Petra M Sijpesteijn
Biographic Data
| ID | 170415 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Petra M Sijpesteijn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Petra M |
| FAMILY NAME | Sijpesteijn |
| SIGNATURE | SIJPESTEIJN P M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6615-469X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Wanting or asking: Polite and impolite requests in Arabic papyrus letters
Requests are a type of directive speech act in which the speaker aims to get someone to do something that that person might not have done without being asked. In the case of Arabic papyri, the scholarly attention requests have received has been limited mainly to petitions addressed to government officials and other figures of authority ( Khan 1990a , b ; Rustow 2020 ; Weitz 2022 ), and to commercial and private letters exchanged between equals ( …
How to ask (im)politely: Letters from Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East from the ninth to the nineteenth century
Approaching requests in historical
Mechanisms of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire
The success of Islamic imperialism in the period from the conquests to the Ayyubid dynasty has traditionally been explained as purely the result of military might. This book, however, adopts a bottom-up approach which puts social relationships and local power dynamics at the centre of the Islamic empire's cohesion. Its chapters draw on sources in diverse languages: not just Arabic, but also Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Hebrew, and Bactrian, showing how…
Mechanisms of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire
Qurʾān Quotations Preserved on Papyrus Documents, 7th–10th Centuries. And The Problem of Carbon Dating Early Qurʾāns, edited by Andreas Kaplony and Michael Marx
How to Ask in the Medieval World: An Introduction
The essays gathered in this thematic issue analyze the strategies of entreaty employed by letter-writers and petitioners across the social spectrum and from a diverse range of medieval Afro-Eurasian cultures, enabling the comparison of shared rhetorical techniques as well as the specific contexts of their making and transmission. Each essay focuses on a single letter or epistolary corpus as exemplary, providing full English translations and, wher…
Maintaining Friendship and Commercial Relations in Eighth-Century Egypt: Three Letters from Abū Yūsuf to Abū Yazīd
Three Arabic papyrus letters written by the same individual in the eighth ce or second ah century Fayyum oasis in Egypt now kept in the Austrian National Library describe the activities of a group of closely related Jewish merchants. The author of all three letters applies linguistic and calligraphic epistolary rhetoric to support his letters' messages as his financial and personal circumstances deteriorate. He makes use thereby of the expectatio…
Amulets and Talismans of the Middle East and North Africa in Context: Transmission, Efficacy and Collections
Rooijakkers of lucis for their assistance during the publication process.The organisational, communication and copyediting skills of Birte Kristiansen and Nynke van der Veldt were crucial at several stages.The book that lies in front of you surely thanks its solid and beautiful form to their steady and supportive input along the way.We would like to thank the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies and the European Research Council who finan…
Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean World: From Constantinople to Baghdad, 500-1000 CE
During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in the Mediterranean during this period. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, the individual chapters detail its connections with imperial and schol…
Closing Ranks: Discipline and Loyalty in the Umayyad Army
Soon after his arrival as newly appointed governor of Iraq, al-Ḥajjāj (d. 95/714) faced a standoff with a prominent member of the Baṣran garrison, Ibn al-Jārūd al-ʿAbdī (d. 76/695). In this article, I track the course of this rebellion as an example of a political system that, lacking a hegemonic system of coercion and control, was rather characterized by multiple overlapping centers authority in which the caliph, his governor, and those under th…
Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies: Studies in Honour of Rudolph Peters
This volume is a tribute to the work of legal and social historian and Arabist Rudolph Peters (University of Amsterdam). Presenting case studies from different periods and areas of the Muslim world, the book examines the use of legal documents for the study of the history of Muslim societies. From examinations of the conceptual status of legal documents to comparative studies of the development of legal formulae and the socio-economic or politica…
An Early Umayyad Papyrus Invitation for the Ḥajj
This letter, written on papyrus, was found in Egypt, where both men were probably living at the time it was sent, and it is now housed in the Oriental Institute Museum collection at the University of Chicago. It is the earliest documentary evidence for the ajj currently
Shaping a Muslim State: The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official
Shaping a Muslim State provides a synthetic study of the political, social, and economic processes which formed early Islamic Egypt. Looking at a corpus of previously unknown Arabic papyrus letters, dating from between AD 730 and 750, which were written to a Muslim administrator and merchant in the Fayyum oasis in Egypt, Sijpesteijn examines the reasons for the success of the early Arab conquests and the transition from the pre-Islamic Byzantine …
Shaping A Muslim State The World Of A Mideighthcentury Egyptian Official
"Shaping a Muslim State provides a synthetic study of the political, social, and economic processes which formed early Islamic Egypt. Looking at a corpus of previously unknown Arabic papyrus letters, dating from between AD 730 and 750, which were written to a Muslim administrator and merchant in the Fayyum oasis in Egypt, Sijpesteijn examines the reasons for the success of the early Arab conquests and the transition from the pre-Islamic Byzantine…
About the collection of jizya
This chapter presents a letter written by Jarīd b. Asʽad to ʽAbd Allāh b. Asʽad concerning the collection of jizya. Jarīd writes that the jizya should only be paid over the harvest and that ʽAbd Allāh should only start the tax collection once the harvest has taken place.
Concerning some urgent business
This chapter presents a letter where neither the names of Nājid nor ʽAbd Allāh appear. However, the vocabulary, expressions used, and the contents of the letter assure that it belongs to the dossier. In it, Nājid informs ʽAbd Allāh about an order of the amīr which he had previously told him about, urging him to take care of it himself, supervise it closely, and appoint someone over it whom he trusts.
Letter related to the tax collection
This chapter presents a letter where Nājid tells ʽAbd Allāh b. Asʽad that a third person has informed him that some people have paid something, presumably their taxes. ʽAbd Allāh has appointed a third person to deliver the taxes and Nājid asks him to collect some more taxes.
Request to buy fifteen dīnārs worth of wheat
This chapter presents a letter where Nājid b. Muslim informs ʽAbd Allāh of a request he received from ʽAwn b. Nāfiʽ to buy him fifteen dīnārs worth of wheat. Nājid writes that ʽAbd Allāh, is obliged by his qawm to take care of the matter for an honourable person. He asks that ʽAbd Allāh reports on how he dealt with this issue.
Letter related to administrative matters
This chapter presents a letter in which Nājid b. Muslim tells ʽAbd Allāh b. Asʽad that he has heard that some inhabitants of the villages under the latter's responsibility have caused him harm in some way. Nājid states that he will send some official presumably to help ʽAbd Allāh deal with the villagers.
Qur’ān
Qur'ān, recital or reading in Arabic, is the Islamic scripture which was revealed in Arabic to the Prophet of Islam, Mu, by God through the agency of the archangel Gabriel.
Muḥammad
Muḥammad, the prophet of Islam, was born in Mecca in 570 CE into the Banū Hāshim clan of the tribe of Quraysh and died in 632 (11 AH ) in Medina.
Hijra
This term is usually associated with Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina, which Muslim tradition places in September 622 CE .
Amr
Muslim commander, conqueror, and first governor of the Muslim province of Egypt, ‘Amr b. al‐‘Ās was a wealthy Meccan merchant of the Quraysh, who had also frequented the greater Syrian area during his caravan trips.
Nessana
Nessana was a town (Arab ‘Awjā al‐Ḥafīr) in the Negev desert near the current Israeli‐Egyptian border. Lying on the ancient trade route connecting Sinaï with Beer Sheba and on to Gaza and Jerusalem, the town functioned as a military checkpoint and way station for pilgrims and other travelers.
Histories of the Middle East: Studies in Middle Eastern Society, Economy and Law in Honor of A.L. Udovitch
For four decades Abraham L. Udovitch has been a leading scholar of the medieval Islamic world, its economic institutions, social structures, and legal theory and practice. In pursuing his quest to understand and explain the complex phenomena that these broad rubrics entail, he has published widely, collaborated internationally with other leading scholars of the Middle East and medieval history, and most saliently for the purposes of this volume, …
Landholding Patterns in Early Islamic Egypt
This article examines the impact of the Arab conquests of the 630s and 640s on rural society and fiscal organization in Egypt. Traditional accounts paint a picture of a seventh-century Egypt from which the aristocracy had largely disappeared and in which Arab rulers and administrators communicated directly with village communities. Drawing upon the testimony of seventh-century documentary papyri, this essay reveals the continued role of Christian…
Travel and Trade on the River
From al-Andalus to Khurasan: Documents from the medieval Muslim world
As in many areas of pre-modern history, the study of medieval Islamic history has been critically hindered by the lack of available evidence. Unlike many parallel fields, however, the shortage of contemporary documentary evidence for medieval Islam has less to do with the survival of documents and archives as with their accessibility. A rich documentary legacy survives, but, because of its inaccessibility and unfamiliarity to all but the most spe…
Landholding Patterns in Early Islamic Egypt
This article examines the impact of the Arab conquests of the 630s and 640s on rural society and fiscal organization in Egypt. Traditional accounts paint a picture of a seventh-century Egypt from which the aristocracy had largely disappeared and in which Arab rulers and administrators communicated directly with village communities. Drawing upon the testimony of seventh-century documentary papyri, this essay reveals the continued role of Christian…
Histories of the Middle East: Studies in Middle Eastern society, economy and law in honor of A.L. Udovitch
Histories of the Middle East: Studies in Middle Eastern Society, Economy and Law in Honor of A.L. Udovitch
For four decades Abraham L. Udovitch has been a leading scholar of the medieval Islamic world, its economic institutions, social structures, and legal theory and practice. In pursuing his quest to understand and explain the complex phenomena that these broad rubrics entail, he has published widely, collaborated internationally with other leading scholars of the Middle East and medieval history, and most saliently for the purposes of this volume, …
Qur’ān
Qur'ān, recital or reading in Arabic, is the Islamic scripture which was revealed in Arabic to the Prophet of Islam, Mu, by God through the agency of the archangel Gabriel.
Muḥammad
Muḥammad, the prophet of Islam, was born in Mecca in 570 CE into the Banū Hāshim clan of the tribe of Quraysh and died in 632 (11 AH ) in Medina.
Hijra
This term is usually associated with Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina, which Muslim tradition places in September 622 CE .
Amr
Muslim commander, conqueror, and first governor of the Muslim province of Egypt, ‘Amr b. al‐‘Ās was a wealthy Meccan merchant of the Quraysh, who had also frequented the greater Syrian area during his caravan trips.
Nessana
Nessana was a town (Arab ‘Awjā al‐Ḥafīr) in the Negev desert near the current Israeli‐Egyptian border. Lying on the ancient trade route connecting Sinaï with Beer Sheba and on to Gaza and Jerusalem, the town functioned as a military checkpoint and way station for pilgrims and other travelers.
Shaping a Muslim State: The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official
Shaping a Muslim State provides a synthetic study of the political, social, and economic processes which formed early Islamic Egypt. Looking at a corpus of previously unknown Arabic papyrus letters, dating from between AD 730 and 750, which were written to a Muslim administrator and merchant in the Fayyum oasis in Egypt, Sijpesteijn examines the reasons for the success of the early Arab conquests and the transition from the pre-Islamic Byzantine …
Shaping A Muslim State The World Of A Mideighthcentury Egyptian Official
"Shaping a Muslim State provides a synthetic study of the political, social, and economic processes which formed early Islamic Egypt. Looking at a corpus of previously unknown Arabic papyrus letters, dating from between AD 730 and 750, which were written to a Muslim administrator and merchant in the Fayyum oasis in Egypt, Sijpesteijn examines the reasons for the success of the early Arab conquests and the transition from the pre-Islamic Byzantine…
About the collection of jizya
This chapter presents a letter written by Jarīd b. Asʽad to ʽAbd Allāh b. Asʽad concerning the collection of jizya. Jarīd writes that the jizya should only be paid over the harvest and that ʽAbd Allāh should only start the tax collection once the harvest has taken place.
Concerning some urgent business
This chapter presents a letter where neither the names of Nājid nor ʽAbd Allāh appear. However, the vocabulary, expressions used, and the contents of the letter assure that it belongs to the dossier. In it, Nājid informs ʽAbd Allāh about an order of the amīr which he had previously told him about, urging him to take care of it himself, supervise it closely, and appoint someone over it whom he trusts.
Letter related to the tax collection
This chapter presents a letter where Nājid tells ʽAbd Allāh b. Asʽad that a third person has informed him that some people have paid something, presumably their taxes. ʽAbd Allāh has appointed a third person to deliver the taxes and Nājid asks him to collect some more taxes.
Request to buy fifteen dīnārs worth of wheat
This chapter presents a letter where Nājid b. Muslim informs ʽAbd Allāh of a request he received from ʽAwn b. Nāfiʽ to buy him fifteen dīnārs worth of wheat. Nājid writes that ʽAbd Allāh, is obliged by his qawm to take care of the matter for an honourable person. He asks that ʽAbd Allāh reports on how he dealt with this issue.
Letter related to administrative matters
This chapter presents a letter in which Nājid b. Muslim tells ʽAbd Allāh b. Asʽad that he has heard that some inhabitants of the villages under the latter's responsibility have caused him harm in some way. Nājid states that he will send some official presumably to help ʽAbd Allāh deal with the villagers.
An Early Umayyad Papyrus Invitation for the Ḥajj
This letter, written on papyrus, was found in Egypt, where both men were probably living at the time it was sent, and it is now housed in the Oriental Institute Museum collection at the University of Chicago. It is the earliest documentary evidence for the ajj currently
Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies: Studies in Honour of Rudolph Peters
This volume is a tribute to the work of legal and social historian and Arabist Rudolph Peters (University of Amsterdam). Presenting case studies from different periods and areas of the Muslim world, the book examines the use of legal documents for the study of the history of Muslim societies. From examinations of the conceptual status of legal documents to comparative studies of the development of legal formulae and the socio-economic or politica…
Amulets and Talismans of the Middle East and North Africa in Context: Transmission, Efficacy and Collections
Rooijakkers of lucis for their assistance during the publication process.The organisational, communication and copyediting skills of Birte Kristiansen and Nynke van der Veldt were crucial at several stages.The book that lies in front of you surely thanks its solid and beautiful form to their steady and supportive input along the way.We would like to thank the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies and the European Research Council who finan…
Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean World: From Constantinople to Baghdad, 500-1000 CE
During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in the Mediterranean during this period. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, the individual chapters detail its connections with imperial and schol…
Closing Ranks: Discipline and Loyalty in the Umayyad Army
Soon after his arrival as newly appointed governor of Iraq, al-Ḥajjāj (d. 95/714) faced a standoff with a prominent member of the Baṣran garrison, Ibn al-Jārūd al-ʿAbdī (d. 76/695). In this article, I track the course of this rebellion as an example of a political system that, lacking a hegemonic system of coercion and control, was rather characterized by multiple overlapping centers authority in which the caliph, his governor, and those under th…
Qurʾān Quotations Preserved on Papyrus Documents, 7th–10th Centuries. And The Problem of Carbon Dating Early Qurʾāns, edited by Andreas Kaplony and Michael Marx
How to Ask in the Medieval World: An Introduction
The essays gathered in this thematic issue analyze the strategies of entreaty employed by letter-writers and petitioners across the social spectrum and from a diverse range of medieval Afro-Eurasian cultures, enabling the comparison of shared rhetorical techniques as well as the specific contexts of their making and transmission. Each essay focuses on a single letter or epistolary corpus as exemplary, providing full English translations and, wher…
Maintaining Friendship and Commercial Relations in Eighth-Century Egypt: Three Letters from Abū Yūsuf to Abū Yazīd
Three Arabic papyrus letters written by the same individual in the eighth ce or second ah century Fayyum oasis in Egypt now kept in the Austrian National Library describe the activities of a group of closely related Jewish merchants. The author of all three letters applies linguistic and calligraphic epistolary rhetoric to support his letters' messages as his financial and personal circumstances deteriorate. He makes use thereby of the expectatio…
History (13 works) · Islamic Studies and History (13 works) · Archaeology (9 works) · Ancient history (8 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (8 works) · Islam (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Geography (6 works)