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2 results

  • Developments in Egypt's early Islamic postal system (with an edition of P.Khalili II 5)

  • Jelle Bruning
  • Journal:
    Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 81 / Issue 1 / February 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 December 2017, pp. 25-40
    Print publication:
    February 2018
    • Article
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  • The importance of documentary sources for the history of the official postal system (barīd) in the first century of Islam has long been acknowledged. In addition to a small number of documents from the eastern part of the Muslim Empire, Egyptian papyri from the 90s/710s and 130s/750s form the main documentary sources for modern studies on the postal system. These papyri belong to a distinct phase in Islamic history. Papyri from other, especially earlier, phases have largely been neglected. The present article addresses the history of Egypt's official postal system from the Muslim conquest up to c. 132/750. It argues that the postal system gradually developed out of Byzantine practices and was shaped by innovations by Muslim rulers through which their involvement in the postal system's administration gradually increased. The article ends with an edition of P.Khalili II 5, a papyrus document from 135/753 on the provisioning of postal stations.

  • 15 - Modern approaches to early Islamic history

  • from PART IV - THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF EARLY ISLAMIC HISTORY
  • Edited by Chase F. Robinson
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge History of Islam
    Published online:
    28 March 2011
    Print publication:
    04 November 2010, pp 623-647

  • Summary

    Western writing on Islam, including early Islamic history, has roots reaching back to the medieval period. As far as early Islamic history is concerned, Western scholars of the Enlightenment began to consult key texts of the Islamic tradition itself in search of information. Contemporary scholars examines Islam's origins in depth mainly tend to follow the source-critical or tradition-critical school in their handling of the Islamic sources. Scholars of early Islamic history have shown increased interest in developing new approaches and methods, and in looking at such things as social history, gender relations, identity formation and economic history. Beyond the thorny problems posed by the heritage of the polemical tradition and by the deficiencies of the sources for early Islamic history, there exist other problems of perception and conceptualisation, as well as practical obstacles, that have affected Western approaches to early Islamic history.