Abd al-Malik by Chase Robinson

Author:Chase Robinson [Robinson, Chase]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780741864
Publisher: Oneworld Publications

Fiscal Policies

Changes in the army mirrored changes in the administration: just as ‘Abd al-Malik imposed a measure of direct control over the army by replacing tribal chieftains with salaried commanders, so too did he impose a measure of direct control over taxation. What we seem to have is not just an example of how levying taxes and maintaining armies are closely related, with changes in one effecting changes in the other. Rather, we seem to have an example of an altogether new model of rule being imposed. And since clear evidence for this new model appears well before ‘Abd al-Malik had taken control of Iraq, we can assume that he came to power in Syria with – and perhaps even because of – this model.

We can see this because of the serendipitous survival of a small collection of Greek papyri from a small town in historical Palestine (in the modern-day Israeli Negev), called Nessana, which date from the mid- to late seventh century. There we can chart three things. The first is that continuity of administrative traditions that I hinted at earlier: the Nessana papyri are in Greek, as they are in parallel documents found in Egypt (where we also have bilingual papyri in Greek and Arabic). The second is irregular tribute-taking, which is familiar to us from other regions, such as northern Mesopotamia; there too, it very clearly featured through the 680s. The third is a series of unprecedented fiscal measures, including a survey of properties and census of people; one papyrus also describes how the “commander of the faithful,” ‘Abd al-Malik, authorized payments to Arab (and thus presumably Muslim) soldiers. The date of these measures belongs to the mid-680s; and the “daybook” that records ‘Abd al-Malik’s authority may even have been written as early as 685 – the year when ‘Abd al-Malik rose to power in Syria. Even if the inferential dating of 685 is in error, there can be no doubt that ‘Abd al-Malik set about effecting a fiscal revolution even before he had successfully completed his rebellion against Ibn al-Zubayr.

Taking control of a region thus meant making it a province of his empire by imposing new, more-or-less uniform fiscal policies: the evidence tells us that what happened in Syria in the mid- to late 680s would happen in Egypt and northern Mesopotamia in the early to mid-690s, and we can fairly assume that it did elsewhere, even if we lack the evidence to show it. The results naturally varied from region to region, but where we can see them at all clearly, they were the extension and increase of tax liability (in some places a poll-tax is introduced; monks first become liable), an increase in coercion and/or efficiency (peasants begin to flee to avoid taxation; tokens are first used to signal tax liabilities); and the Arabicization and Islamicization of the fisc: not only do the Greek and Greek-Arabic bilingual papyri give way to exclusively Arabic papyri, but positions that had been held by non-Muslims were now increasingly (if never fully) filled by Muslims.

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