Arabic Documents From Medieval Nubia

This volume presents an edition of a corpus of Arabic documents datable to the 11th and 12th centuries AD that were discovered by the Egypt Exploration Society at the site of the Nubian fortress Qaṣr Ibrīm (situated in the south of modern Egypt). The edition of the documents is accompanied by English translations and a detailed analysis of their contents and historical background. The documents throw new light on relations between Egypt and Nubia in the High Middle Ages, especially in the Fatimid period. They are of particular importance since previous historical studies from the perspective of Arabic sources have been al-most entirely based on historiographical sources, often written a long time after the events described and distorted by tendentious points of view.

This volume presents an edition of a corpus of Arabic documents datable to the 11th and 12th centuries AD that were discovered by the Egypt Exploration Society at the site of the Nubian fortress Qaṣr Ibrīm (situated in the south of modern Egypt). The edition of the documents is accompanied by English translations and a detailed analysis of their contents and historical background. The documents throw new light on relations between Egypt and Nubia in the High Middle Ages, especially in the Fatimid period. They are of particular importance since previous historical studies from the perspective of Arabic sources have been almost entirely based on historiographical sources, often written a long time after the events described and distorted by tendentious points of view.

As one of the few surviving archaeological sites from the medieval Christian kingdom of Nubia, Qasr Ibrim is critically important in a number of ways. It is the only site in Lower Nubia that remained above water after the completion of the Aswan high dam. In addition, thanks to the aridity of the climate in the area, the site is marked by extraordinary preservation of organic material, especially textual material written on papyrus, leather, and paper. Particularly rich is the textual material from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, written in Old Nubian, the region's indigenous language. As a result, Qasr Ibrim is probably the best documented ancient and medieval site in Africa outside of Egypt and the Maghreb. Medieval Nubia is the first book to make available this remarkable material, much of which is still unpublished. The evidence discovered reveals a more complicated picture of this community than originally thought. Previously, it was accepted that medieval Nubia had existed in relative isolation from the rest of the world, subsisting on a primitive economy. Legal documents, accounts, and letters, however, reveal a complex, monetized economy with exchange rates connected to those of the wider world. Furthermore, they reveal public festive practices, in which lavish feasting and food gifts reinforced the social prestige of the participants. These documents prove medieval Nubia to have been a society combining legal elements inherited from the Greco-Roman world with indigenous African social practices. In reconstructing the social and economic life of medieval Nubia based on the Old Nubian sources from the site, as well as other previously examined materials, Giovanni R. Ruffini corrects previous assumptions and provides a new picture of Nubia, one that links it to the wider Mediterranean economy and society of its time.

The dry climate of Egypt has preserved about 130,000 Arabic documents, mostly on papyrus and paper, covering the period from the 640s to 1517. Up to now, historical research has mostly relied on literary sources; yet, as in study of the history of the Ancient World and medieval Europe, using original documents will radically challenge what literary sources tell us about the Islamic world. The renaissance of Arabic papyrology has become obvious by the founding of the International Society for Arabic Papyrology (ISAP) at the Cairo conference (2002), and by its subsequent conferences in Granada (2004), Alexandria (2006), Vienna (2009), and Tunis (2012). This volume collects papers given at the Vienna conference, including editions of previously unpublished Coptic and Arabic documents, as well as historical and linguistic studies based on documentary evidence from Early Islamic Egypt. With contributions by: Anne Boud’hors; Florence Calament; Alain Delattre; Werner Diem; Alia Hanafi; Wadād al-Qāḍī; Ayman A. Shahin; Johannes Thomann and Jacques van der Vliet. For more titles about Papyrology, please click here.

The study of medieval Islamic history has been hindered by the lack of available evidence. This is because of its inaccessibility to all but the most specialised scholars in the field. Containing papers given at the "Documents and the History of the Early Islamic Mediterranean World" conference, this title looks at the redressing of this problem

British excavations at the important archaeological site of Qasr Ibrim have yielded numerous written sources composed in Greek, Coptic, Old Nubian, and Arabic. However, only a small number of them have been published so far, among them some sixty Old Nubian texts, both literary and documents. They were edited between 1988 and 1991 by Gerald Michael Browne. After twenty years of stagnation in this field, Ruffini took up the task initiated by Browne and produced the edition of further sixty-two Old Nubian texts, this time only documents. Texts included in this volume supplement Ruffini's 2012 monograph (Medieval Nubia. A Social and Economic History) and provide illustrattion for his recosntruciotn of social and economic life of the Middle Nile Valley in the 12th-14th century. The edition of each document is supplied with a photograph as well as extensive linguistic and historical commentary and the volume is accompanied by a set of well organised indices.

Die moderne Geschichte Ägyptens und des Sudan hat mehrfach radikal in die nubische Lebenswelt eingegriffen und tut dies bis auf den heutigen Tag: Nach den großen Staudammbauten des 20. Jahrhunderts sind neue Damm-, Bau- und Schürfprojekte auch im 21. Jahrhundert der Anlass, unter enormem Zeitdruck großflächig nubisches Terrain zu erforschen. Hierdurch bedingt wurde auf allen Gebieten der Kulturgeschichte ein gewaltiger Wissenszuwachs erreicht. Ergänzt wird dies durch Entdeckungen in ägyptischen Fundplätzen, angrenzenden Wüstengebieten und benachbarten Großräumen. Die 42 Beiträge dieses Handbuches zielen auf die diachrone, regionale und großräumliche Perspektive. Beginnend mit den Befunden der Altsteinzeit wird der Weg hin zu dem Nebeneinander pastoraler Gesellschaften und größerer Kulturäume in der Flussaue dargestellt. Über die bronzezeitlichen Kulturen wird der Bogen zu den Königreichen von Napata und Meroe bis hin zu den christlichen Königreichen und der islamischen Frühneuzeit gespannt. Dieser Sammelband beabsichtigt, den interessierten Kulturwissenschaftler auf den jüngsten Stand der Forschung zu bringen und die wechselvolle Geschichte dieses Bindeglieds zwischen dem Mittelmeerraum und Afrika zu vermitteln.