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Document Details : Title: A Companion of Muḥammad in the Oldest Egyptian Bilingual Entagion Author(s): VANTHIEGHEM, Naïm , WEITZ, Lev Journal: Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists Volume: 58 Date: 2021 Pages: 203-214 DOI: 10.2143/BASP.58.0.3289956 Abstract : Edition of a bilingual Arabic-Greek entagion in the collection of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, issued, in either 50/670 or 60/680, by Maslama b. Muḫallad, one of Muḥammad’s Companions and governor of Egypt from 47/667 to 62/682. The entagion is addressed to the people of Tebtynis and is one of few pieces of evidence for this important village in the earliest Islamic period. It is also the oldest known dated bilingual entagion from Egypt, antedating by a decade or more the Marwānid period, when Arabic literary sources suggest that the caliphal government formally adopted Arabic as its administrative language. It thus attests to the joint operation of Greek and Arabic scribal traditions at the highest offices of the Egyptian administration at an earlier date than has sometimes been supposed and urges us to reconsider the standard chronology of administrative Arabization in the caliphate. |
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