Onomastics as Indicators of Conversion to Islam in Egypt: A Survey of Seventh-to-Ninth-Century Papyri

1 The Papyrology of Early Islamic Egypt

Egypt’s climatic conditions have made it possible for large quantities of written artifacts to have survived on its territory since antiquity. The steady stream of documentary sources continues well into medieval times after the Arab conquest of Egypt in 642. At the dawn of the new rule, most public and private documents were still written in Greek, which had been the administrative language of the country since Alexander’s conquest. However, papyri composed in Coptic – essentially Egyptian written in Greek letters – appeared in the fourth century and gained increasing private use over time. From the second part of the sixth century onwards, Coptic started to be employed for legal and administrative documents and by the time of the Arab conquest, it had gained significant ground.^[1] With the conquerors, Arabic texts start to appear in the documentation, but only in small numbers before the eighth century, since Arab presence was mainly limited to garrisons and officials. However, this situation changes drastically over the eighth century, during which Greek slowly fades out of usage, while Coptic and, to a lesser extent, Arabic papyri start to dominate our documentation. By the early ninth century, the linguistic situation clearly shifted: Arabic became the language of public administration and legal documents, while Coptic increasingly withdrew to the private sphere and Greek, apart from some rare exceptions, disappeared from documentary use.^[2]

The first 200 years of Arab rule were a period of significant social transformation. We witness a transition from a Christian, mainly Coptic and Greek speaking Roman world, to a province of the successive Islamic empires in which Arabic became the language of power and Islam the religion of the ruling elite. In modern scholarship, this period is usually referred to as the ‘early Islamic period’, even if this designation is a bit ambiguous. While the Arab conquest in 642 clearly demarcates its beginning, its end is less clearly defined. In papyrological usage, the ‘early Islamic period’ ends with the eighth century, while the barely explored world of ninth- and tenth century documents is usually considered to be a new era, though if this is rarely spelled out. Other scholars, however, extend the early Islamic period to the beginning of Fatimid rule in 969, which is perhaps a more natural boundary from the view of political history.^[3]

Egyptian society was not transformed overnight after the Arabs arrived.^[4] The conquerors were few in number and largely lived separated from locals. Egypt was essentially an occupied country: most interactions of locals with Arabs occurred in administrative settings. The conquerors appear in the abundant documentation of this period rarely and almost exclusively as officials and soldiers. Private documents in Greek and Coptic barely reference Arabs or provide any signs of the change of times: in fact, it is often difficult or impossible to tell from a contract or private letter written in a seventh-century handwriting whether it was still composed in the Byzantine period or already under Arab rule.

Our impression of a post-Byzantine world under Arab masters starts to change slowly but surely in the late seventh-early eighth century, when the much-discussed reforms of the Marwānids set off significant societal changes. These reforms aimed, among other things, at increasing the use of Arabic in the official sphere and at a tighter fiscal control over the conquered populations. Egyptian papyri clearly attest how Muslims replaced Christians in important administrative functions in the first decades of the eighth century. The increasing presence of Arabs loyal to the central government threatened Christian elites who were used to act largely independently of Arab control on the local level. Furthermore, poll-tax was introduced on monks which, together with the other taxes of monasteries, was another heavy blow to the traditional spiritual centers of the local population. This tense situation resulted in unrest, which manifested itself most clearly as a series of tax revolts during the eighth century led by the disenfranchised local elites.^[5]

Parallel to the administrative developments, the Arab presence becomes more palpable in the papyrological record. The number of Arabic private letters and legal documents significantly increases over the eighth century: Arab immigration as well as conversion to Islam become much more visible, even if the evidence can be ambiguous. By the end of the eighth century, the number of Arabic documents starts to catch up to the mass of Coptic texts, while in the ninth century the ratio clearly tilts in their favor.^[6] It is difficult to discuss the developments of the ninth century from the point of view of a papyrologist, since it is an under-researched period in the field. Nevertheless, one has the impression of entering a very different world from that of a hundred years earlier, a world in which Arab and Muslim institutions and culture have already left a significant mark on local society, even if the majority of the population was undoubtedly still Christian.

The Egyptian papyrological evidence provides a very different perspective on many aspects of early Islam than narrative sources, the majority of which was composed centuries after the conquest. Recent studies of early Islamic Egypt have mostly focused on administration and its connection to major trends and events of Islamic history. By integrating sources in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic, our understanding of early Islamic rule has much evolved in recent decades.^[7] These studies are of central interest, but there are many other research topics that await a fresh look from a papyrological perspective. In this paper, I am going to survey the value of onomastics for the study of conversion to Islam in Egypt up to the ninth century. By discussing selected examples, I aim to highlight the potential of this source material for future studies. The reader may be surprised to find that the following pages contain more references to Coptic and Greek papyri than to Arabic documents. This is mainly due to the fact that, especially in what concerns the seventh and the eighth centuries, the majority of the relevant documents were written in these two languages. In addition, many more Coptic and especially Greek texts from this period have been published than Arabic ones, because Greek papyrology is a much more developed discipline than its Arabic and Coptic counterparts.

2 The Geographical Distribution and Archival Context of the Papyri

The overwhelming majority of papyrus finds were discovered south from the Nile Delta, since only there climatic conditions were arid enough to allow organic material to survive the centuries. While there are many find spots in Middle and Upper Egypt, only a few have produced papyri in the thousands for our period. These are the region of the Fayyum oasis and nearby Heracleopolis (Ar. Ihnās), further to the south Hermopolis (Ar. al-Ashmūnayn) and its region, and, finally, the Theban area with its mainly Coptic material. The sheer number of papyri, however, should not blind us: what has been preserved only reflects the circumstances of certain regions, all of which had their own local peculiarities. It can be assumed that Alexandria, the Nile Delta, and generally Lower Egypt witnessed a much greater influx of Arabs than Upper Egypt, where Egyptian language and Christianity remained dominant for a much longer time.

In addition to the geographical distribution of our material, it is also important to pay attention to its archival context. Administrative and monastic archives have dominated the papyrological record of early Islamic Egypt, while family papers remain rare in contrast to the Roman period. Whether this is due to societal reasons or caused by archeological factors is still an open question.^[8] It should be noted, however, that this picture is mostly of the seventh and early eighth centuries: there are many more private documents written in Coptic and Arabic from the second half of the eighth and ninth centuries.

Let us look at what kinds of documents attest to Arabs, Muslims, and converts up to the ninth century. Our Greek texts are almost exclusively of fiscal nature: we find accounts, receipts, and tax demand notes, which contain a plethora of onomastic information. These paint a clear picture: up to the mid-eighth century, our lengthy tax registers mention Arab names only in exceedingly rare cases, in which we are usually dealing with Arab officials and messengers. This is clearly illustrated by the rich archive of the Upper Egyptian village of Aphrodito from the early decades of the eighth century, which to my knowledge never mentions a single taxpayer with an Arab name: Aphrodito was a Christian environment without Arab or Muslim presence.^[9] There are only two regions where Greek documents offer glimpses into the appearance of Arabs and Muslims in the countryside: the Fayyum oasis and the neighboring city of Heracleopolis. This is, in my view, due to archeological reasons: from these cities, we possess remnants of the archive of their pagarchy, i. e. the administrative district of the later eighth century. While there also are documents extant from the pagarchy of Hermopolis from the seventh and eighth century, they seem to be limited to the seventh century and the first half of the eighth, probably because later texts were not preserved or found.

The dating of these papyri unfortunately constitutes another important problem. In our period, Greek and Coptic documents are normally dated by indiction years, which do not allow determining their date precisely. While a few Greek and Coptic fiscal documents employ Hijri dates in the eighth century,^[10] this is rather the exception than the rule. Paleography helps to narrow down the eligible time frame, based on certain characteristics of the highly standardized Greek minuscule of the period, but it is impossible to achieve higher accuracy than about 50 or 100 years. Additionally, we often do not know the origin of the persons mentioned in our documents: are they inhabitants of a village, a city, or perhaps a monastery? Furthermore, taxpayers mostly are men who are identified by their patronymic: women rarely figure, and household or family structures are only seldom visible. Since the archeological context of the vast majority of papyri is unknown, their provenance must often be determined based by text-internal criteria, such as toponyms. All these limitations demonstrate the difficulty in using the data of our Greek registers statistically, as has been done for assessing fourth-century Christianization (see below 3.).

Coptic and Arabic texts of our period provide information on Arabs and Muslims in more diverse contexts than Greek fiscal documents. This may partially simply be due to chronological reasons: while in the seventh and early eighth century Greek texts represent the lion’s share of our documentation, as mentioned before, Coptic and Arabic documents become more numerous in the later eighth and ninth centuries and thus reflect an already more Islamic population. Coptic documents refer to Muslims mostly in accounts, letters, and legal documents. Letters and legal documents are especially interesting, since they often attest to various kinds of contacts between Christians and Muslims.^[11] They inform about onomastics through the names of the parties and witnesses. Dating Coptic documents poses even more difficulties than what we have seen in the case of Greek papyri. Legal documents are, with a few exceptions, dated only by indiction years and letters rarely include a dating clause. Furthermore, Coptic documentary paleography is poorly understood and thus, dates for these texts are often vague.

It is hardly surprising that Arabic documents offer a wide variety of texts attesting to Arab onomastics, such as administrative and private documents, letters, legal documents, and accounts. However, most papyri of the seventh and eighth centuries are either administrative in nature or document the internal affairs of Arabs and therefore, we find less onomastic examples of conversion than in Greek and Coptic papyri. Furthermore, Arabic administrative accounts, which contain numerous names, do not seem to appear in large numbers until the second half of the eighth century – Greek remains the main accounting language until the late eighth century.

Many of the thousands of relevant published papyri in the three relevant languages are only available in old editions without commentary and translation. While there are onomastic databases, most notably Trismegistos People,^[12] there is no easy way to glean Arab names from this material in a systematic fashion. Disciplinary boundaries are a further obstacle: while it has become standard for researchers of this period to consider sources in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic, very few specialists are equally comfortable with papyri in all three of them and the corresponding secondary literature. This difficulty may perhaps explain to the reader why I opted for only presenting a gleaning of selected examples rather than a more complete study, which would have been far beyond the scope of an article.

3 Conversion and Onomastics

The question of conversion to Islam has understandably attracted much scholarly attention both in general and in the case of Egypt.^[13] Most discussions concentrate on the changing religious demographic and try to find the ‘tipping point’ when Muslims became a majority, usually in correlation with major events in political history. As Lev Weitz has recently pointed out, social change cannot be measured solely in terms of demographics, but the transformation of culture and institutions are important aspects too if we want to understand what made Egypt ‘Islamic.’^[14] Nevertheless, the question of demographics remains an important one, even if it should not be considered with a teleological lens.

According to the traditional view, conversion to Islam occurred in two major waves in Egypt. The first would have been induced by heavy taxation in the eighth–ninth century, because Muslims were exempt of the poll-tax (jizya). While the economic factor was certainly important, the complex phenomenon of conversion cannot be reduced to it.^[15] The second wave would have happened in the thirteenth–fourteenth century, when the heavy Mamluk repression and forceful conversions would have finally resulted in reaching the tipping point and Christians becoming a minority. However, Arab immigration, Christian intermarriage with Muslims and demographic decline, as well as other factors were also slowly but surely changing demographic ratios.^[16]

The value of onomastics for understanding the spread of Islam has long been recognized. Most important in this respect is Richard Bulliet’s seminal study from 1979: Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period. An Essay in Quantitative History.^[17] In this short book, the author attempted to infer the rate of conversion to Islam in Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, and Spain based on the genealogical information found in biographical dictionaries of Muslim scholars and other noteworthy personalities. For Egypt, he summarizes:

The conversion process passes the halfway point just before the beginning of the tenth century. The ninth century is, indeed, the watershed period with over a third of all conversions taking place between 800 and 900, but Brett’s estimate that the Christians were in the majority as late as the year 900 may well be accurate since the conversion curve makes no allowance for the unknown percentage of Christians who never converted at all.^[18]

His approach certainly entails risk: the biographical dictionaries were compiled long after the death of the persons mentioned in them, and the individuals represented in these collections are a very specific urban elite subgroup of society. Furthermore, inferring religious affiliation from onomastics can be very difficult in certain cases. While Bulliet’s approach has been rightly criticized,^[19] it remains an important study, even if some of its conclusions need to be qualified.

Jonathan M. Bloom partially confirmed Bulliet’s results for Egypt in his 1987 analysis of early tombstones from Aswān and Fusṭāṭ. He observed that Bulliet’s data ‘show[s] that the great peak in tombstone-using of the 240ies (854 – 64) corresponds to the middle of the “early majority” conversions in Egypt, a time when people were turning to Islam at an increasing rate.’ He correlates this finding with the crushing of the last major Coptic rebellion in 832 and increasing anti-Christian repressions. However, he also admits that his sample size is limited and a full study of tombstones from these sites may produce different results.^[20] In a similar discussion of tombstones from Aswān, Christian Décobert raised the important methodological issue of biblical names that are appropriate for both Christians and Muslims when written in Arabic.^[21]

Apart from sporadic notes in commentaries of papyrus editions, only Marie Legendre’s recent repertoire of Arab names in Coptic papyri has addressed the value of names in papyri for understanding conversion.^[22] Even if such compilations are in constant need of update and corrections, Legendre’s work represents an invaluable starting point for further research. While only partially discussing onomastics, Clément Onimus’s 2005 study on mawālī (clients, in part converts, who took an Arabic name and were thus integrated in Arab tribal society) in the papyrological record constitutes also an important contribution to this topic.^[23]

Onomastic data found in papyri has already been fruitfully used to trace the spread of Christianity in fourth-century Egypt. Roger Bagnall’s groundbreaking 1982 article,^[24] inspired by Bulliet’s aforementioned book, looked at several major dateable text-groups, notably tax registers, and attempted to identify Christians based on their names in order to derive a curve for the spread of Christianity. However, this is a methodologically complicated undertaking, as subsequent responses to his article have pointed out.^[25] While conversion to Islam commonly involved taking on an Arab name, this was not the case for Christians. In fact, adopting the names of saints and martrys bearing markedly pagan names was popular, to mention just one problem. With the advent of digital resources, Bagnall’s results were refined by Willy Clarysse and Mark Depauw, who worked on a much more complete dataset than it had been possible before.^[26] As a response to this article David Frankfurter criticized the results drawn from the dataset. He stressed that the conclusions were based on a modern notion of conversion, which did not necessarily apply to early Christianity:^[27]

The model of embracing Christianity that underlies these articles is intellectual and psychological, presuming deliberate choices on the part of individuals (and perhaps their households) to embrace an ideologically clear and absolute Christianity – that is, one different from a so-called paganism –, to undergo (allegedly) an individual baptism, and thereafter to disconnect fundamentally from “pagan” ways and to participate exclusively in a public ritual life that the modern scholar would properly recognize as Christian.

While admitting the validity of some of Frankfurter’s points, Depauw and Clarysse essentially reacted to his criticism with the following argument: ‘Even if Christians participated in many traditional religious practices, there is thus in our view little evidence for the concept of a fluid Christian identity, as embraced by Frankfurter.’^[28] Recognising the complexity of the issue,^[29] in the following discussion I will attempt to identify trends.

4 Arabs, Muslims, Converts, and their Names

Most papyrus documents contain only indirect references to conversion, which must be carefully contextualized in order to be properly understood.^[30] However, there are rare exceptional cases in which they offer us extraordinary glimpses into the everyday realities of conversion to Islam. Such an example is provided by the fragmentary Arabic account of unknown provenance P.Giss.Arab. 5 which can be dated on paleographical grounds to the eighth–ninth century.^[31] Each of its 14 lines contains an Arabic name followed by the word mawlā (‘client’, pl. mawālī) of name and the words ‘and he is’ Christian name with patronymic and continues with the physical description of the person and, occasionally, his place of origin. For instance, in line 11 we read:

ʿĪsā, client of Sulaymān, and he is Mīnā (son of) Qultah, a young man, corpulent, having beautifully arched eyebrows, having an aquiline nose, with hair half smooth, half curled …^[32]

‏عيسى مولى سليمن وهو مينا قلته شابّ جسيم أزجّ أقنى ر[جل‎

Thus, we are dealing with an Egyptian Christian who went by the name Menas, son of Kolthe (a short form of Kollouthos) and converted to Islam, taking on the name Arab name ʿĪsā in order to be integrated in Arab tribal society through a patronage contract (walāʾ) made with a certain Sulaymān.^[33] We must note that his choice of the new name might be due to his former religious affiliation, since ʿĪsā is the Arabic version of Jesus. This certainly was not problematic regarding his conversion, since, as is well known, Jesus is considered a prophet in the Islamic tradition. Choosing the Arab version of Jesus as his new Muslim/Arab name might have created a bridge for the transition from his old religious identity to a new one. Indeed, we can find another convert named ʿĪsā in this list, but the new names otherwise vary (in order of their appearance): Kāmil, Saʿbad, ʿAlī, Maymūn, Nuṣayr, Mahdī, Ayyūb, Sālim, and Yazīd.

We also need to highlight that their conversion would not have necessarily meant that they abandoned their old name. Indeed, in some Arabic documents of the ninth–tenth century we find persons with Arabic names who were converts, but apparently still known by their former name. For example,^[34] in P.FahmiTaaqud 1 (852 – 853) we encounter (lines 7 and 19) a person designated as ‘ʿAbd Allāh b. Buṭrus, known as Antānās’ (‏عبد اللّه بن بطرس المعروف بأنتناس‎). This suggests that this ʿAbd Allāh b. Buṭrus, as well as the converts mentioned in P.Giss.Arab. 5, were still known by their former Christian name in their everyday life. This in turn implies that a convert may have been referred to in different papyri only by his old Christian or new Muslim name. For example, in an Arabic legal document he may appear with his Muslim name, while in a Coptic account compiled by someone else, he could still be identified by his former name.^[35]

To return to P.Giss.Arab. 5, the exact function of this list remains unclear. Grohmann published it as ‘Liste von Freigelassenen ehemaligen zum Islam übergetretenen Kopten mit Signalement.’ His edition is laconic, and thus the reader may assume that the title indicates the function of the register, i. e. recording converts.^[36] However, in the introduction Grohmann points to P.Cair.Arab. IV 260, one of the few parallel documents (which does not preserve names), where he discusses the problem in more detail (p. 159):

Possibly all these lists have a connection with the census of some particular district. But though I have arranged the present list under the heading “census”, it must be confessed that it is not quite certain that this was the purpose originally intended. (…) It may be possible, too, that the clerk had collected the names and descriptions of so-called fugitives or persons who had temporarily removed themselves from or to another district.

Indeed, the last possibility mentioned by Grohmann, keeping record of ‘strangers’ who do not reside in their own tax-district, is a practice well-known from Greek papyri of the early Islamic period.^[37] This would also explain why Barshūb, the origo of one of the mawālī, lay in the Nile Delta.^[38] This would otherwise be surprising, since, as discussed above, there are virtually no papyri preserved from that region.

As indicated, clear examples for conversion such as this are rare. It is more frequent, even if not common, to find combinations of Arabic names with Christian patronymics which strongly, but not certainly indicate conversion. In addition to onomastics, a close papyrological analysis of the document in question can help to find further hints corroborating or refuting a possible instance of conversion. This is well illustrated by O.Louvre AF 12678, a Coptic ostracon dating probably to (the first half of?) the eighth century.^[39] In this short, rather informal legal document a certain Sulaymān, son of Georgios (ⲥⲟⲩⲗⲁⲓⲙⲁⲛ ⲡϣⲏⲣⲉ ⲛⲅⲉⲟⲣⲅⲓⲟⲥ) acknowledges that he is leasing a room from a certain Iannia, daughter ‘of the master’ Athanasi. The name Sulaymān is Arabic; Egyptian Christians would have used Solomon instead at this date. The name, therefore, points to a convert, as well as the fact that he is conducting business in Coptic, presumably his mother tongue. A further feature of the document corroborates this assumption: it begins with double slanting-strokes (//) instead of the usual cross or staurogram. Scribes of Greek and Coptic documents often replaced the initial crosses with two slanting-strokes, when writing in the name of or to Muslims. They probably did so in order to not provoke Muslims by using crosses.^[40] Similarly, this document contains a monotheistic invocation not specifically Christian, ‘in the name of God Almighty’, which often appears in the Islamic period.^[41] These features corroborate our assumption that Sulaymān was a convert. Iannia, the addressee of the text, seems to have been a Christian.^[42] A further interest of the document is that it probably originates in Elephantine, at any rate in Upper Egypt, a region where conversion was slower than in the North.

A similar situation appears in P.Heid.Kopt. 18b, a legal document from eighth-century Hermopolis (Cop. Shmoun). It contains an acknowledgement of a debt of three solidi owed by Ibrāhīm, son of Apa Mena (ⲉ]ⲃ̣[ⲣⲁϩ]ⲏ̣ⲙ̣^[43] ⲡϣⲉⲛ ⲁⲡⲁ ⲙⲏⲛⲁ), a resident of a village ‘of the north of Shmoun’, to ‘Apa Shenoute, the most humble priest, son of Severus, of Shmoun’ (lines 1 – 2). We can think again of a convert who nevertheless conducts private business with a priest. The involvement of the cleric could, however, be interpreted in another way: Ibrāhīm could be a Christian Arab. Furthermore, it is interesting that his signature is represented by three crosses, as was common in case of illiterates in Hermopolite documents of this date,^[44] and that another person writes his following consent to the document for him (line 10). The situation is further complicated by the fact that the whole text, including the subscriptions of the document, was written in a single hand and might have been a draft.^[45] Unfortunately, the question of the subscription does not help either in determining whether Ibrāhīm was a convert or an Arab Christian. We can both imagine an illiterate convert or a Christian Arab, perhaps illiterate in Greek/Coptic, not taking any issue with signing with three crosses.

The case of P.Heid.Kopt. 18b leads us to the question of Christian Arabs. A recently published Coptic account of the seventh or eighth century from an unknown middle-Egyptian monastery, P.CUA 75.20,^[46] mentions a certain ‘Kollouthos, Saracen’ (Κολλούθ(ου) Σαρακ(ηνοῦ)) in line 14. The designation ‘Saracen’ undoubtedly points to Arab ethnicity,^[47] while his name is a Christian one – the cult of St. Kollouthos was popular in Middle Egypt, where the monastery probably was situated. It is thus apparent that some ordinary Christian names may hide Arabs and it follows that, vice versa, an Arab name could point to a Christian as well. The term ‘Saracen’, however, occurs in papyri mostly in association with Muslims, especially ones in government service. Accordingly, P.Apoll. 37, a Greek letter from ca. 660 – 680, mentions (line 10) ‘the four Saracens of the ʾamīr of the believers [i. e. the caliph]’ (τεσσάρων Σαρακηνῶν τοῦ Ἀμιρᾶ τῶν Πιστῶν). Similarly, an eighth-century monastic document, P.Louvre Bawit 2, simply mentions the ‘The Saracen of Pne’ (ⲡⲥⲁⲣⲁⲕⲓⲛⲟⲥ ⲛⲡⲛⲉ) which probably denotes an Arab official in charge of that settlement.^[48]

The term ‘Saracen’ may open further layers of interpretation in case of CPR XXII 33, a Greek account from the second part of the eighth century. This fragment preserves the lower five lines of an account listing persons, their landholdings, and the incumbent land taxes. Three persons bear Christian names, but the last two lines refer to Arabs: Ṣalatān, ‘Saracen’ (line 5: Σαλαθαν Σαρ(α)γ(ηνός)) and Abū Ḥathma (line 6: Αβου Αθμαν). Both their names are preceded by the word pakton that refers to state land rented at lower tax/rent-rates to Muslims.^[49] This suggests that there is no doubt about the religious affiliation of Ṣalatān and Abū Ḥathma. It is interesting, however, that Ṣalatān is specifically referred to as a “Saracen” while Abū Ḥathma is not. In my view, the only obvious solution to this problem would be that while Ṣalatān was an ethnic Arab, a settler, or a descendant of one, Abū Ḥathma was an Egyptian convert or a descendant of one. Another indication that he might have been a convert is that he is identified by his kunya, which is usually considered an honorific, rather than by his name. This practice seems to have been popular among converts, for if a convert had not changed his name upon conversion, he could use the teknonym instead of his non-Arabic name.^[50] Be that as it may, the identification of Abū Ḥathma as a convert may hold in this case, but cannot be extrapolated to other accounts containing Arab names, which usually do not refer to ‘Saracens’, because scribal habits vary.

CPR XXII 33 brings us to the general interpretation of accounts that contain Arab names. Most of these cannot be precisely dated and we generally do not understand what group of people they represent. SB XXVIII 17235 provides a lucid example of the problems associated with interpreting this genre. This papyrus sheet was cut out of an official document, which ‘is likely to be a list of workmen who were away from their fiscal residence for reasons of (requisitioned?) work.’^[51] The toponomastic of this text suggests a Heracleopolite origin for the document. The other side, which concerns us here, was reused for writing a list of people, several of whom are identified by their occupation, such as workmen, camel-drivers, guards, but also a carpenter and a potter. Of the 26 men mentioned, only two bear Arab names: ʿAbd Allāh (line 3a: Αβδελλα) and Mandhūr (line 9b: Μανδουρ). The heading of the list simply contains the invocation ‘with God’ (σὺν Θ(εῷ)) and does not specify its purpose. Contemporary parallels suggest that the document lists workers requisitioned for government work, such as a building project or the maintenance of canals.^[52]

The two fragments of the papyrus were originally published separately and later reunited and reedited by Nikolaos Gonis. His considerations on the presence of Arab names neatly summarizes the problems we are facing:

An interesting feature is the presence of Muslims, identified by their Arab names: ʿAbd Allah in 3a, Mandhūr in 9b. The function of ʿAbd Allah is not stated; Mandhūr was a guard. If my interpretation of the nature of this document holds, the two Muslim men will have been liable to a compulsory public service, though their duties may not have been of the most menial kind. To all appearances, they were villagers; if so, they were probably Egyptian converts, or the descendants of converts. P.Vindob. G 14965+18880 [= SB XXVIII 17235] may thus offer a small piece of evidence for the Islamisation in the rural areas of Middle Egypt in the eighth century.^[53]

Unfortunately, in most similar cases, we cannot go beyond these considerations because the necessary background information is lacking. SB XXVIII 17235 was dated to the eighth century, and I am inclined to believe that it stems from its later rather than its earlier part. My assessment is mainly based on two factors: the paleography of the document and the presence of Arab names. Paleography is, however, subjective and while I am fairly confident that this handwriting does not belong to the seventh century, it is very difficult to say whether a dating to 730 – 750 could be excluded in favor of one to 750 – 800. In addition, I must admit that preferring later dates due to the presence of Arab names may create circular arguments. As long as there are no other precisely dateable accounts containing Arab names published, the interpretations of such documents for the Islamization of the countryside are bound to remain impressionistic.

A further problem is apparent from the discussion quoted above. We read that ‘to all appearances, they were villagers; if so, they were probably Egyptian converts, or the descendants of converts.’ This interpretation is presumably based on the idea that Arabs tended to first migrate into cities and thus Muslims in the countryside are more likely converts than Arab settlers. While this interpretation is certainly appealing, it is again difficult to be certain in specific cases. A step forward from this aporetic situation would be to collect all the personal names in these lists and look for typical names for converts, such as ʿAbd Allāh, which is extremely frequent in the papyrological documentation of the early Islamic period.

So far, we have only dealt with the combination of Arabic names with Christian patronymics, but there are examples for the reverse case as well.^[54] In the Greek wheat-receipt SPP III 2.5 474 dating to the late seventh or eighth century, the name of the taxpayer is ‘Petros son of Malik’ (Πέτρος Μαλικ). This was commented in the edition in the following way:

Eine derartige Kombination von christlichem Namen und arabischem Vatersnamen ist äußerst ungewöhnlich. Eine Konversion ist in dieser Zeit nur vom christlichen zum islamischen Glauben denkbar und nicht umgekehrt. Anscheinend ist hier der Vater des Petros bereits Moslem geworden und hat entsprechend seinen Namen geändert, sein Sohn ist aber noch Christ.

The interpretation of the editors is based on the assumption that a conversion to Christianity would not have been possible at this period. This a priori judgement is, however, false, as is known from literary sources, such as Christian martyrdoms.^[55] The interpretation, therefore, that we must be dealing with a family where only the father converted, is only one of the possibilities. Since the text does not provide us with much helpful context, other options remain. We might again be dealing with Christian Arabs or a Muslim Arab family, where the son converted to Christianity. Furthermore, developing the interpretation of the edition, one may even think that after the father and perhaps his son converted to Islam, the son reconverted to the religion of his ancestors. Christian martyrdoms provide us with many examples of such complicated conversion stories with several back-and-forths between Christianity and Islam,^[56] thus we need to leave this possibility open.

Finally, I would like to discuss two interesting papyri that may present more subtle hints for conversion than the examples discussed above. The first one is P. IFAO Edfou Jarre Inv. 11a, a Coptic official letter written around 660 – 680.^[57] The sender, certainly a Christian, discusses his meeting with a colleague in lines 7 – 8: ‘I met our brother the lord Saleh (ⲥⲁⲗⲉϩ).’^[58] The Coptic Saleh (ⲥⲁⲗⲉϩ) can be identified with the Arabic Ṣāliḥ. The title ‘lord’ (ⲕⲩⲣⲟⲥ from Greek κύριος) is, to my knowledge, not attested referring to an Arab/Muslim in papyri and thus represents a curious combination. It is, however, even more telling that Saleh was corrected from Sergios (ⲥⲉⲣⲅ̣ⲓⲟⲥ), an ordinary Christian name. The editor of the letter, Grzegorz Ochała, commented this as follows:

The simplest explanation of this correction is that the author of the letter (not very well versed in writing, indeed) thought of someone named Sergios while composing the letter and only afterwards did he remember that in fact he had met a different person, Saleh. However, a more attractive hypothesis can be proposed, namely that we are dealing with a recent conversion to Islam of the person in question: the author of the letter was so accustomed to Saleh’s old name that he wrote it down automatically and only afterwards corrected it to the actual name.

Indeed, the second hypothesis proposed by Ochała is very attractive and strikes me as much more likely than the first one. This letter stems from the papers of the pagarchy of Edfu, the bulk of which dates to ca. 660 – 680. The contents of these papyri center on local Christian stakeholders collecting taxes and managing their landholdings. We could therefore identify ‘lord’ Ṣāliḥ, the previous Sergios, as an aspiring member of the local elite who perhaps converted out of opportunism – but this is not to say that spiritual reasons could be excluded. This would be a rare example of a conversion to Islam in the Upper Egyptian urban elite at a rather early date, before the first major wave of conversion in the eighth century began.

We may deal with something similar in P.Louvre inv. E 7395, an eighth-century Coptic legal document from the Fayyum.^[59] One of the witnesses signs the text framed by two crosses: ‘I Mūsā from^[60] b. ʿAbd Allāh from the city, witness.’^[61] I discuss this document in detail elsewhere, so I would like to only quote my comment on this passage:

The document had three witnesses, one of them a Muslim: Mūsā b. ʿAbd Allāh. A closer look at his subscription (written, as mentioned, by the scribe of the document) reveals some interesting details. The eta of Μουσ⸌η̣⸍ is superscript and it appears to have been written above a long horizontal supralinear stroke which is a common abbreviation for an alpha in this period. It seems thus that the scribe first wrote Μουσα( ) which could be expanded as Μουσα(ῖος), a common name in our period. After realizing his mistake, he changed it to Μουση which was the standard Greek spelling for the Arabic Mūsā in papyri (…) This may of course be a simple scribal error caused by the similar spellings of the two words, but we may wonder whether more lies behind. Could it perhaps be that Mūsā was a convert to Islam who had went by the name Mousaios before and thus took on an Arab name phonetically similar to his Christian one? This could both explain the psychology of the scribal error, since the scribe might have known him as Mousaios, and why he figures as the only Muslim witness in a private document otherwise concerning exclusively Christians. A further clue for his family’s conversion may be, as Naïm Vanthieghem points out to me, that his patronymic was ʿAbd Allāh which was a name typically taken on by converts.^[62]

This interpretation must remain a hypothesis, but together with the examples discussed earlier, it illustrates that a close analysis of our documents can lead to unexpected results.

5 Research Perspectives

I hope to have demonstrated the potential of the onomastic material found in papyri for understanding the spread of Islam in Egypt. Nevertheless, it has also become clear that a statistical, quantitative approach would be futile at present. Long, datable registers would allow observing regional developments, as is the case with the spread of Christianity in the fourth century. Of the seventh–eighth century material, only a few registers are exactly datable, but those of the earlier period usually contain exclusively Christian names and the later ones are generally shorter. This situation could change with the publication of more Arabic tax accounts of the later eighth and ninth–tenth century. Arabic texts are usually dated by Hijri years and thus we could find fixed snapshots of village populations distributed over the ninth century, offering a window into the changing religious landscape of the Egyptian countryside.^[63]

While a statistical approach is impossible at present, I see two main ways to move forward. A first step would be to compile a catalogue of all Arab names found in papyri. These could be further categorized and qualitatively analysed: for instance, a systematic look at persons with Arab names but non-Arab patronymic would be a significant step forward. This could be complemented with an analysis of all the contexts in which we see interactions between Christians and Muslims in papyri, taking into account, of course, the language situation. While these texts are seldom spectacular, they could display patterns of business and family relationships. The results of such an investigation could be further compared with narrative sources that inform on conversion to Islam, for instance with martyrdoms and hagiographical sources.^[64] The often lively stories found in literature could help elucidate what we see in everyday documents and vice versa.