The transition from Byzantine to Islamic Egypt is a trending topic in current scholarship – and rightly so, since this area has been neglected for a long time. Interest in Islam and Christian-Muslim interactions has been sky-rocketing since 9/11 and has stimulated research in many areas, and Egypt is no exception. The Arabs conquered the country in 641 and the Nile Valley's slow transformation from a predominantly Coptic- and Greek-speaking, Christian country into an Arabic-speaking, Islamic one began. The attraction of Egypt lies above all in the wide range of sources which can be consulted. Besides a literary tradition, archaeological remains, inscriptions and a huge (but still mostly unpublished) amount of documentary texts in Greek, Coptic and Arabic offer deep insights into the extent of change and continuity in early Islamic Egypt. The justifiably increasing specialisation renders it difficult to obtain an overview of the vast source material. Maged S. A. Mikhail engages in this arduous task for roughly the seventh to the tenth century.
Mikhail discusses a variety of aspects relating to the transition from Byzantine to Islamic Egypt. His focus is mainly on religion, language and identity. The argument is structured into twelve essayistic chapters which are backed up by rich endnotes. His conclusions are conveniently summed up in the last chapter. He emphasises his ‘revisionist’ approach, which means that he does not presuppose the existence of a ‘Coptic’ anti-Chalcedonian faction at odds with a ‘Greek’ Chalcedonian one. This opposition was created in ninth- and tenth-century historiography, when the identifications of language with creed (Coptic/orthodox, Greek/heretical, Arabic/Muslim) were born. Mikhail's analysis of various sources (liturgy, historiography, papyri) shows that this view cannot be projected back on the earlier periods. The division arose because of the need to create ‘clear boundaries within a social milieu that increasingly lacked visible markers’ (p. 257).
The development of the Arab Muslim community is another focus of the monograph. Mikhail scrutinises how a primarly tribally organised community developed into an agrarian and predominantly urban one. The manifold socio-political changes of the eighth century played a crucial role in this process. Beginning with the ninth century a more unified, homogenous culture appeared in Egypt. Christians and Muslims lived in a multicultural society and not in two separate worlds. The development of church institutions and liturgy are also thoroughly discussed. Especially interesting is the analysis of the interactions of the Melkite and anti-Chalcedonian Churches with each other and with the Muslim government.
Unfortunately, the rich endnotes include many inaccuracies, and typos are not infrequent throughout the book.Footnote 1 Citations and references are also sometimes unreliable.Footnote 2 Here I will allow myself to comment on certain passages in Mikhail's argument which concern my own field of specialisation, papyrology. A more attentive look every now and then would have benefitted Mikhail's argument. Mikhail repeatedly refers to the ‘accident of preservation’ (for instance pp. 79–80, 99) in the case of papyri. This is a simplification of complex methodological issues. The ‘taphonomy’ of ancient texts is a complicated topic and what is preserved is certainly not random.Footnote 3 Further, there are gaps in the bibliography: the oeuvre of the leading specialist on Greek papyri from early Islamic Egypt, Federico Morelli, is, for instance, almost entirely ignored. Mikhail's argumentation could have benefitted at several points from Morelli's scholarship. Also several minor misunderstandings concerning papyri can be found.Footnote 4
Some questions of detail: on p. 93 Mikhail claims that ‘most Coptic-speaking Muslims encountered in documentary texts were first-generation converts’. This sentence is backed up by n. 78 (p. 312) which simply refers to P.Ryl.Copt. 324, 346, two letters addressed by Muslims to Christians. Such a strong claim would need more solid argumentation than these two references, which in fact are not even relevant to the question. Both texts come from an administrative context, and their similarly structured address is common in letters issued by Arab officials (both letters are erroneously referred to as ‘personal correspondence’ on p. 104). These letters tell us nothing about the language or ethnicity of the senders, since they must have been written by their secretaries (P.Ryl.Copt. 346 even begins with a cross). So there is no way telling whether they were Egyptian converts or Arab Muslims.Footnote 5
The claim on p. 95 that ‘the 705 Arabizing edict led Christian elites to adopt the [Arabic] language and to teach their children as preparation for securing administrative appointments and the possibility of social mobility’ and later ‘Christian elites along with their children acquired proficiency in the Arabic language during the first half of the eighth century’ is heavily debatable. As the author himself admits (p. 81), the effect of this edict is not immediately visible in the sources. Similarly, on p. 153, Mikhail states that ‘in 99/718, however, an administrative reform replaced Coptic officials in rural districts with Muslim personnel … this reform inevitably weakened local notables, such as the lashane‘. This is generally true, but Muslim officials appear only seldom appear at the village level in the eighth century. This edict probably did not have an immediate effect either.
On pp. 181–2 Mikhail argues that Egyptians had no problems with switching to Muslim rulers from their former Christian emperors in prayers and everyday formulas. But the fact that Coptic documents contain oaths by ‘the health of our lords [who] rule over us’ can also be interpreted as a conscious avoidance of mentioning the Arab rulers, especially since official texts sometimes include similar formulas referring to the health of the ‘amīrs’ (for example P.Laur. 3.112–17).
Despite these minor remarks, Mikhail's monograph is an important contribution to the study of the transition from Byzantine to early Islamic Egypt. The main merit of the book is that it places the historical developments of seventh–tenth-century Egypt in a modern framework. His interdisciplinary approach is also certainly to be praised. Nevertheless, despite the often convincing argumentation and stimulating ideas, this book should be read with some caution due to its not infrequent inaccuracies. For an introduction to the problems of the transition from Byzantine to Islamic Egypt it should be certainly studied in tandem with Petra Sijpesteijn's recent Shaping a Muslim state: the world of a mid-eighth-century Egyptian official (Oxford 2013).
