Buljusūq, six of the thirteen individual witnesses had others to sign for them; the cow-driver signed for himself, but with a clumsy hand.99 The property transactions demonstrate a lively market for residential houses and privately owned agricultural land, and suggest that considerable amounts of gold coins were in circulation. Houses cost between 2.5 and 14 dinars, with 5 dinars the average across the villages. The Banū Bifām bought small plots of arable land, of ½–1 feddans, at constant price of 4 dinars per feddan of arable land, a price attested elsewhere in the Fayyum in the eleventh century.100 In Tuṭūn, a slave-girl cost 13 dinars, and a family of three generaMouton, Hommes et villages, p. 196. 92  93 

Livingstone, ‘Fāṭimid Subjects’, pp. 27–28.

Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, pp. 179, 188.

Grohmann, APEL, i, no. 60, dated 406/1015 (a house is in the qbyla known as ḥārat al-kallābīn/Kilābiyīn). 94 

95  96  97  98 

Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, p. 205. Livingstone, ‘Fāṭimid Subjects’, pp. 27–28.

Rāġib, Actes de vente d’esclaves et d’animaux, nos IX (372/983), X (383–84/994). Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, p. 22.

In the urban centre of al-Ashmūnayn, south of the Fayyum, all witnesses signed for themselves (Livingstone, ‘Fāṭimid Subjects’, pp. 55–57). 99 

Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, p. 29; Grohmann and Khoury, Papyro­logische Studien, doc. no. XIX (417/1026) — 2 feddans of arable land (ṭīn sawād) in Difinnū, near Qalhāne, 100 

Chapter 2

46

tions of slaves 49 dinars.101 Our evidence comes of course from the archives of wealthier families, but the existence of such elite at the village level is striking. The two key officials at the village level were the Coptic tax-farmer or taxguarantor, and the Arab tribal protector. The tax-farmers in the Fayyum appear to be local, well-off villagers. The senior member of the Banū Bifām family served as the dalīl of the village, a position which meant he was responsible for collecting poll-tax and protection payments.102 In 445/1053, the sons of the tax-farmer (ḍāmin) of Tuṭūn bought half a horse and half a foal from the taxfarmer of another village. Both sellers and buyer had distinctly Coptic names, and the sellers were the grandsons of Minā ibn Girgā, whose papers from the end of the tenth century indicate he had access to slave-girls and cash.103 The most prominent village official to appear in eleventh-century documents, however, is the khafīr, guardian or protector. Yūsuf Rāġib has identified the small archive of one such guardian, Abū al-Dīn ibn Ramaḍān al-Rabʿī, whose documents date from 1054 to 1068. Abū al-Dīn was almost certainly a member of the Banū Rabīʿa tribe, and he and his brother are identified as the protectors (khufarāʾ) of the village of Ṭabā — or perhaps Iṭsā, the reading is uncertain.104 The documents deal with the transfer of rights associated with the function of guardianship. The brothers shared a ‘protection’ (khafāra) feddan in the village of Ihrīt, and Abū al-Dīn also bought other two other ‘protection’ feddans of arable land in another village, possibly Ahnās.105 In three other transactions, Abū al-Dīn buys shares of the rights of protection over the monastery of Qalamūn.106 Most surprising here is the commodification of these rights, which are not only bought and sold but also, in another document, paid in lieu of a husband’s marriage gift.107 Other official protectors in eleventh-century Fayyum also have Muslim and tribal names. In 459/1067, Hassān ibn Janāḥ, one of the protectors of the village of Minyat Shushhā, bought half a foal from a Copt called Barmūda ibn for 8 dinars; doc. no. XX (456/1064) — Ṭuṭūn, 1 feddan for 4 dinar. 101  102  103  104  105 

Rāġib, Actes de vente d’esclaves et d’animaux.

Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, pp. 11, 183 ff.

Rāġib, Actes de vente d’esclaves et d’animaux, pp. 64ff, no. XXV.

Rāġib, ‘Archives d’un gardien du Qalamūn’, no. V (457/1065).

Rāġib, ‘Archives d’un gardien du Qalamūn’, nos V and no. VIII (date unknown).

Abū al-Dīn pays ¾ dinar and 1 dinar for rights of protection which are said to be worth ¼ dinar a year, and 4½ dinars for rights worth 1 dinar. See Rāġib, ‘Archives d’un gardien du Qalamūn’, no. II (446/1054); no. III (448/1056), no. IV (448/1056). 106 

107 

Rāġib, ‘Archives d’un gardien du Qalamūn’, no. III.

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

47

Zakariyā.108 Another document, dated 456/1064, involves the Coptic sons of the tax-farmer of Tuṭūn buy a feddan of arable land from ʿUqayl b. Ḥudayj al-ʿĀmirī, of the Banū ʿĀmir.109 The feddan was part of the rights of protection that belonged to ʿUqayl, although it was cultivated (bi-yadd) by Bandalūs Ibn Helya, a Copt. This document from Tuṭūn is a snap-shot of village elites in the middle of the eleventh century: it shows the sons of the local Coptic taxfarmer buying land, cultivated by a Coptic peasant, from the Muslim protector of the village, a member of the Banū ʿĀmir clan. Both the Banū ʿĀmir and the Banū Rabīʿa were clans of the Banū Kilāb, a tribal confederacy which already by the beginning of the eleventh century was a key local power broker, mentioned in the context of the rebellion of Abū Rakwa, a pseudo-Umayyad pretender who tried to overthrow the Fatimids in 1005–07. Abū Rakwa fled to the Fayyum after losing a major battle in Giza, pursued by the Fatimid general al-Faḍl ibn Ṣāliḥ, who then defeated him in a decisive and bloody battle at the head of the Lake. Still in the Fayyum, the Fatimid commander then moved to demand an assurance of security from the Banū Kilāb and other Arab tribes, presumably because much of the support for Abū Rakwa came from another tribal group, the Banū Qurra.110 Overall, the presence of Arab tribesmen, whether as power brokers or as linked to the institution of ‘protection rights’, was much more marked in the eleventh century than ever before.111

The Second Fatimid Century: Desertion and Decline Then, in 1068 or 1069, the wealth of sources for Fatimid Fayyum comes to a sudden halt. There are only a handful of published documents from the Fayyum that can be dated to the entire second Fatimid century, between 1069 and 1171.112 There are no longer any documents from Tuṭūn, Uqlūl, or the monastery of Qalamūn, the main sources of our evidence for the preceding century. This sharp drop suggests a sudden desertion of sites, a cut-off point at which some of the small archives that guide us through eleventh-century Fayyum have been abandoned. This is supported by archaeo­logy. Pottery evi108  109 

Rāġib, Actes de vente d’esclaves et d’animaux, pp. 74ff, no. XXVII.

Grohmann and Khoury, Papyro­logische Studien, pp. 68–73 (no. 20).

Al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, ed. by Aḥmad, ii, 62–64; al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, iv, 139, and the sources cited there. 110 

111  112 

Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, pp. 252–53.

See the hand-list of documents in Livingstone, ‘Fāṭimid Subjects’, pp. 67–72.

Chapter 2

48

dence shows that the old sites of Tuṭūn and Narmouthis were abandoned sometime in the eleventh century.113 The silence of the sources extends also to the papers of the Geniza. The Jewish merchants stop visiting Būṣīr Qūrīdīs around 1080 at the latest, and although the Geniza records are quite abundant until 1150, nearly all letters from the region of the Fayyum date before 1065.114 The desertion of villages in this period is, undoubtedly, the result of the severe political and economic crisis that overtook Fatimid Egypt from 1068 to 1074, the ‘Time of Hardship and Shortages’ (ayyām al-shidda wa’l-ghalāʾ) under the caliph al-Mustanṣir.115 The political instability began with clashes between Turkish troops and African troops on the streets of Cairo, but the fighting soon spread and engulfed all of the Egyptian provinces. Coptic sources report that the Fatimids lost control over much of the Delta to groups of the Berber Lawāta tribal confederacy. In Upper Egypt there were attacks on Christian communities and monasteries in al-Ashmūnayn, and probably elsewhere.116 Compounded with years of low Nile, the result was widespread famine and starvation of a magnitude that was unprecedented in Islamic Egypt.117 The memory of that famine was still alive nearly two centuries later. Al-Nābulusī reports that the village of Ṭalīt ‘used to be large and populated, but it was deserted — so it is said — because of the shortages during the days of al-Mustanṣir’.118 113  For Tuṭūn, see Björnesjö, ‘Toponymie de Tebtynis’; Gayraud, ‘Tebtynis’. For Narmouthis, see Rāġib, ‘Archives d’un gardien du Qalamūn’, no. III (448/1056), where the village is mentioned as Qūṣ Narmūda. In Bagnall and Rathbone, Egypt, from Alexander to the Copts, p. 146, the desertion of the site is dated to the tenth century.

An exception is a letter dated to 1084, where a sender from Busir (Būṣīr Qūrīdīs) says that he went in August to Christian flax-growers because their flax was of the best quality; they also preferred to sell in ‘ropes’ before scotching (Gil, ‘The Flax Trade’, pp. 88, 93; Gil, Be-malkhut Yishmaʿel, iv, 468). 114 

115 

Lev, State and Society, pp. 43–45.

Lev, State and Society, p.  188; Ellenblum, The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean, pp. 147–59. Atrocities against Christians are reported in Coptic sources ([Abū al-Makārim], The Churches and Monasteries of Egypt, trans. by Evetts and Butler, p. 252; HPEC, ii, pt 2, 203–04; pt 3, pp. 182–83, 314–15). 116 

Two earlier major famines, in 1025 and in 1054–56, have been used as evidence for a prolonged decline in agriculture under the Fatimids, either as a result of climatic changes or of mal-administration (Ellenblum, The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean; Shoshan, ‘Fatimid Grain Policy’; Bianquis, ‘Une crise frumentaire’). But there is no doubt that the crisis of 1068–74 went deeper and continued even when the Nile level was normal. 117 

118  It is possible that the desertion of the village started before 1068. There are six migrants from Ṭalīt mentioned in the Banū Bifām archive of the early eleventh century, leading Gaubert and Mouton to suggest that desertion started before 1068 (Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, p. 250).

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

49

Given the lack of evidence, the second Fatimid century is a black hole in the history of the Fayyum. When it re-emerges in Ayyubid sources from the late twelfth century and early thirteenth century, it is repeatedly described to be in a state of economic decline and partial habitation. The great geo­grapher al-Idrīsī, working in Sicily in the 1150s, merely reproduces Ibn Ḥawqal’s account of the Fayyum and adds no new information of his own.119 He does, however, report that the town of Dilāṣ, just outside the Fayyum and not far from al-Lāhūn, used to be large but has been reduced in size since ‘the Lawāta Berbers and other vile Arabs have taken control over the edges of the inhabited parts of this land and corrupted it’.120 By the end of the twelfth century, al-Makhzūmī reports that parts of the Fayyum are in ruins, ‘since its people deserted it and sand covered much of its lands’. He proceeds to cite the irrigation regulations of Abū Isḥāq, discussed above, but states that he omitted the names of many of the villages, since most are now abandoned.121 The coming of the Ayyubids certainly marked a change in the fortunes of the province. The Fayyum attracted the attention of Saladin immediately after he assumed control in Cairo in 567/1171, and one of his early actions was to grant the Fayyum as an iqṭāʿ to Turkish Ghuzz and Kurdish troops. Over the next fifteen years, Saladin re-allocated the revenues of the Fayyum repeatedly, experimenting with novel structures of administration. In 576/1180 he granted the province to his brother Būrī.122 Another report has the Fayyum allocated as the private domain (khāṣṣ) of the general Ṣārim al-Dīn Khuṭlubā, who was also appointed provincial governor.123 The following year, Saladin decided to divert the revenues of the Fayyum to finance the Ministry of the Navy. Local iqṭāʿholders — and it is unclear who were they, or how many — were given compensation through cuts to the iqṭāʿ grants of Arab tribes.124 Two years later, in 579/1183, the Fayyum and its villages were given as iqṭāʿ to Saladin’s nephew, the ruler of the Syrian city of Hama al-Muẓaffar Taqī al-Dīn ʿUmar.125

119  120  121  122  123  124 

Al-Idrīsī, Opus geo­graphicum, ed. by Cerulli, iii, 327.

Al-Idrīsī, Opus geo­graphicum, ed. by Cerulli, ii, 130–31. Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 669, 674.

[Abū al-Makārim], The Churches and Monasteries of Egypt, trans. by Evetts and Butler, p. 204. Al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, i, 72; al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, iii, 400. Al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, i, 73.

Al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, i, 82; al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, iv, 458; Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. by ʿAbbās, iii, 456. The iqṭāʿ also included the environs of al-Qāyāt and Būsh near the entrance to the depression. 125 

Chapter 2

50

The Ayyubids also drew the Fayyum, for the first time in its history, into the wider network of Islamic scholarship and charity. Al-Muẓaffar ʿUmar built the first two madrasas in Madinat al-Fayyum, one Mālikī and one Shāfiʿī, before he was relieved of the Fayyum in 582/1186.126 Already in 566/1170–71, shortly after his arrival in Egypt, Saladin endowed the village of al-Ḥanbūshiyya in the Fayyum to support a Mālikī madrasa in Cairo.127 Some taxes in kind from the Fayyum were also used to support Saladin’s new hospital in the capital.128 Ayyubid attention to the province, however, only highlighted the extent of the contraction of the Fayyum’s economy. Tax revenues during the 1170s and 1180s, reported in Ayyubid administrative sources, are much smaller than they had been under the early Fatimids. When Saladin came to power, the Fayyum’s total revenues are said to be 133,274 dinars. Another report puts its revenues at 100,046 dinars in 576/1180.129 Saladin then abolished a levy on flax coming from the Fayyum and other areas of Upper Egypt; this levy on flax was worth only 4,160 dinars a year.130 In his account of the budget of the Ayyubid state for 585/1189–90, al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil reports that the Fayyum had total revenue of 152,634 or 152,703 dinars.131 These figures, ranging between 100,000 and 150,000 dinars, represent the actual fiscal revenues from the province. In 582/1186, the value of the entire province was given as 300,000 dinars — surely a nominal fiscal value calculated for the purpose of iqṭāʿ allocation.132 All these figures fall far short — in fact, less than half — of the 620,000 dinars mentioned as the fiscal value of the Fayyum two centuries earlier, just before the Fatimid takeover of Egypt. In Ayyubid sources of the early thirteenth century, the Fayyum appears as a place on the edge of civilization, a ghost province. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī, who left a very vivid account of economic life in Ayyubid Egypt c. 1200, makes no mention of crops special to the Fayyum, but he does mention the dangers of the roads from Fayyum to Alexandria, including the possibility of being eaten by one’s guides during a famine.133 It is telling that the Fayyum 126  127  128  129  130  131  132  133 

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, iv, 458; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, i, 91.

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, iv, 455.

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, ii, 350 (citing al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil).

[Abū al-Makārim], The Churches and Monasteries of Egypt, trans. by Evetts and Butler, p. 204. Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 279.

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 234, 675. Al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, i, 91.

Al-Baghdādī, The Eastern Key, ed. and trans. by Zand, Videan, and Videan, pp. 239, 241, 263.

The Fayyum, from the Ptolemies to the Ayyubids

51

has become a site for hunting. In 1199, Saladin’s son al-Malik al-ʿAzīz ʿUthmān died after falling from his horse during a hunting journey in the Fayyum.134 The worst indictments come from the pens of two well-known Ayyubid authors. Al-Harawī (d. 1215), the author of a famous pilgrimage manual, states that out of the legendary 360 villages built by Joseph in the Fayyum, ‘it was mentioned to me that only 63 still remain’.135 Yāqūt, who completed his geo­ graphical dictionary in 1228, reports that the garden-like Fayyum of Joseph’s time is no longer: ‘Today, I am told, it is no more than a tenth of what it was.’136

134  He was chasing a dhiʾb, a wolf or a jackal (Ibn al-Athīr, Al-Kāmil, ed. by Tornberg, xii, 58; a shorter version in Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. by ʿAbbās, iii, 251). See also the note by Ibn al-Bayṭār (d. 1248) on the mythical sqnqwr, a crocodile-like creature, which in his own time ‘is found only in the Fayyum’ (Ibn al-Baytạr̄ , al-Jāmiʿ, iii, 21, last line of the page). 135  136 

Al-Harawī, A Lonely Wayfarer’s, trans. by Meri, p. 108. Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-Buldān, ed. by Wüstenfeld, ix, 936.

Chapter 3

T

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

he Fayyum visited by al-Nābulusī in 1245 was smaller than it had been in the first Fatimid century, and much smaller still than the Fayyum of Greco-Roman times. Judging by the names of inhabited villages, the cultivated area was circa 750 sq. km, just more than half the estimated 1200–1500 sq. km of the Ptolemaic period. Cultivation was mainly limited to the central areas of the depression, between Wadi Nezla on the west and the Bats trench on the east. Around forty abandoned villages, scattered along the edges of the desert, were a testimony to the lost glory of the past. A-Nābulusī also describes chronic water shortages, caused by a decrease in the flow in the Baḥr Yūsuf, a deterioration of the main dam at al-Lāhūn, and the blocking of the two encircling canals running along the foot of the desert plateau. This grim picture needs to be mitigated by the development that had been taking place in the Fayyum since the beginning of the Ayyubid period. First, by the time al-Nābulusī visited the Fayyum in 1245, shoots of regeneration were appearing, and about ten deserted villages were now re-occupied. Al-Nābulusī himself believed that land reclamation proceeded at such a pace as to compensate earlier decline caused by the great Fatimid crisis of 1068–74. Second, al-Nābulusī’s visit came on the back of persistent Ayyubid interest and investment in the Fayyum, including an expensive and overtly ambitious thrust by an Ayyubid official, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿUthmān, who held the entire province as iqṭāʿ in the 1220s. Thus, al-Nābulusī’s survey itself should be seen in the context of Ayyubid long-term strategy of increasing the productivity of the province. The following chapter will assess the extent of the cultivated area at the time of al-Nābulusī’s visit, the limitations of water supply, and the size of the province’s population. The first section defines the boundaries of the cultivated area, based on the names of the inhabited villages and their presentday locations, juxtaposed with al-Nābulusī’s account of the villages deserted along the edges of the province. This section allows us to assess the relative decline in the cultivated area compared with the Greco-Roman and the earlier

54

Chapter 3

Islamic periods. The second section will assess the water shortages reported by al-Nābulusī, their causes, and the Ayyubid attempts to rectify them. A concluding section will use several quantitative methodo­logies to estimate the rural population of the Fayyum at the time of al-Nābulusī’s visit, mainly relying on indicators gleaned from the fiscal data. These different calculation methods arrive at a range of 70,000–120,000 inhabitants, a range which, even at its lower end, suggests a high population density.

Cultivated Area At the time of al-Nābulusī’s visit, the richest and most populous villages of the province were located in the area north of Madinat al-Fayyum, between the city and the lake. Most of the water that entered the province flowed towards Madinat al-Fayyum in what was known as the Great Canal (al-baḥr al-aʿẓam), and from there several sub-canals branched off, nearly all radiating along the northward slope of the depression towards Lake Qarun, save for a limited flow in the southern Tanabṭawayh Canal that irrigated the Tuṭūn basin in the south-west. This gravity-based, radial canal system was effectively bounded by two deep ridges that cut through the depression, Wadi Nezla on the west and the Bats trench on the east. Both ridges terminated in the lake and were used as outlets for excess waters at times of high Nile. The two long encircling canals of the Greco-Roman period, which allowed cultivation on the edges of the desert, were mostly silted. As a result, the Fayyum visited by al-Nābulusī was much smaller than in the Greco-Roman period, and no village was too far away. In the east, the furthest villages were Shāna, half a day’s ride east from Madinat al-Fayyum, and al-Rubiyyāt, five hours ride to the north-east. At the westernmost edges was the large village of Minyat Aqnā, whose distance from the town is not mentioned, but it lay to the west of Ibshāyat al-Rummān, modern Ibshaway, itself four hours ride from the city. In the extreme south, the small village of Ṭalīt, at the end of the Tanabṭawayh Canal, was at a distance of half a day’s ride. All other villages in the depression were within four hours’ ride from Madinat alFayyum, meaning that they were within a radius of 20 km. Nearly all the villages that can be identified with certainty — on the basis of modern place-names — lie in the central areas of the depression, bounded by Wadi Nezla in the west and the Bats trench in the east. The villages of the north, from al-Rubiyyāt in the north-east to Abū Ksā and Ibshayāt al-Rummān in the north-west, are all located 6–8 km south of the shores of Lake Qarun at its present level of -45 m below sea level, but were closer to the lake at its higher level

55

Map 2. Cultivated areas and major villages

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

Chapter 3

56

at the time, which was probably around -30 m.1 In the south, most of the cultivated area was bounded by a line connecting Babīj Andīr (modern Abū Jandīr) in the west, Iṭsā, Difidnū, and Qalhāna in the east. These central areas not only included the vast majority of the settlements of the Fayyum, but also accounted for over 80 per cent of the province’s total land-tax in grains. Together, these villages form a polygon measuring about 600 km2 (see Map 2).2 Beyond these central regions, the most important outlying areas of cultivation were three villages on coastal lands just to the south of the lake — Minyat Aqnā, al-Ṭārima, and Minyat al-Baṭs. These three villages together accounted for about 13 per cent of the provincial taxes in grains. In these northern areas, the amount of land cultivated was subject to annual fluctuations, as coastal lands were submerged in years of high Nile. But in years of lower floods, lands that were normally covered by the lake were exposed and sown, leading to an increase in tax revenues. During the year of al-Nābulusī’s visit the overall amount of land cultivated by the three coastal villages was substantial, perhaps amounting to additional 115 km2 — an estimate based on the relative contribution of these villages to the provincial land-tax, compared to that of the central areas of about 600 km2. The exact location of these three villages is somewhat speculative, as none of the names survives today, probably because of the subsequent decrease in the level of the lake. In the east, Minyat al-Baṭs is most probably modern Ṭāmiya, in the north-eastern corner of the Fayyum.3 The identification of Minyat Aqnā at the extreme west is both more difficult and of considerable impact on the question of the extent of the cultivated area, as the village was not only the largest of the three coastal villages but also the largest village in the Fayyum as a whole, providing nearly 10 per cent of the entire provincial grain revenues. Al-Nābulusī states Minyat Aqnā lay to the west of Ibshāyat al-Rummān (modern Ibshaway) and to the north of al-Ḥanbūshiyya (modern Shafei, ‘Fayoum Irrigation’, pp. 309, 320. In recent years, several scientific studies based on pollen records, paleolimno­logy, and sedimento­logical analysis have confirmed this as a reasonable estimate for the lake level during the thirteenth century. See Mehringer, Petersen, and Hassan, ‘A Pollen Record’, p. 241; Keatings and others, ‘Ostracods and the Holocene Palaeolimno­logy of Lake Qarun’, p. 159; Baioumy, Kayanne, and Tada, ‘Reconstruction of LakeLevel and Climate Changes’, pp. 325–26. 1 

See also the map in Mikhail, ‘An Irrigated Empire’, p. 575, adapted from Wessely,‘Topo­ graphie des Faijûm’, and Boak, ‘Irrigation and Population in Faiyum’, p. 355. 2 

In this I have followed earlier scholars (Halm, Ägypten nach den Mamlukischen Lehensregistern, pp. 265–66; Salmon, ‘Répertoire géo­graphique’, p. 52). But al-Nābulusī states it was near Bamawayh and Tirsā, which suggests a more central location. 3 

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

57

Nezla). He also says it was on the southern shores of the lake, straight across from Dime (Soknopaiou Nesos) on the northern banks, and was the main fishing site on the lake, with some thirty fishing boats.4 It seems therefore likely that Minyat Aqnā was located on the coast of the lake at its higher level of -30 m, to the south of the current shoreline, and near Wadi Nezla’s mouth, which would have provided a natural mooring point. There were two additional narrow strips of cultivated land in the south and in the east of the Fayyum. In the south, the villages of Qambashā, al-Mahīmsī, Buljusūq, Tuṭūn, and Ṭalīt were all irrigated by the Tanabṭawayh Canal. Together they accounted for 5 per cent of the provincial total land-tax, so probably cultivated between them about 50 km2. To the east, the fields of villages inside the narrow Lahun Gap, such as Dimashqīn al-Baṣal, and villages just outside the depression, such as al-Ḥammām, Sidmant and al-Lāhūn, were bounded by the desert hills that separate the gap from the main Nile Valley. Their lands would have covered no more than about 30 km2. Altogether, the total area under cultivation in Ayyubid Fayyum amounted to about 750 km2, and almost certainly not more than 800 km2, little over half the size of GrecoRoman Fayyum at its peak. Al-Nābulusī is well aware of the contraction of cultivation and lists names of abandoned villages along the two great desert canals encircling the Fayyum, the southern Tanabṭawayh and the eastern Waradān. These were the two ancient canals which branched out from the Lahun Gap along the edges of the Fayyum depression, dug by Ptolemaic engineers as part of the original land reclamation. Originally, the Tanabṭawayh flowed southwards along the semicircle of the Fayyum, then turned towards the west and then north. It terminated in the lake near Qaṣr Qārūn. The Waradān Canal branched out towards the north, along the other semicircle of the Fayyum. According to al-Nābulusī, the Waradān had been at such considerable elevation above the level of fields, so that it even fed villages to the north of the lake, such as Dime. While Greco-Roman sites north of the lake are well-attested and visible to this day, al-Nābulusī’s claim that they were irrigated by the eastern Waradān Canal has never been confirmed by excavations. Shafei, ‘Fayoum Irrigation’, p. 309, claims that he identified Minyat Aqnā by the remains of the public bath house mentioned by al-Nābulusī. He also notes that the nearby canal is called to this day Baḥr al-Ḥammām (canal of the bath house). However, the location he assigned to Minyat Aqnā appears too far to the west from the central areas of cultivation, and is not in line with our conclusion that the Minyat Aqnā Canal followed the route of the modern Wadi Nezla. We therefore located Minyat Aqnā to the east of the location provided by Shafei, close to the mouth of the Wadi Nezla, near the village of ʿIzbat al-ʿAwnī (‫)عزبة العوني‬. 4 

Chapter 3

58

By the time al-Nābulusī arrived in the Fayyum, the twin desert canals were mostly blocked with sand, and the majority of the villages along their banks abandoned. Along the Tanabṭawayh Canal, al-Nābulusī lists twenty-one abandoned villages, listed in geo­graphical sequence from the head of the canal near the Lahun Gap towards its end in the north-west tip of Lake Qarun.5 The list includes Aqnā and Tanhamā, or Tanhamat, which, as we have seen, are mentioned in literary sources as the westernmost points of the Fayyum in the Abbasid period. The area between Tanhamat and Aqnā was the site of decisive battles between Abbasid forces and tribal rebels allied with the Fatimids, as late as 919. Al-Idrīsī, writing in the twelfth century but relying on earlier sources, still mentions Tanhamat as the endpoint of the Fayyum Canal.6 We can therefore conclude that the desertion of the sites at the western end of the Tanabṭawayh occurred after the Abbasid period, most probably during the crisis of 1068–74, and represented a significant contraction of the cultivated area in the west of the province. In the south of the province, however, a segment of the Tanabṭawayh Canal remained unblocked, and allowed recent repopulation of sites. Al-Nābulusī attests that the Tanabṭawayh fed the villages of Qambashā and al-Mahīmsī, as well as the more southerly villages of Buljusūq, Tuṭūn, and Ṭalīt. The last three villages were abandoned in the Fatimid period but now re-established at new lower sites, away from the mountain. Ṭalīt, which al-Nābulusī explicitly says had been deserted at the time of al-Mustanṣir, was then re-established when the amir Fakhr al-Dīn ʿUthmān invested in digging a new canal to serve the area in the 1220s. The new village was on lower grounds compared to the previous site, which was located higher up on the mountain. Similarly, al-Nābulusī also adds that the village of Tuṭūn, which as we have seen is very well attested in the first Fatimid century, was replaced by a smaller settlement to its north. In the same area of the Tuṭūn basin, Buljusūq on the mountain was replaced by Buljusūq al-Qibliyya (the Southern), and an abandoned site called Iṭfīḥ Shallā was succeeded by a hamlet of the same name, near Tuṭūn, supporting a recently established Sufi community. Further to the west along the Tanabṭawayh, two other abandoned villages called Umm al-Sibāʿ and Ḥaddāda were now replaced by villages of the same name, now fed by the Dilya Canal.

The villages are: Tanabṭawayh, Ṭabā, Shallā, Iṭfīḥ, Ihrīt al-Munqalaba, Ḥaddāda, Juzāza (also called Zujāja), Sanhūris, Burjtūt, Sudū, Sidrā, Badrīs, Sanhāba, Aqnā, Tanhamā, Kharāb Qāsim, Banī Barī, Tanhamat al-Sidr, Qaṣr Qārūn, Zarzūra, and al-Rayyān. 5 

6 

Al-Idrīsī, Opus Geo­graphicum, ed. by Cerulli, p. 130.

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

59

While the southern segment of the Tanabṭawayh was revived, al-Nābulusī has little to say about the Gharq reservoir in the south-west, well attested in other periods.7 The purpose of this reservoir, created by a dike that can be traced back to the Ptolemies, was to store excess water during the Nile floods. In pre-Islamic times it had been an important source of water during the drier seasons. Later on, Ottoman sources refer to it as a massive body of water.8 In al-Nābulusī’s time, however, only three minor villages in western Fayyum — Muqrān, Diqlawa, and Masjid ʿĀʾisha — were irrigated by water from the Gharq reservoir, via two different outlets (one for Muqrān, and another for Diqlawa and Masjid ʿĀʾisha).9 The three villages irrigated from the reservoir were marginal to the Fayyum economy; their combined tax revenue amounts to less than 1 per cent of the province’s total. It seems, therefore, that the reservoir was not fully functional, a sign of low level water supply.10 Al-Nābulusī also provides a list of abandoned villages on the eastern Waradān canal. This list contains ten villages, all of which, according to archaeo­logical evidence, were already deserted in Late Antiquity. None of these villages have been re-established in the Ayyubid period and the canal appears to be entirely blocked.11 The sequence of the list of deserted villages along the Waradān proceeds from al-Lawāsī, in the far eastern edge of the Fayyum, towards the Canal’s terminus point on the northern shores of the lake. It ends with some well-known Greco-Roman sites to the north-east of the lake: Shīm (Oshim, Karanis), Umm al-Athl (Bakchias), Damya (Dime or Soknopaiou Nesos), and Dār al-Ḍarb, which are listed in somewhat confused order.12 While al-Nābulusī appears to suggest that all these sites were deserted recently, abandoned villages along the easternmost canal are already men7 

Rathbone, ‘Mapping the South-West Fayyum’.

For the Ottoman period, see Mikhail, ‘An Irrigated Empire’. On the al-Gharq reservoir, see also Garbrecht, ‘Historical Water Storage’. 8 

Unlike the allocation of water rights from canals, which was calculated by the width of the opening in the divisor controlling a feeder canal, water rights from the al-Gharq reservoir were calculated by both width and height of the outlet. 9 

Garbrecht concludes that an important part of the dam (which survives today) must have been built after al-Nābulusī’s visit (Garbercht, ‘Historical Water Storage’, p. 65). 10 

The sequence of the ten abandoned villages is: al-Lawāsī, Umm al-Maʿāṣir, Umm al-Abrāj, Dumaydīm, Samasṭūs, Shīm (Oshim, Karanis), Umm al-Athl (Bakchias), Sūnīs, Damya (Dime or Soknopaiou Nesos), Dār al-Ḍarb. The latter village was identified by Shafei as Qasr al-Ṣāgha, on philo­logical grounds (Shafei, ‘Fayoum Irrigation’, p. 297). 11 

See the Trismegistos project map of Greco-Roman Fayyum online at [accessed 3 March 2018]. 12 

Chapter 3

60

tioned by Abū Iṣḥāq, writing in the eleventh century.13 In fact, there is no literary or material evidence for occupation of any of these sites in the Islamic period, and it is quite certain that they were all abandoned by the fourth century ad. Nonetheless, it is still remarkable that the memory of these villages was sufficiently alive for al-Nābulusī to record them in nearly correct sequence a millennium after their desertion. Al-Nābulusī reports that there were no inhabited villages north of the lake, but limited cultivation continued by means of a waterwheel which raised water from the lake, whose waters at the time were not yet saline. He was well aware that large settlements had existed north of the lake in the past, although he offers conflicting explanations as to how these villages were supplied with water. At one point in the treatise he claims that villages north of the lake used to be fed by the eastern Waradān Canal, which branched off from the Lahun Gap at such elevation as to circumvent the lake and continue above its northern coasts until Dime. But in another section, as part of his account of Lake Qarun, he states that water from the central areas of the depression were transported over an aqueduct (ʿabbāra li’l-māʾ) that stretched over the lake, from the southern shores towards settlements in the north. According to al-Nābulusī, this aqueduct used to carry water and people from the village of Minyat Aqnā, on the southern coast of the lake, towards the villages on the northern shores, at the foot of the mountain. Over time, however, the arches of the aqueduct were damaged, and it fell out of use. This version of the history of the villages north of lake seems rather fanciful, as there is no material or documentary evidence of such an aqueduct — surely massively expensive structure — spanning the lake. All in all, al-Nābulusī lists more than forty abandoned settlements along the edges of the Fayyum. The loss of significant number of sites confirms the accounts of other sources from the Ayyubid era, such as al-Makhzūmī, Yāqūt, and al-Harawī, who all report a sharp decline in the number of villages in the Fayyum. This loss of villages was certainly dramatic and, compared to the Greco-Roman peak, would have meant a loss of a quarter or even a third of inhabited sites. The abandonment of sites occurred in several stages, and a significant contraction of the cultivated area must have occurred during the late Fatimid period. Of the twenty-one listed on the Tanabṭawayh Canal, at least five — Buljusūq, Tuṭūn (Tebtynis) Ṭalīt, Aqnā, and Tanhamat — are attested in the Abbasid and the first Fatimid century, and so were abandoned relatively recently, probably during the crisis of 1068–74. 13 

Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 671. Abū Iṣḥāq calles this canal al-Awāsī.

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

61

It is also clear that the decades prior to al-Nābulusī’s visit saw some substantial recovery. For one, at least ten villages were repopulated on new sites, nearly all located on lower grounds, away from the largely defunct encircling canals that were cut at higer elevation. Moreover, al-Nābulusī ends his gloomy discussion of the contraction of cultivation and the water shortages with a surprising change of tone. Yes, he admits that it is no longer possible to reinstate the villages along the Tanabṭawayh and the Waradān Canals, because the resources required for re-excavating the long desert canals are enormous: but he then notes that many new villages have been recently established towards the centre of the Fayyum, and the lands of some of the abandoned villages are now sown by peasants from nearby settlements. Overall, he says, ‘it is possible that the majority of the current villages in the centre of Fayyum are newly built after the retreat of the Fayyum’s water from them, so they make up for all the deserted and derelict villages which we have mentioned’.14 Thus, according to this section of al-Nābulusī’s narrative, a massive expansion of settlement occurred at the central-northern areas of the Fayyum, in areas from which the lake has receded. Al-Nābulusī seems to be saying that as the lake receded and fell to lower levels, it exposed land that became available for cultivation. This newly reclaimed land, he estimates, compensated for all the villages abandoned at the edge of the province. Here he is saying that, not only have some abandoned sites in the south and south-west been resettled, but also that retreating lake levels allowed a shift from the periphery of the depression to lands in the central and northern areas. Therefore, he argues, the level of cultivation has already bounced back to what it had been, with his point of reference being the Fatimid period, not the Greco-Roman one. He may well be overstretching his argument, but the impression of recent regeneration is then reinforced by his account of Ayyubid investment in the Fayyum irrigation system, the subject of our next section.

Water Supply The water supply of the Fayyum — the lifeline of its agricultural production — depended on the flow of the Baḥr Yūsuf canal, which branched off from the Nile some 300 km to the south, and, second, on the functioning of the dam at al-Lāhūn, which was necessary for regulation of the Nile flood levels. The massive dam at al-Lāhūn was built by Ptolemaic engineers as to divert the water of the Baḥr Yūsuf into the Fayyum, while also allowing high Nile floods to escape 14 

VF, p. 47.

Chapter 3

62

back to the Nile to prevent flooding.15 In order to prevent excess water flowing into the Fayyum, the original dam had weirs (qanāṭir) that, when opened, allowed water to go through them back to the Nile rather than over the dam. It may have had also culverts at the bottom of the dam which were opened to allow excess water to escape.16 By the time of al-Nābulusī’s visit, however, the structure operated as a simple spillway dam that diverted water to the Fayyum but allowed excess water to go over it at times of high Nile. This was the case already at the time of the irrigation survey of Abū Iṣḥāq in the early eleventh century. Abū Iṣḥāq reports that in the summer, when the level of the water at the Baḥr Yūsuf was high, excess water were directed through two gaps in the crest of the dam. One large gap, in the southern section, was 120 cubits wide, and the other was 20 cubits wide. The two banks of the larger gap sloped gently towards each other until they reached a depth of four cubits, which allowed boats to pass through the gap during the Nile flood season. This meant that during the summer and autumn months, sailing from the Fayyum back to the Nile was possible, crucial for the transport of the grain taxes of the province. But when the level of the water at the Baḥr Yūsuf dropped, these two gaps had to be closed in order to ensure that all water flowing through the Baḥr Yūsuf were diverted to the Fayyum, rather than escaping back to the Nile. The blocking of the gaps in the dam, coinciding with the receding of the Nile levels, was the major event in the annual irrigation cycle of the province, and, as we have seen, was even known to the Andalusian author al-Bakrī writing in the eleventh century. The water diverted into the Fayyum was then distributed through a network of irrigation canals controlled by systems of ancient, pre-Islamic sluice gates (bāb), ‘dating from the time of Joseph’, with a width of two to three cubits.17 These are not discussed by al-Nābulusī, but are described in detail by Abū Iṣḥāq in the eleventh century. The sluice gates were subject to a strict schedule of opening and closure and were therefore known as al-muṭāṭiyya (literally, ‘alternating’). According to this schedule, all the alternating canals were simultaneously closed and opened for periods of twenty days between November and April, For further exploration of the irrigation system, see Rapoport and Shahar, ‘Irrigation in Medi­eval Islamic Fayyum’. 15 

16 

Al-Masʿūdī, Murūj, ed. by Pellat, ii, 72, no. 784; ii, 80, nos 797–98.

The Tanabṭawayh Canal, branching off towards the south of the Fayyum, was said to be controlled by three sluice gates, each with a width of two cubits. The Dilya (or Delahe) Canal was controlled by two sluice gates, with a capacity of 2.25 cubits each. The next three major canals, called Tlālh, Bamūh (Bamawayh) and Tndh, were controlled by pairs of sluice gates of 2.33, 2.5, and 2.25 cubits (al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 671–74). 17 

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

63

before the driest season.18 The term is already mentioned by Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam19 and al-Masʿūdī, who explains that these alternating canals were the low-lying canals (al-munkhafaḍ), as opposed to upper-level canals (murtafaʿ).20 The closure of the ‘alternating’ low-lying canals was surely intended to prevent excessive flow of water through canals with steep gradients, in order to divert some of it to ‘high-level’ canals with moderate gradients crossing higher grounds.21 Much of al-Nābulusī’s narrative concerns decreasing water supply to the Fayyum caused by a dwindling of the water level in the Baḥr Yūsuf, the canal that branched off from the Nile about 300 km south of the Fayyum. Al-Nābulusī states that water flowed into the Baḥr Yūsuf only four months a year, and the head was dry during the remaining eight months, presumably from November to June. In the past, he claims, the canal had flowing water for eight months a year and was dry for only four months. He also explains that the Baḥr Yūsuf was not entirely deprived of water even when the head of the canal was dry, as some underground seepage (nabʿ) found in the bed of the Baḥr Yūsuf — a result of the fact that the bed of the canal was lower than the bed of Nile — continued all year long. However, without a constant flow from the main river, the water level in the Baḥr Yūsuf was insufficient for the needs of the Fayyum during much of the year. Moreover, waterwheels on the banks of the Baḥr Yūsuf in the upstream provinces of al-Ashmūnayn and al-Bahnasā drew off water for irrigation, further reducing the amounts that eventually reached the Fayyum. Al-Nābulusī points out that it is possible to increase the water supply of the Fayyum by closing off these upstream waterwheels when the Nile recedes.22 The insufficient flow in the Baḥr Yūsuf was exacerbated by problems at the dam itself, where silting caused the shoaling of the canal in front of the dam. Al-Nābulusī attributes the silting of the canal to the blocking of the ancient The schedule of these canals was as follows: they were closed from 10 Hatūr (20 November) until the end of that month (9 December); then open from the beginning of Kihāk (10 December) for twenty days; then closed for the ten remaining days of Kihāk, until Epiphany (January 6), and opened on Epiphany, until the end of Ṭūbah (7 February); then they were closed from the beginning of Amshīr (8 February) for twenty days; then they were opened for the ten remaining days of Amshīr (28 February), until the 20 Baramhat (29 March); then they were closed for thirty days, until they were opened ten days before the end of Barmūda (28 April). Presumably the canals were then left open until the cycle began again in November. 18 

19  Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Futūḥ Miṣr wa’l-Maghrib, p. 14; repeated in al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 665. 20  21  22 

Al-Masʿūdī, Murūj, ii, 72 (no. 784).

Rapoport and Shahar, ‘Irrigation in Medi­eval Islamic Fayyum’. VF, p. 41.

Chapter 3

64

culverts, at the bottom of the dam, which in the past used to allow silt to pass through them and escape to the Nile. Since the culverts were now blocked, soil and clay had accumulated in front of the dam, raising the water level. As a result, the height of the crest of the dam above the bed of the canal was reduced from 15 cubits to less than 7 cubits. This meant that water escaped back to the Nile even when the level of water in the Baḥr Yūsuf was low.23 A couple of decades before al-Nābulusī’s visit, the water shortages of the Fayyum were tackled head on by the energetic Fakhr al-Dīn ʿUthmān, who had previously served as ustādār (majordomo) to the sultan al-Malik al-Kāmil. Fakhr al-Dīn took over the province in 620/1223–24, following the death of the previous iqṭāʿ-holder, Mufaḍḍal Quṭb al-Dīn, brother to Sultan al-Kāmil.24 Fakhr al-Dīn was allocated the entire province as an unconditional (darbastā) iqṭāʿ, with rights over the grain revenues (ḥawāṣil), sugar-cane, and cattle of the Fayyum. In return, Fakhr al-Dīn committed to providing two hundred horsemen, unspecified cash payments, and grain to the royal granaries.25 The chronicler al-Makīn ibn al-ʿAmīd (d. 672/1273), to whom we owe this information, also extols the generosity of Fakhr al-Dīn, who is said to have built madrasas and mosques, as well as schools and endowments for orphans.26 Al-Maqrīzī reports that Fakhr al-Dīn built a special dove-cote in Cairo, known as Burj al-Fayyum, to ensure continuous communication with his Fayyum holding by carrier pigeons; it was probably one of these pigeons that was used by al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ to summon al-Nābulusī to the Fayyum.27 Fakhr al-Dīn had both the incentive and the resources to embark on an ambitious project of improving the water supply to the province, both at the source of the Baḥr Yūsuf and at the al-Lāhūn dam. The fact that Fakhr al-Dīn held the province in its entirety, as an independent iqṭāʿ-holder-cum-governor, was unusual in a period where the Ayyubids tended towards fragmentation of iqṭāʿ grants. By the time of al-Nābulusī’s visit twenty years later, the province was divided up to a dozens of iqṭāʿ units, each usually corresponding to one village. But in the 1220s the Fayyum was still one integral and unified iqṭāʿ unit, and Fakhr al-Dīn made several attempts, over a prolonged period of time, to increase the water supply for the province as a whole.

23  24  25  26  27 

VF, p. 45.

Al-Makīn b. al-ʿAmīd, ‘Chronique’, ed. by Cahen, pp. 133–34; Sato, State and Rural Society, p. 81. Al-Makīn b. Al-ʿAmīd, ‘Chronique’, ed. by Cahen, pp. 133–34; Sato, State and Rural Society, p. 81.

Al-Makīn b. Al-ʿAmīd, ‘Chronique’, ed. by Cahen, pp. 133–34; Sato, State and Rural Society, p. 81. Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, iii, 747.

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

65

His first attempt to deal with the water shortage was to clean up the Baḥr Yūsuf. At his orders the banks of the canal were cleared of reeds, shrubs, and trees, with the objective, it seems, of preventing loss of water to the vegetation. This, according to al-Nābulusī, ‘had no effect whatsoever, except for having no trees [on the banks], and the greenery of the canal was lost’.28 Fakhr al-Dīn’s second attempt to improve the water supply was a much more ambitious and expensive project, consisting of an alteration to the dam at al-Lāhūn. Since silting in front of the embankment made the canal shallower and caused more water to escape over the dam and back to the Nile, Fakhr al-Dīn decided to raise the height of the entire length of the dam by a cubit and a half (about 1 metre). The raising of the level of the dam was intended to divert more water to the Fayyum and prevent water escaping over the dam back into the Nile. We are not told how this major construction work was executed, but it seems to have been financed out of Fakhr al-Dīn’s coffers. The raising of the dam, however, had the unintended effect of again increasing sedimentation in front of the dam. Al-Nābulusī claims that the original height of the dam, as planned by ‘ancient’ pre-Islamic engineers, was precisely calculated to prevent this kind of silting. When the Nile was high and the current was sufficiently strong, silt was raised over the crest of the dam and escaped back to the Nile (as noted above, al-Nābulusī also says elsewhere that culverts at the bottom of the dam used to fulfil a similar purpose). But once the crest of the dam was raised by orders of Fakhr al-Dīn, the silt carried by the Baḥr Yūsuf could not escape to the Nile, and therefore again accumulated in front of the dam. The only way to divert sufficient water into the Fayyum was for peasants from all over the province to gather prior to the Nile flood season and remove the shoal with shovels: The soil and the sand were held back until they formed mounds within the al-Manhā Canal [Baḥr Yūsuf], and a huge shoal (dikka) of soil was formed in the place from which the water enters the Fayyum, in front of its opening. This shoal is visible every year in the Coptic month of Bashans [or Pashons, 9 May–7 June], and water gets absorbed in it. Men from all the villages of the Fayyum gather there and cut it with shovels, carrying it off with large baskets. Then, the water bypasses the shoal from both sides, entering the canal that flows into the Fayyum and its villages through two narrow mouths, one seven cubits wide and the other five cubits wide. Both have a depth of no more than two cubits.29

28  29 

VF, p. 45. VF, p. 45.

66

Chapter 3

After this failed attempt to improve the efficiency of the dam at al-Lāhūn, the relentless Fakhr al-Dīn embarked on even more ambitious endeavour, this time cutting a new opening on the western bank of the Nile itself, at the head of the Baḥr Yūsuf. At the advice of the villagers of al-Lāhūn, who were considered experts on the irrigation system, he travelled with tools and beasts of burden to the head of the Baḥr Yūsuf near Dairut, some 300 km south of the Fayyum. There he ordered a new opening to be cut about 350 m north of the old opening. But, again, this effort had unexpected negative effects. Some of the water that used to enter through the old opening now escaped back into the Nile through the new opening, thereby actually reducing the flow in the Baḥr Yūsuf. Eventually, the new opening was naturally reblocked with sand and clay, within two years. Fakhr al-Dīn then tried an alternative method of tackling the drying-up at the head of the Baḥr Yūsuf. This time he attempted creating an artificial island in the Nile itself, close to the head of the Baḥr Yūsuf, hoping that the artificial island would divert more water into the canal. At the advice of local experts — possibly the same experts that he brought with him from the Fayyum — he sank several large boats in the Nile, near the head of the Baḥr Yūsuf, allowing silt to accumulate around them and form an obstacle in the water course. But, because the way the boats were positioned, the water was not diverted towards the head of the canal but rather around the artificial island and away from the Baḥr Yūsuf. According to al-Nābulusī, this final spectacular failure caused a further decrease in the amount of water available to the Fayyum, and it is only after the creation of this artificial island that the head of the Baḥr Yūsuf began to dry up for eight months each year. Overall, the picture that emerges is one of ambitious and expensive attempts to solve the water shortages in the Fayyum. While al-Nābulusī does blame negligence and lack of investment on the part of the government, noting that there are no central records of money spent on maintaining the irrigation system of the Fayyum for over a century, Fakhr al-Dīn ʿUthmān’s persistence demonstrates that funds for maintaining the irrigation system actually came from the local iqṭāʿ-holder and not from Cairo. If the Fayyum suffered a water shortage, it was not due simply to a lack of investment or commitment by the military elite. Nonetheless, al-Nābulusī’s account suggests that the challenges facing Fakhr al-Dīn were related to the decentralized and localized nature of the irrigation system. First, Fakhr al-Dīn lacked cadres of professional engineers who would be able to provide technical advice on the grand projects he was undertaking. According to al-Nābulusī, he relied on the local knowledge of the peasantry, men from the village of al-Lāhūn who had no formal training but

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

67

had knowledge of the operation of the dam located next to their village. Their knowledge, mocked by al-Nābulusī, was probably appropriate to the upkeep of the dam, but it is quite likely that they did not have the expertise necessary for the major engineering projects undertaken by Fakhr al-Dīn. Second, as noted above, al-Nābulusī believed that the water shortages in the Fayyum were partially caused by the siphoning off of water from the Baḥr Yūsuf by villages in the upstream provinces of al-Ashmūnayn and al-Bahnasā. A solution to this conflict of interests would have required coordinated planning from the centre, something that Fakhr al-Dīn, as a provincial iqṭāʿ-holder, could not have achieved on his own. The decentralized and localized nature of the irrigation system is best exemplified in the rituals and procedures surrounding the autumn blocking of the al-Lāhūn dam, the key event in the annual cycle of irrigation. As we have seen, the crest of the dam had gaps that allowed water to escape back to the Nile during the Nile floods. But the end of the Nile flood season meant it was necessary to block the gaps in the dam in order to divert into the Fayyum whatever water still flowed in the Baḥr Yūsuf. Al-Nābulusī’s lively account is peppered with uncharacteristic hints of Egyptian dialect: When the Nile recedes […] the ‘bit’ (qiṭʿa) is installed at al-Lāhūn […]. The ‘bit’ is a long palm log to which straw and rags are affixed. These are tied up with ropes, so that it becomes very thick. There are strong ropes at its edges, and the ends of the ropes are in the hands of large groups of men on the bank adjacent to the small village (ḍayʿa) called al-Lāhūn, and on the opposite bank. They release the ropes little by little, while the water carries the ‘bit’ and pulls it toward the gap […] until it comes to the mouth of the gap and blocks it and thereby prevents the water from escaping. Then the men pile soil and clay on it so that it resembles the bank adjacent to the structure, so much so that a person may cross over the dam from al-Lāhūn to the bank of Qāy,30 just as he would proceed on the same bank.31

We have here traces of the ceremony of the blocking of the dam as described by al-Bakrī in the eleventh century. But, while in al-Bakrī’s account the blocking of the dam was a matter for the Fatimid state and its officials, the account in al-Nābulusī shows a simple process, based on local knowledge and materials. No state official is mentioned, nor corvée labour. Al-Nābulusī simply describes local men and ‘so-called’ engineers from the surrounding villages coming together to install a long palm log across the gap in the dam. The lack 30  31 

Qāy is located several miles south-west of al-Lāhūn.

VF, p. 41. See also Shafei, ‘Fayoum Irrigation’, p. 307.

Chapter 3

68

of close central control by the state, and the reliance on local communities, is in line with the haphazard way Fakhr al-Dīn ʿUthmān, iqṭāʿ-holder for the Fayyum, went about trying to improve the water supply. This relative degree of local autonomy is a feature to which we will come back when we will discuss the tribal structures that dominated the province.

Demo­graphy How many people lived in Ayyubid Fayyum? Al-Nābulusī did not conduct a census of the inhabitants, something he had wanted to do but which he avoided, fearing the reaction of the villagers. Nonetheless, as part of his fiscal audit, he did compile the number of non-Muslim men subject to the poll-tax in each village, and in a pair of predominantly Christian villages we can take these numbers to indicate the total number of inhabitants. Moreover, al-Nābulusī gives us direct and indirect indications for the relative size of all villages. First, he classifies each village as small, medium, or large. Second, and more precisely, he cites a detailed village-by-village labour levy, almost certainly based on estimates of village populations produced by local bureaucrats. By integrating the data from the labour levy with the poll-tax on non-Muslim men, it is possible to extrapolate the size of the provincial population as a whole. This extrapolation gives a range of 120,000 inhabitants at the top end, and a more conservative figure of 70,000 inhabitants at the lower end. This second, lower figure is in line with probable population density and with a similar recent estimate by Krol.32 The poll-tax records, which list the number of non-Muslim men in each village, provide us with remarkably precise approximations of the population in two predominantly Christian villages, Bāja and Minyat al-Usquf. These two villages are described by al-Nābulusī as small Christian villages, in close proximity to Madinat al-Fayyum, the provincial capital. It is safe to assume that nearly the entire population of both Bāja and Minyat al-Usquf was Christian. This is not only because al-Nābulusī describes them as the only two predominantly Christian villages in the province, but also because both villages had only churches — two in Bāja and one in Minyat al-Usquf — but no mosques. Based on the poll-tax records, we can estimate the population of each of these villages: around 150 inhabitants in Minyat al-Usquf and double that, around three hundred inhabitants, in Bāja. Al-Nābulusī reports that in the vilKrol extrapolates from the studies of Rathbone, Issawi, and Ashtor to give 70,000 as a lower end, and 120,000 as an upper range (‘The “Disappearing” Copts of the Fayyūm’, p. 146). 32 

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

69

lage of Minyat al-Usquf there were fifty-six non-Muslim men subject to the poll-tax, of which forty-seven men were resident and nine were recorded as living outside the province. The village of Bāja had 102 non-Muslims subject to the poll-tax, of which ninety were resident and twelve were recorded as absentees. The Islamic laws regarding the poll-tax, as applied by the Ayyubid administration, meant that every non-Muslim male over thirteen years old was subject to the poll-tax. The total number of inhabitants in the village can now be calculated by using a multiplier that takes into account minors and females. For Roman Egypt, similar demo­graphic calculations based on census data assume a multiplier of 3.1, which will be used here.33 Thus, based on fiftysix non-Muslim men in Minyat al-Usquf, of which forty-seven are residents, it is likely that the village had about 150 inhabitants at the time of al-Nābulusī’s visit. The larger village of Bāja, with 102 men subject to the poll-tax, had around three hundred inhabitants. Using these fairly reliable figures for these two villages as building blocks, it is possible to extrapolate the total population of the province, based on the share of these two villages of the province’s population. Our key to the relative size of the different villages of the Fayyum is a royal decree, reproduced by al-Nābulusī, which ordered the province of the Fayyum to raise one hundred dredging units (jurrāfa, pl. jarārīf) for the construction of a dike in al-Muḥraqa in the nearby province of Giza.34 Nearly all the villages in the Fayyum are mentioned as having to contribute a share to the levy, adding up to just over the required sum of one hundred dredging units. The only settlements exempted were three small- and medium-sized villages that were part of charitable endowments, as well as the city.35 The amount each village was supposed to contribute is listed in units (qiṭaʿ, sing. qiṭʿa) and often given in fractions, indicating that the levy was not delivered in physical dredging tools. This type of Rathbone, ‘Villages, Land and Population’, p. 130. A sample of inheritance records in the early eleventh-century Banū Bifām papers suggests that on average three children reached majority by the time their parents died (Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, p. 194). 33 

A site by the name of al-Muḥraqa is mentioned in al-Nābulusī’s introductory chapter as a desert refuge (mafāza) within the mountain range that encircles the Fayyum, alongside Ṣafṭ Maydūm and Zirzā. The jurrāfa (pl. jarārīf) was a simple tool, measuring roughly a metre on each side, which was used for the annual dredging of canals in Mamluk and Ottoman Egypt (Borsch, The Black Death, pp. 34–39). 34 

35  Two other exempted villages were al-Qubarāʾ, which was not cultivated by its own inhabitants, and the tiny village of Ṭimā, which was recently transferred to the royal domain. Hamlets were not included in the list, presumably because they contributed to the share of their mother villages.

Chapter 3

70 Table 1. Villages with largest shares of the Giza dike levy

Share in Giza Dike levy (out of 100 dredging units)

Tax revenue in kind (in ardabbs)

Share of provincial revenue in kind

Tax revenue in cash (in gold dinars)

Share of provincial revenue in cash

9

13,226

9.9%

600.42

3.4%

Bamawayh

4.75

6,317.42

4.7%

332

1.9%

Ibshāyat alRummān

4.42

6,717.86

5%

92

0.5%

Dhāt al-Ṣafā

4.33

4,013.16

3%

746.42

4.2%

Miṭr Ṭāris

3.75

5,373.75

4%

1,061.57

6.1%

Qambashā

3.25

3,770

2.8%

275.2

1.6%

Sirisnā

3

4,901.08

3.7%

372.62

2.1%

Shāna

3

4,000

3%

40

0.2%

Abū Ksā

2.75

4,120.75

3.1%

131.5

0.7%

Sinnūris

2.75

4,568.62

3.4%

648.15

3.7%

Village Minyat Aqnā

levy is explained by Ibn Mammātī, who states that when agricultural districts required new dikes, a levy was divided (tuqsaṭ) between the villages of those provinces that would stand to benefit from the new structure. Each village was set an amount according to its capabilities and the extent of its fields (bi-nisbat mā yazraʿu-hu).36 Ibn Mammātī reports that the levy was calculated in units called qiṭaʿ37 — the same type of unit mentioned by al-Nābulusī in the Villages of the Fayyum — with each unit a combination of a labour levy, dredging tools, Ibn Mammātī, Qawānīn al-Dawāwīn, ed. by ʿAṭiya, pp.  342–44. A  later account by al-Qalqashandī describes an annual process of maintenance of royal dams, led by an amir appointed as the Superintendent of Dams (kāshif al-jusūr) at a given province, and supported by a tax levied on most villages in jarārīf dredging units, ploughs and beasts of burden (al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ, iii, 448–49. See also Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt, p. 115; Michel, ‘Travaux aux digues’). 36 

Ibn Mammātī, Qawānīn al-Dawāwīn, ed. by ʿAṭiya, p. 343; ʿAṭiya erroneously prefers the reading qaṭīʿa (tax-rate). 37 

Land, Water, and People in Ayyubid Fayyum

71

Map 3. Relative village size (based on the Giza dike levy)

fodder, and construction materials. Ibn Mammātī also states that the villages had the option of commuting this levy to cash, as a rate of 10 dinars per unit.38 The dike levy recorded by al-Nābulusī constitutes a good guide to the relative size of each village out of the population of the province as a whole. The levy was almost certainly apportioned among the villages according to an estimate of the local population. As Table 1 illustrates, each village’s share of the dike levy, as represented in the number of units it was required to provide, correlated with the amount of land-tax in grains in the same village. The correlation co-efficient between the villages’ shares in the Giza dike levy and their taxes in grains is a high 0.94, clearly indicating that the apportioning of the Giza dike levy was based on the amount of land held by each village. In villages that mainly cultivated orchards and had little arable land, the estimate of the village’s population must have been based on other indicators, perhaps the value of the taxes in cash. Al-Maqrīzī, possibly on the authority of Ibn Mammātī, confirms that each village had to pay a certain amount of units (qiṭāʿ) towards to the royal dams levy (muqarrar al-jusūr). The payment was commuted to cash at a rate of 10 dinars per unit. Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 288, 297. See also Cooper, Ibn Mammati’s Rules, pp. 313–15, explaining the special taxes for the construction of dams in the provinces of al-Gharbiyya and al-Sharqiyya, called al-rusūm al-muwaẓẓafa. 38 

Chapter 3

72

The size of villages as reported by al-Nābulusī largely corresponds with villages’ shares in the dike levy. For example, those villages which al-Nābulusī describes as large were those who made larger contributions to the dike levy. All fourteen villages which were liable to more than two units, or >2% of the total provincial levy, are described by al-Nābulusī as ‘large’. The majority of the fifty-six villages with a share of less than one unit in the labour levy, or