It was during the second campaign of the German excavations at Samarra (1912-1913) that Ernst Herzfeld found in the ruins of Samarra among many other objects a group of seven Arabic texts written on papyrus, paper and marble (below nos. 1-7)². A good number of important inscriptions and graffiti have likewise been found³. However, since they do not belong to the field of papyrology in the narrower sense, they are to be excluded here. This concerns also a line in Arabic written with indigo colour on a white wall⁴. The only exception to be made is a piece of embroidered linen cloth (Arab. ṭirᾱz) that had been found together with the other texts on the same spot and will be included here for reasons of dating (below no. 8). The objects have entered the Berlin Museum of Islamic Art (SMB) where they are preserved to this day. Yet, their accessibility and historical significance notwithstanding, they have never been properly edited⁵.

Lack of training was not necessarily the reason, since Herzfeld was not only an architect and archaeologist but also a philologist and polyhistorian⁶. Already in his short version of the second campaign’s excavation report, he had mentioned the textual objects, and we can suppose that he properly assessed their historical significance⁷. However, it was the sheer mass of outstanding textless objects from Samarra – first and foremost the architecture and the famous stucco paintings – that had eclipsed the few textual items. Moreover the general working conditions were hard enough for Herzfeld in the following decades, since they were dominated by a series of concomitant circumstances that hindered him from finishing his work in his lifetime: the tangled political situation and the international travel ban in post-World War I Germany; the dispersal of the Samarra findings among several European and American collections after 1917; later on in the 1920s, a lack of time, reduced budgets and unreliable financial support; and still later in the 1930s, adverse political conditions and racial discrimination in Germany and eventual emigration to the United States in 1936⁸.

In the decade after 1920, Herzfeld successively published his Samarra findings in a series of monographs⁹. He concentrated his focus on the textless objects first and came to deal with the admittedly few texts only in his last book that was published posthumously. Here the papyri are given short descriptions of their outward appearance together with suggestions of their possible internal contents, together with not a few readings as well as breathtakingly exact drawings and casual photographs¹⁰. However, the book contains no full editions of the texts. Moreover, Herzfeld’s occasional verbatim readings are incorrect and misleading, a fact that should not surprise us given the palaeographic challenges and fragmentary conditions of the papyri. Be it as it may – his effort to publish the texts in whatever preliminary manner is at any rate meritorious.

In the meantime the Samarra documents had aroused the interest of a devoted philologist: Adolf Grohmann, Professor for Semitic languages and Islamic cultural history in Prague 1924-1945, had started in the first days of 1944 an exchange of letters with the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin, asking about the state of the Samarra papyri. We can presume that his main motivation at this moment was a concern for the objects’ fate, since the museum had immediately before suffered a series of heavy bombings. Herzfeld, on the other hand, had not published his work on the papyri and was not in Europe any more. The museum’s director, Ernst Kühnel, replied immediately¹¹. Three weeks later he sent Herzfeld’s manuscript together with photographs of some of the papyri (not all) to Grohmann¹². This had happened obviously without Herzfeld’s knowledge, since wartime communication with colleagues in America was at that time not possible (and perhaps not intended). Kühnel obviously had intended to make Grohmann continue Herzfeld’s work – or should one rather say: to yield the tricky yet important texts to the better philologist? Accordingly the papyrologist began work and later that year sent back to Berlin a first list, in which he rejected or corrected almost all of Herzfeld’s readings¹³. These corrections were even published, too late though to find their way into Herzfeld’s 1948 book that went to press without consulting Kühnel and Grohmann, as it seems¹⁴. Thus Grohmann publicly and repeatedly announced that he had set himself to work on a proper edition of the texts¹⁵. This venture was never tackled by him, however, for reasons unknown to us. We can only guess that it was his own overload with other urgent projects or personal turbulence in the aftermath of his NS-career in Prague that hindered his progress¹⁶. His personal Nachlass bears no trace of even the slightest preparatory steps.

Inspired by the significance of the texts, I am currently preparing a full edition that will include longer commentaries as well as an in-depth analysis of the historical content. For the time being, an overview of the contents of the texts and their functional background will suffice. The order of presentation corresponds to the consecutive numbering in my projected edition.

1. Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art inv. I.7750.1

Compilation of Egyptian tax payments. Papyrus. 38 x 26,5 cm. 221-278 AH/AD 836-892.

The entries are grouped and declared in gold currency (dinars) and subsequently converted into their equivalent in silver drachmae at the bottom of the document. The final sum of incoming taxes amounts to more than 1 million drachmae. The account is written on a papyrus of fine quality and with an experienced and lavishly executed chancery script. The back is empty¹⁷.

2 Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art inv. I.7750.2

Receipt for payment of gold dinars. Papyrus. 16,5 x 27 cm. 221-278 AH/AD 836-892.

The amount of money received adds up to 44 gold dinars. The quality of the papyrus is similar to that of no. 1. The document is written in a likewise experienced chancery script in a different hand¹⁸.

3 Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art (no inv. no.)

Official report from Dihistān. Paper. 12 x 8,5 cm. 221-278 AH/AD 836-892.

This fragment of an administrative letter offers insight into contemporaneous political events in one of the empire’s eastern border territories. It seems to have been written by a high official responsible for the stability of that region. The province of Dihistān (Dahestan) was located on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea in what is nowadays Turkmenistan. During the tenth century AD it was a zone of storm and stress with a Turkmen population that had not yet converted to Islam. The back is left empty¹⁹.

4 Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art (no inv. no.)

Legal deed. Paper. 4x7,5 cm. 221-278 AH/AD 836-892.

The fragment bears writing on both front and back. The back is dated to the month of Muharram of an unknown year²⁰.

5 Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art (no inv. no.)

Inventory of ready money. Paper. 8 x 5,5 cm. 221-278 AH/AD 836-892.

Two paper fragments contain remnants of three lines of text on both front and back. Back mentions an amount of ten miṯqāls (weight unit)²¹.

6 Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art inv. 597

Unidentified content. Paper. 221-278 AH/AD 836-892.

Small fragment. Remnants of single letters on front²².

7 Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art inv. 768

Marble tile. 17 x 15 x 2 cm. 221-278 AH/AD 836-892.

The tile contains lines of Arabic written with ink. Herzfeld interpreted them as a letter («eine Mitteilung») together with an address line²³. Grohmann refuted this explanation, pointing out not only a dittography but also the fact that the address line and the body of the letter had been written by two different hands (and presumably on two different occasions). He therefore interpreted the text as a mere writing exercise («pen trials»)²⁴. We cannot reach a final decision here, but keep in mind that other marble tiles had been found in Syria that actually do contain Arabic or Greek letters²⁵. The object seems to have been reused more than one time, the older lines having been washed away before writing again. A similar object that originally belonged to the German Samarra findings (Berlin Islamic Museum inv. 266) is now kept in the British Museum in London²⁶.

8 Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art (no inv. no.)

Linen with ṭirāz inscription. 11 cm. 221-278 AH/AD 836-892.

This object had already been published by Ernst Kühnel in 1924²⁷. It is a strip of white linen of 11 cm length that had been produced in the Egyptian delta town of Tinnīs. It carries an Arabic inscription (Arab. ṭirāz) embroidered in red silk²⁸. The inscription mentions the Abbasid caliph al-Mu ’tamid ’alā llāh, who ruled between AD 870 and 892 and under whose rule the caliphal administration returned to Baghdad in AD 883. The mention of this caliph is a terminus ante quem for dating the texts presented here, since they have been found together at a spot that was physically abandoned in AD 892. The city of Samarra was of course not abandoned within one day. However we can be quite sure that documents dealing with imperial administration and written on fine papyrus and in chancery script had not been produced anymore in Samarra after the court had moved back to Baghdad. We can thus assume a time slot of AD 836-892 for the production of the Samarra texts, if we take into account the court’s move from Baghdad to Samarra as the earliest and its abandonment as the official capital as the latest possible years²⁹.

The texts on their own might not seem comprehensive at first sight. However it is the archaeological context that makes them a source of high importance and their edition a rewarding enterprise. In fact they do have a long story to tell, provided that the right questions are posed to them.

Most striking at first sight is their provenance from Mesopotamia, the centre of Abbasid power. They thus provide a link so far missing between the western parts of Islamic civilisation (Spain, Egypt, and let us say even Syria) and its eastern (Khurasan, Central Asia) in the context of original documents found up to now³⁰. Important aspects of documentary practice, language use, and administrative procedure can be highlighted. Even the frame of political events may be touched on by details such as the news from the frontier province (text no. 3) or the yearly tributes that Egypt apparently still paid although it in fact had become independent from the Abbasids under its own local Ṭūlūnid dynasty (text no. 1). The texts, however, serve not only as a corrective to the abundant Egyptian documentation in terms of geography. There is also a significant contrast to be noted in regards to their respective administrative background: whereas the Samarra documents have been found in a centre of Caliphal rule with high level administration, the Egyptian material consistently depicts the circumstances at middle and lower levels of administration at a provincial level. The Samarra documents contribute to research on the nature of empires and the interplay between imperial centres and provincial peripheries, such as that currently conducted inter alia by the ongoing Austrian National Research Network (NFN) Imperium and Officium: Comparative Studies in Ancient Bureaucracy and Officialdom³¹.

Moreover there is the relatively rare circumstance that the Samarra documents have been found in a specific archaeological context, in this case a palace complex in the centre of an empire³². The interpretation of the texts benefits considerably from the surrounding archaeological evidence. In return the archaeological evidence can be substantiated by the texts³³. One example of interplay between archaeological and textual remains may suffice: the texts presented here have been found by Herzfeld inside the caliphal palace (Arab. dār al-ḫilāfa; or in Herzfeld’s terminology: the Ğawsaq al-Ḫāqānī) that was founded in AD 836 under the reign of al-Mu ’tasim. More precisely, they were found in a room that Herzfeld had classified as the palace’s «harem», i.e. its most private part where the caliph’s women were shielded from the public³⁴. Already in 1960 Dominique Sourdel doubted this interpretation, pointing to the fact that the room was located too closely to the caliph’s public audience hall to be a private residence³⁵. Alastair Northedge has recently, and very convincingly, argued that this so-called harem was rather a part of the public palace, the «house of the public» (Arab. dār al- ‘āmma) as it is called in the literary sources³⁶. If it proves true, though, that the «harem» was rather an audience hall where the caliph met his people, then we can assume that the Samarra documents were found in situ, in their immediate context of administrative procedure. In fact we know that this palace was not abandoned after al-Mu ‘taṣim’s successors had founded their own respective palaces in Samarra. Rather it continued to fulfil a public function until Samarra was finally abandoned in AD 892³⁷. This is, however, an important affirmation of what we had concluded previously from internal indicators only (papyrus of fine quality; skilled chancery script; large sums of money mentioned in papyri no. 1 and 2; military matters mentioned in text no. 3): that the texts are of an administrative nature and were directly related to procedures at the high imperial level.

Finally the Samarra documents were produced at a decisive moment of history, when the medium changed from papyrus to paper in the Near East³⁸. Arabic literary sources seem to agree that paper came into widespread use at the expense of papyrus already by the end of the eighth century AD, at least in the eastern part of the Islamic empire³⁹. In our case at hand, part of the material is still written on papyrus, while other documents are already on paper. Given the fact that some of them were written in Samarra proper – nos. 1 and 2 look as if they were rewritten in Samarra on the basis of documents that had come in from Egypt –, this would prove that papyrus had still been in active use in Iraq in the ninth century AD, i.e. 50-100 years after the writing material used had supposedly shifted to paper in that area. On the other hand, the papers among the Samarra documents presumably found their origin in more eastern parts of the empire and belong to the earliest of all datable Arabic paper documents⁴⁰. Altogether the Samarra texts mirror chancery practices from different regions (no. 3 was produced in Dihistān) yet from the same time period. They allow comparative investigation in regard to the use of different writing materials, of palaeographic features or of formulary use. As has been shown by Geoffrey Khan with a recently discovered archive from Khurasan, even broader cultural developments and interactions can be discovered that otherwise would have remained all but undetected⁴¹.