Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Notes on Transliteration, Place Names, Dates, Editions, and Translations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Ties that Bound the Societies of the Islamic Empire
- Part I Personal ties
- Part II Institutions
- Part III Communities
- 12 Local Elites during Two Periods of Civil Strife: Al-Ashʿath b. Qays, Muḥammad b. al-Ashʿath, and the Quarter of Kinda in Seventh-Century Kufa
- 13 Rulers, Ḥanābila, and Shiʿis: The Unravelling Social Cohesion of Fourth/Tenth-Century Baghdad
- 14 Resistance to and Acceptance of the Fatimids in North Africa: A Shiʿi Dynasty in Negotiation with Both Adherents and Enemies
- 15 Boundaries That Bind? Pagan and Christian Arabs between Syriac and Islamic Strategies of Distinction (Late First Century AH)
- 16 “Peace Be upon You”: Arabic Greetings in Greek and Coptic Letters Written by Christians in Early Islamic Egypt
- 17 Tied to Two Empires: The Material Evidence of the Islamic Conquest of Sicily
- Index
16 - “Peace Be upon You”: Arabic Greetings in Greek and Coptic Letters Written by Christians in Early Islamic Egypt
from Part III - Communities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Notes on Transliteration, Place Names, Dates, Editions, and Translations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Ties that Bound the Societies of the Islamic Empire
- Part I Personal ties
- Part II Institutions
- Part III Communities
- 12 Local Elites during Two Periods of Civil Strife: Al-Ashʿath b. Qays, Muḥammad b. al-Ashʿath, and the Quarter of Kinda in Seventh-Century Kufa
- 13 Rulers, Ḥanābila, and Shiʿis: The Unravelling Social Cohesion of Fourth/Tenth-Century Baghdad
- 14 Resistance to and Acceptance of the Fatimids in North Africa: A Shiʿi Dynasty in Negotiation with Both Adherents and Enemies
- 15 Boundaries That Bind? Pagan and Christian Arabs between Syriac and Islamic Strategies of Distinction (Late First Century AH)
- 16 “Peace Be upon You”: Arabic Greetings in Greek and Coptic Letters Written by Christians in Early Islamic Egypt
- 17 Tied to Two Empires: The Material Evidence of the Islamic Conquest of Sicily
- Index
Summary
In early Islamic Egypt, “Arab-style” Greek (and later Coptic) letters employing religiously neutral monotheistic formularies were sent in the name of Muslim officials to Christian administrators. By analyzing old and new evidence of Egyptian Christians using this epistolary template, this paper argues that in the first decades of Arab rule, probably only a few beneficiaries of the new regime employed the “Arab-style” prescript in their letters written to other Christians to demonstrate their close connection to the new government and thus their social standing. Later, however, the “Arab-style” prescript became commonplace in communication between Christians and Muslims and among Christians only in everyday life. Thus, the religiously neutral template created by the conquerors for official top–down communication became a mechanism for facilitating not only the smooth functioning of administrative structures, but also, in the long run, the social cohesion of Christians and Muslims.
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- Mechanisms of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire , pp. 466 - 480Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
- Creative Commons
- This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/