Journal of Abbasid Studies � (�0�4) 7-��

brill.com/jas

Reconstructing Archival Practices in

Abbasid Baghdad

Maaike van Berkel

University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
m.l.m.vanberkel@uva.nl

Abstract

The Abbasid administration relied extensively on the use of written documents. The
central administrative apparatus in Baghdad, with its numerous specialised bureaus,
seems to have been one of the main producers of documents and it must have pos-
sessed some of the largest archives of its era. However, only few documents issued by
and written for the central administration have survived in their original form. Through
an analysis of references found in narrative sources, this article seeks to provide a
reconstruction of the functioning of the archives of the central administration in
Baghdad during the caliphate of al-Muqtadir (r. 295/908-320/932).

Keywords

Abbasid administration – narrative sources – archival practices – writerly culture

Introduction

In the course of the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries the Abbasids built
up an extensive and specialised bureaucratic apparatus. This administration
relied heavily upon the use of written documents. Narrative sources testify to
the production and spread as well as archiving of large numbers and types of
written documents throughout the empire. The central administrative appara-
tus in Baghdad, with its numerous specialised bureaus, seems to have been one

* I would like to thank Letizia Osti, Claire Weeda, and Johan Weststeijn for carefully reading
and commenting on an earlier version of this article.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi �0.��63/���4�37�-��340003

8 van berkel

of the main producers of documents. The preservation of (copies of) these

documents, together with the storage of records produced by the provincial
administrations which had been sent to Baghdad, must have generated some
of the largest archives of the period.
The archives of Baghdad did not stand the ravages of time. Only a few docu-
ments issued by and written for the central administration have survived in
their original form. The narrative sources, however, contain numerous refer-
ences to the ways in which documents were preserved and used. On the
basis of these references this article will provide a reconstruction of the func-
tioning of the archives of the central administration in Baghdad during the
caliphate of al-Muqtadir (r. 295/908-320/932), a period particularly rich in
extant narratives on administrative practices.
A persistent misunderstanding holds that the Middle East lacked any
archives before the arrival of the Ottomans. Evidence against this claim, first
and foremost in the form of actual (collections of) documents, is overwhelm-
ing and has been provided in many recent studies.1 However, until today the
assumption of an absence of archives continues to inspire scholars to formu-
late essentialist theses both explaining the alleged lack of interest in archiving
(generally in terms of cultural traditions) and describing its long-term negative
effects on the Middle East as a region (especially in comparison to Europe).2
Very recently, in an excellent article in al-Qantara, Tamer el-Leithy made a
plea for moving beyond this binary argument of absence or presence of
archives in the medieval Middle East, in the direction of analysing the actual
workings of these archives. He argues convincingly against a Eurocentric and
static interpretation of the concept of archive. Instead he suggests investigat-
ing various archival practices and strategies in their historical context, as part
of the worlds that produced them.3
In line with el-Leithy’s research agenda, I will analyse late third/ninth-early
fourth/tenth century archival practices within the central administrative
apparatus in Baghdad. The two parts of this article will successively discuss the

1 See, for example, Rustow, A Petition; Sijpesteijn, Archival Mind; idem, Multilingual Archives;
idem, Shaping a Muslim State; also Bauden, Du destin des archives.
2 For an explanation of the lack of interest, see, for example, Chamberlain, Knowledge and
Social Practice, 14: “[people] did not brandish documents as proofs of hereditary status, privi-
lege, or property to the extent they did in the Latin West. Nor were their strategies of social
reproduction recorded, sanctified, or fought out through documents.” For an explanation of
the long-term results, see Timur Kuran who argues in his The Long Divergence that the bias
against written proof in Islamic law and society prevented the rise of capitalism and led to
the economic and political underdevelopment of the Middle East.
3 El-Leithy, Living Documents.

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Reconstructing Archival Practices in Abbasid Baghdad 9

organisation of the archives and the uses of stored documents in the bureau-
cratic milieu of Baghdad under caliph al-Muqtadir. To do so, I will rely mainly
on narrative sources discussing these practices rather than on the documents
themselves.

Reconstructing Archives Without Documents

While references to letters, surveys, registers, reports, financial accounts and

internal notes issued and received by the central administration in Baghdad
are numerous, only a handful of these documents have survived in their origi-
nal form today. As the only extant original documents from the central admin-
istration, these few documents form an important corpus. They were found
during the second campaign of the German excavations at Samarra (1912-1913),
led by Ernst Herzfeld, and are kept in the Berlin Museum of Islamic Art.4 The
Samarra corpus consists of seven documents, two on papyrus, four on paper
and one marble tile. They contain, among other things, a compilation of
Egyptian tax payments, a quittance of payment, a legal deed and an official
report from the district of Dihistan.5 Rather than delving into their contents,
I will restrict myself in this article to their archaeological context, as this might
shed some light on the question of the preservation of documents in the
Abbasid administration of the period immediately preceding the late third/
ninth and early fourth/tenth centuries.
Obviously, much more documents have survived from the administrations
at the local and provincial levels, first and foremost the extensive collections of
papyrus and paper documents from Egypt. On top of these, there is the recently
discovered corpus of thirty-two administrative and legal Arabic documents on
parchment from North-Eastern Afghanistan produced during the reign of the
Abbasid caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 136/754-158/775).6 None of these collections con-
tain documents — as far as I know — which were issued by or written for the
central administration in Baghdad, but they do provide some information on
provincial or local archival practices, and I will refer to them in that context.

4 Herzfeld, Mitteilung, 202-204; Northedge, Creswell, Herzfeld and Samarra, 79-87.

5 Herzfeld, Samarra, 271-274; Reinfandt, Administrative Papyri.
6 These documents are probably from a private archive of a family in North-Eastern
Afghanistan and mostly deal with local taxes (official quittances for the receipt of taxes,
cadastral surveys and recordings of the renunciation of debts), issued by tax officials under
the authority of a local governor; see Khan, Newly Discovered Arabic Documents.

Journal of Abbasid Studies 1 (2014) 7-22

10 van berkel

As mentioned earlier, most of the findings of this study are based on

narrative sources. I will focus on the late third/ninth and early fourth/tenth
centuries, because this period is relatively rich in sources discussing adminis-
trative practices. The administrative literature — treatises, manuals and expo-
sés generally written for and by scribes, in Arabic also referred to as adab
al-kātib — is a very useful source in reconstructing archives and archival prac-
tices. This genre reached a peak during the late third/ninth and early fourth/
tenth centuries, a period that witnessed the extension of the administrative
apparatus and the consolidation of administrative practices. Examples of
these manuals are Adab al-kātib (“The Education of the Scribe”) by Ibn Qutayba
(d. 276/889); Ṣināʿat al-kuttāb (“The Scribes’ Craft”) by al-Naḥḥās (d. 318/930);
Adab al-kuttāb (“The Education of the Scribes”) by al-Ṣūlī (d. 335/947); a book
of the same title by Ibn Durustawayh (d. 346/957); Ibn Wahb’s (d. 4th/10th c.)
al-Burhān fī wujūh al-bayān (“The Proof Concerning the Means of Com-
munication”); Qudāma b. Jaʿfar’s (d. 337/948) Kitāb al-kharāj (“The Book of
Land Tax”) and ʿAbdallāh al-Baghdādī’s (d. after 255/869) Kitāb al-kuttāb
wa-ṣifat al-dawāt wa-l-qalam wa-taṣrīfuhā (“The Book of Scribes and the
Description of the Inkwell and the Pen and their Use”).7 Particularly fruitful for
this study was the Kitāb al-kharāj by Qudāma b. Jaʿfar, a scribe (kātib) in vari-
ous departments (dīwāns) of the Baghdadi administration during the reign of
caliph al-Muqtadir.
Certainly, the administrative literature also has its limitations, particularly
in its prescriptive nature. Administrative texts lay down the rules for the ideal
bureaucrat and guidelines for running the administrative machinery smoothly.
They describe the ways in which the administration should ideally have been
run rather than how it was actually organised in everyday practice. Their
style and contents follow the literary conventions of the genre. However, with
these limitations in mind, the administrative manuals still contain a wealth
of information on which archival practices were considered appropriate
and effective.
Moreover, administrative manuals can be supplemented by references to
archival practices in other narrative texts, especially histories or anthologies
describing historical figures and situations. Particularly rich on administrative
practices is the Tuḥfat al-umarāʾ fī taʾrīkh al-wuzarā (“A Gift for Princes
Concerning a History of Viziers”) by Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ (d. 448/1056), a scribe in
the Būyid administration. The part from his History of Viziers which survives

7 For a detailed analysis of the administrative genre in this period, see Heck, Construction of
Knowledge, 26-93; for an outline of the representatives of the genre, see Björkman,
Staatskanzlei, 6-16.

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Reconstructing Archival Practices in Abbasid Baghdad 11

contains the descriptions of the viziers of caliph al-Muqtadir. Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ

wrote a century after the time of al-Muqtadir, but based his information on
contemporary witnesses and documents. Notwithstanding their descriptions
of actual historical situations, we should be cautious when valuing these histo-
ries and anthologies as representing the actual day-to-day functioning of the
administration and thus counterbalancing the administrative manuals.
Authors of chronicles and anthologies differed in their interests from com-
pilers of manuals, yet their texts contain similar prescriptive elements.
They often formulate the administrative practices in the form of clichés to be
understood as positive and negative examples of good governance. The work
of Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ is therefore as much a mirror for good governance as it is a
historical account.
Due to the large number of extant narrative sources discussing the Abbasid
administration in the late third/ninth and early fourth/tenth centuries, this
article cannot present a complete overview of all references to archival prac-
tices. What follows is an analysis of a few narratives offering a preliminary
inventory of what kind of information we may find in the narrative sources on
two specific topics: first, the collection and preservation of archival documents
and the organisation of archives in Baghdad, and, secondly, the use of these
archives in day-to-day administration.

Organisation of Archives

The modern term “archives” refers both to the collection of documents and the
building or physical place housing these collections.8 Unfortunately, we have
very limited information on the physical places, the actual locations, of reposi-
tories of administrative documents in Abbasid Baghdad. For example, the
question whether documents were generally stored in separate rooms or build-
ings, or piled up in the offices of the responsible scribes is difficult to answer.
The extant documentary sources from the central Abbasid administration
reveal little about the location and organisation of archives. The Samarra docu-
ments were found inside the caliphal palace. Ernst Herzfeld, the excavator of
the sites, identified the room in which they were found as the harem.9 Recently,
however, Alastair Northedge has identified the square building in which

8 See, for example, how The Society of American Archivists defines the term at: http://www.
archivists.org/glossary/term_details.asp?DefinitionKey=156.
9 Herzfeld, Der zweiten Kampagne von Samarra, 200-201; idem, Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra
VI, 271.

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12 van berkel

the documents were found as the dār al-ʿāmma, the public palace where the
caliph held audiences, arguing that the area was simply too open to be a
private residence.10 Lucian Reinfandt emphasises the importance of this con-
clusion, because it indicates that the documents were found in situ, in the con-
text of administrative procedures.11 However, we do not know whether their
discovery in the dār al-ʿāmma also means that they were stored there and thus
were part of some sort of archive.
The documents from Egypt reveal far more details about archival practices.
While most papyri from Egypt cannot be traced to a specific archive or reposi-
tory, some were found stored together in sealed ceramic jars, a preferred
method of preserving documents. Others, while not found together or no lon-
ger in the same collection, can be traced back to a collection kept by a specific
official, and therefore can be seen as having been part of an archive or reposi-
tory of documents. Even more important is that the contents of many Egyptian
documents refer to an administrative world in which the production, preserva-
tion and consultation of written documents was a widespread custom.12
However, these Egyptian documents all refer to the provincial and local admin-
istrative practices of their time and there is no way for us to know how these
related to the archival practices of the central administration in Baghdad.13
The narrative sources describing the scribal and archival practices in
Baghdad in the era of caliph al-Muqtadir are equally limited in their descrip-
tion of the actual locations of archives. However, scattered pieces of informa-
tion do pop up in the narrative sources and, more importantly, they contain a
wealth of information on the ways in which documents were stored and how
they were made retrievable for later use. Not surprisingly, the histories and
anthologies generally relate exceptional cases, the remarkable stories.
A narrative by Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ, describing the archives kept by the vizier ʿAlī b.
ʿĪsā during his first term in office (301/913-304/917), is a good example of such
an exceptional case, which can nevertheless open a window to more standard
archival practices. The narrative goes as follows. After ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā’s dismissal and
arrest, a conflict evolves with the leader of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Yūsuf b.
Abī l-Ṣāj. The powerful Ibn Abī l-Ṣāj refuses to pay the previously arranged con-
tribution to the central treasury after ʿAlī’s dismissal and replacement by a new

10 Northedge, The Palaces, 33-36.

11 Reinfandt, Administrative Papyri.
12 See, for example, Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State; idem, The Archival Mind; Sundelin,
The Consult-Collector and the Orientalist.
13 For an interesting comparison to the archival practices of Abbasid judges in various pro-
vincial towns, see Tillier, Cadis, 400-407.

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Reconstructing Archival Practices in Abbasid Baghdad 13

vizier, Ibn al-Furāt. Ibn Abī l-Ṣāj even claims that he has never entered into an
agreement on the delivery of a guaranteed sum (ḍamān).14 Thereupon one of
Ibn al-Furāt’s scribes is sent to find the official document of the agreement
which is supposedly located in ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā’s archives. These turn out to be tre-
mendously chaotic archives, situated in a building next to the vizier’s palace.
Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ bases this narrative on a report related by one of Ibn al-Furāt’s
scribes, named al-Zanjī:

Abū l-Ḥasan [Ibn al-Furāt] ordered me to go to the archives (al-khizāna)

to investigate what was to be found of lists of revenues and to search for
the guarantee agreement (wathīqat al-ḍamān). So I went. They were large
archives stored in a building referred to as al-Dimashqī and located in his
palace known as the palace of Sulaymān b. Wahb in al-Mukharrim. The
documents in this place almost reached the ceiling. Among those things
I examined, I discovered copies of what ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā had written to Dhakā,
the one-eyed, who was in Egypt, and also to Takīn al-Khāṣṣa who was
appointed there after him and to al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Mādarāʾī and
Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Qarmaṭī and Najaj and Ibn Rustam and other gov-
ernors. I kept on reading and I found these documents of the utmost
beauty.
Sometimes, when I was going through the documents, I found among
them estimations15 and measurements, as well as letters from the pay-
masters16 in the armies [. . .]. None of these documents had been sent to
the dīwāns. I kept saving them and each day I brought a dossier on them
to Abū l-Ḥasan [Ibn al-Furāt] the vizier who was astonished by ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā
and his omission.17

Here al-Zanjī, the source of Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ, explains that Ibn al-Furāt’s anger
about the postponement of the sending of the documents to their relevant
departmental archives was motivated by the fact that in this way the scribes of
the bureaus (dīwāns) lacked proper evidence when they estimated taxes or

14 Ḍamān most probably refers here to a tax farming agreement. With tax farming the state
entered into a contract with a certain well-to-do individual, the tax farmer (ḍāmin), offer-
ing him the right to collect the taxes of a vast area for a fixed period in return for a guar-
anteed sum, usually paid in advance. The estimated revenues for the area were always
more than the sum contracted by the tax farmer. The difference between the two pro-
vided the tax farmer with a profit. See on this term, Løkkegaard, Taxation, 92-108.
15 Ḥazr; see on this term, Bosworth, ʿAbū ʿAbdallāh al-Khwārazmī, 137.
16 Munfiq; see on this term, Løkkegaard, Taxation, 64.
17 Ṣābiʾ, Wuzarāʾ, 208-209.

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14 van berkel

when they dealt with conflicts about estimations. Al-Zanjī then continues to
summarise the contents of ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā’s archives. He also discovered a booklet
ascribed to al-Ḥallāj containing an ādāb al-wizāra text, notes from al-Muqtadir
and from his mother to the vizier ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā and copies of the vizier’s answers
to them.18
Obviously, throwing documents of such a diverse nature into a storage room
was not an ideal situation. Before analysing this narrative, an example is pre-
sented of how the storage of documents should have been organised according
to the administrative manuals. In a chapter on the dīwān al-maẓālim (bureau
of the maẓālim which handles petitions and response procedures) from the
early tenth-century Kitāb al-kharāj, Qudāma b. Jaʿfar, a scribe under al-Muqta-
dir, describes the duties of the head of this bureau (ṣāḥib dīwān al-maẓālim) as
follows:

He [the ṣāḥib dīwān al-maẓālim] is to collect all petitions and submit

them to the caliph on each Friday. [. . .] When the session over which the
caliph or his deputy presided ends, he [the ṣāḥib dīwān al-maẓālim] is to
gather all the petitions [divided into] groupings, record the groupings in
the dīwān and note the names of those who submitted the petitions and
record the responses on the petitions. Then the petitions should be
returned to them [the plaintiffs], so that no trick (ḥīla) or forgery (tazwīr)
can enter into the notes [on the petition]. For if the plaintiff returns once,
twice, three times or more, his entire case is recorded in one place, so
that, if a request is made to present the case from the dīwān al-maẓālim,
his entire dossier will be found in proper order and in its entirety in one
place, and the chief of the dīwān can present it without trouble.19

What do these, and other, examples tell us about the location and organisation
of the archives in Baghdad? First, they attest that, generally, documents were
archived in the relevant administrative departments. In other words, there
existed separate archives for the various dīwāns. In the first example, ʿAlī b.
ʿĪsā’s storeroom is filled with documents of all kinds; his successor Ibn al-Furāt
makes sure that they are all returned to their proper storage places in the vari-
ous dīwāns. The description from Qudāma b. Jaʿfar’s dīwān al-maẓālim shows
that petitions and the decisions on them were stored away in the dīwān itself,
so that “entire dossiers will be found in proper order and in their entirety in

18 Ṣābiʾ, Wuzarāʾ, 209.

19 Qudāma b. Jaʿfar, Kharāj, 63; transl. Heck, Construction of Knowledge, 87, with small
modifications.

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Reconstructing Archival Practices in Abbasid Baghdad 15

one place.” Other references to archives by Qudāma b. Jaʿfar and Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ
corroborate the location of archives in several dīwāns.20
The spread of documents over specialised archives did not mean, however,
that the archives were far removed from one another physically. During the
better part of al-Muqtadir’s reign, most of the administrative offices seem to
have been located next to one another in the neighbourhood of the vizieral
palace, generally referred to in the sources as the palace of the vizier Sulaymān
b. Wahb (d. 272/885). It was situated in the Mukharrim district, close to the
caliphal palace. The various dīwāns had been transferred to this place or its
vicinity either during the first vizierate of ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā (r. 301/913-304/917) or alter-
natively during the second vizierate of Ibn al-Furāt (r. 304/917-306/918).21 It is
in a building connected to this palace, for example, where ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā’s chaotic
storeroom was situated, and which was cleaned out after Ibn al-Furāt had
moved in.
The quotation from Qudāma b. Jaʿfar further reveals details about the organ-
isation of documents in the archives. Here Qudāma suggests that all docu-
ments related to one case — “whether a person returns once, twice, three
times or more” — should be registered in one single dossier. Unfortunately, he
does not relate how the complete dossier should be filed away in order to be
easily located and presented if necessary. Was it filed according to the date of
its oldest or most recent document, according to the name of the plaintiff, type
of petition, subject, or in any other way? Qudāma b. Jaʿfar does not go into this
matter, nor did I come across other relevant references to filing for this peri-
od.22 But what Qudāma does emphasise is that storing all documents related
to one case in the same place makes them easier to retrieve if and when a
plaintiff returns; and this brings us to the next topic, the use of the archives.

Using the Archives

Documents were stored with a reason, with the intention of being used and
re-used at some point. The last part of this article will therefore provide some

20 See, for example, Ṣābiʾ, Wuzarāʾ, 119 and 33.

21 Ṣābiʾ, Wuzarāʾ, 31, 121, 184, 341.
22 However, we do have some descriptions from later administrative manuals on the ways
in which documents were stored for easy retrieval. Both the Fāṭimid Ibn al-Ṣayrafī
(d. 542/1147) and the Mamlūk al-Qalqashandī (d. 821/1418) emphasise the classification of
documents within an archive according to year, and within each year according to month,
marking each monthly dossier with an etiquette; see van Berkel, Archives and Chanceries.

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16 van berkel

examples of the use of archives, the ways in which stored documents were
accessed and how they functioned in day-to-day administrative procedures.
Again, the narratives from chronicles and works of adab disclose a myriad of
vivid and detailed descriptions on the use of stored documents in the admin-
istrative departments of Baghdad.
The first, most obvious, use of archival materials was to provide evidence in
cases of conflict or debate. The search for the tax farming contract concluded
between the vizier ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā and the leader of Azerbaijan, Yūsuf b. Abī l-Ṣāj,
discussed in the previous section, is a demonstration of the importance
attached to the storage of written records in such cases. Various other narra-
tives also refer to the verification of information by recourse to archived docu-
ments. Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ, for example, describes how an unknown estate holder
from the Sawād submitted a petition with al-Muqtadir’s vizier Ibn al-Furāt
complaining that his land had been overtaxed, since his long-standing privi-
leges concerning tax reduction had not been taken into account in the most
recent estimations. In reaction to this complaint Ibn al-Furāt is said to have
ordered an investigation into the matter. The scribes of the relevant adminis-
trative department, in this case the one dealing with the land tax for the Sawād,
apparently conducted an investigation by studying the documents stored in
their own bureau. When they could not find any irregularities in the accounts
of the current and previous years and concluded that the estimations of the
petitioner’s taxes must have been correct and that the petitioner’s claim was
invalid, the vizier himself asked for the relevant documents, studied them
meticulously and discovered that a certain person had erased numbers in one
of the accounts. He then returned to the petitioner with his findings and
justice was restored.23 While the outcome of this story — in the end justice
prevails — has an obvious moralistic element as an example of good gover-
nance, the role played by stored records in such a situation — tax accounts of
the district, reports by tax collectors and so on — is an indication of the value
attached by this milieu to the archiving of written evidence.
In the same vein, very extensive investigations, both in personal and depart-
mental archives, were carried out when officials were dismissed from office
and the new bureaucratic faction tried to establish reimbursement sums which
the dismissed officials had to pay (or repay) to the treasury. The case against a
scribe of the caliph’s cousin Hārūn b. Gharīb, Abū Jaʿfar b. Shīrzād who was

23 Ṣābiʾ, Wuzarāʾ, 163-164. For a more detailed description of this case, see van Berkel,
Embezzlement. In some cases such a research in the records was extended by the dis-
patch of an official to the district in question in order to investigate the local situation; see
Ṣābiʾ, Wuzarāʾ, 165; also, Løkkegaard, Taxation, 151.

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Reconstructing Archival Practices in Abbasid Baghdad 17

dismissed and then arrested, demonstrates how complex an investigation of

the relevant papers could be. After Ibn Shīrzād is accused by his master of
embezzling a vast sum, one of Hārūn’s other scribes, called al-Muʾammal,
draws up an account for his master presenting the amounts Ibn Shīrzād was
thought to have embezzled. Ibn Shīrzād denies such accusations and there-
upon the vizier ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā is asked to mediate in the dispute. The vizier sends a
certain Abū Yūsuf, one of the scribes of the caliph’s mother, to Hārūn’s house in
order to check all the documents related to the case. The narrative is taken
from Miskawayh’s Tajārib al-umam:

Under the first heading, al-Muʾammal had stated that in one of the regis-
ters of Ibn Shīrzād’s bureau a report was found of what he had collected
from the allocations which the vizier al-Khāqānī had assigned to him for
the loans the vizier had borrowed from the property of Hārūn b. Gharīb.24
He [al-Muʾammal] reported that, according to this list, Ibn Shīrzād had
thus received fifteen thousand dinars. He [al-Muʾammal] could, however,
not find this sum among the monthly accounts of the finance officer
which were registered at the bureau.25 Ibn Shīrzād’s kātib responsible for
this bureau was Ibn Abī Maymūn, and he made the following statement:
“The sum,” he said, “was truly entered in the monthly account of the col-
lector, and my chief Ibn Shīrzād has an original document of the prince
[Hārūn b. Gharīb], acknowledging the receipt of it. The money has been
brought into the presence of the prince, who had subsequently spent it
on the purchase of the house of al-Muḥassin, a house he bought from the
caliph’s agent during the vizierate of Abū l-Qāsim al-Khāqānī.”
Thereupon an identical monthly account was produced, and the
receipt was recorded there. They discovered that the clerk who had writ-
ten down the monthly account, had entered the sum as though it were an
item in the preceding account, whereas it should have been written dis-
tinctly and separately from the preceding item. Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad
b. Jinnī (director of the dīwān al-mashriq)26 thus found that the matter

24 The word for “allocations” used here (tasbīb) indicates that the salary of an official is
diverted onto a source of taxation, which the tax administrators have not yet been able to
collect. Implicit is the hope that the assignee may help extract the money; cf. Bosworth,
ʿAbū ʿAbdallāh al-Khwārazmī, 139-140; Løkkegaard, Taxation, 63-64, 156. The charge, then,
was that Ibn Shīrzād had appropriated certain revenues assigned for the payment of a
loan to al-Khāqānī.
25 In other words, al-Muʾammal suggests that Ibn Shīrzād had not registered these amounts
and instead had embezzled them.
26 See also Sourdel, Vizirat, 443 and 740.

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18 van berkel

was as the kātib of Ibn Shīrzād had stated. On top of this, Ibn Shīrzād
himself produced the original document of Hārūn b. Gharīb, acknowl-
edging the receipt of the sum from the aforesaid source and stating that
it had been paid to the treasury as the price of the house; and the receipt
of the director of the bureau of the treasury was also produced.27

This narrative on how no stone was kept unturned and numerous documents
were extracted from the archives to investigate a case of embezzlement, con-
textualises the occasions when archived documents were accessed and used. It
also corroborates the value attached to written evidence that was stored in the
archives of the various departments and offices and that could be presented in
conflict situations.
Cases describing the (potential) misuses of archives illustrate their work-
ings as well. A telling example is the discussion on the location of the docu-
ments describing the negotiated reimbursement sums of dismissed and fined
officials. During the vizierate of al-Khaṣībī (r. 313/925-314/927), the temporary
dīwān al-muṣādarīn, the office dealing with confiscated property from dis-
missed officials, gained a more permanent character as it became equipped
with an archive that kept the documents on the reimbursement sums.
Previously, these documents had been stored in the vizier’s personal archives
and al-Khaṣībī’s successor, ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā, disapproved of the innovation. In an
argument with his predecessor al-Khaṣībi, ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā is said to have exclaimed:

You are the first person who has handed the reimbursement sums of the
fined officials to the chief of the bureau of the fines; it has been the prac-
tice to retain the bonds in the archives of the viziers, each vizier handing
them down to the next. If your idea was to increase the importance of the
bureau (dīwān al-muṣādarīn), you should have taken the bonds in dupli-
cate, one copy for the bureau, and the other to remain in your
possession.28

ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā’s main argument is that if the signed documents containing the
reimbursement sums are solely in the hands of the head of the bureau of the
fines, the latter might be tempted to sell these valuable documents. The state
would then lose all evidence of forthcoming payments.29

27 Miskawayh, Tajārib, I, 164-165; transl. D.S. Margoliouth, with small modifications in the
wording and transliterations.
28 Ibid., I, 155.
29 See also Løkkegaard, Taxation, 162-163.

Journal of Abbasid Studies 1 (2014) 7-22

Reconstructing Archival Practices in Abbasid Baghdad 19

Finally, the importance of archival documents as written evidence also

appears from attempts to destroy them in order to prevent them from being
used as evidence. One of the steps in the procedures aiming at the discharge of
fallen factions of scribes involved the collection of incriminating testimony. In
order to prevent the destruction of valuable evidence, papers, accounts, let-
ters, deeds and possibly duplicate bookkeeping were seized by the new faction
immediately after the dismissal of the old faction.30

Conclusive Remarks

Comprehensive examples from narrative sources demonstrate that despite the

lack of extant documents from the central Abbasid administration in Baghdad
we can still discern a milieu deeply rooted in the production, collection,
archiving and consultation of written records. Thus, an alleged lack of interest
in archiving documents apparently does not apply to the Abbasid administra-
tion in Baghdad.31 Stories taken from narrative sources and instructions found
in administrative manuals bring us right in the heart of the extensive archives
which Baghdad must have possessed. There is no doubt that most of the cen-
tral administration’s scribes were familiar with variegated and complicated
archival practices and that they worked on a daily basis with repositories and
collections of letters, accounts, reports and other documents.
The motivations behind the preservation of written records must have been
manifold. A complicated and diversified tax system as upheld by the Abbasids
was probably only possible thanks to a meticulous recording and preserving of
registers and dossiers. Especially in situations of conflict, either between
scribes and tax payers or in cases of (alleged) corruption within the adminis-
trative ranks, searches in the archives seem to have helped to unearth proof
and disentangle complicated issues. The most remarkable conclusion is of
course that written documents were highly valued within the administrative
apparatus as evidence in cases of dissent.
Whether larger groups in society appreciated the benefits or disadvantages
of archiving documents is a question which largely remains to be answered.
Our narrative sources generally do not speak in much detail about archival
practices outside the state administration. Still, the fact that outsiders filed

30 See, for example, Miskawayh, Tajārib, I, 95 on the seizure of the accounts and deeds of
Ḥāmid b. al-ʿAbbās; also Ṣābiʾ, Wuzarāʾ, 33.
31 Similarly, the documentary evidence from Egypt and Khurasan demonstrates that out-
side Baghdad archives were kept as well.

Journal of Abbasid Studies 1 (2014) 7-22

20 van berkel

petitions and claims which were stored and investigated in the archives, indi-
cates that a larger part of society, even though not really being involved in
maintaining or using archives, nevertheless might have realised how impor-
tant and useful archiving material could be. Moreover, the documentary evi-
dence from Egypt and Khurasan, especially the collections of tax receipts,
demonstrates how individual tax payers stored their own records.
Finally, the question remains how the anecdotes on archival practices from
the Abbasid era relate to those of other eras and areas. Although much more
detailed research about earlier and later periods is needed, at this stage a few
general observations can be made. The administration of the early caliphates
built upon the long bureaucratic traditions of the conquered areas. The Arabs
continued to use personnel and to apply practices of their predecessors, but
they also introduced new customs and ideas. Documentary evidence from
Egypt and administrative manuals from the Abbasid era testify to this.32
However, the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries seem to have witnessed a
period of exceptional growth in the bureaucracy. At once, the number and size
of administrative manuals increased extensively and the scribes of these man-
uals expressed themselves first and foremost as experts in writing. At the same
time, the bureaucratic culture anchored in a broader context of writing and
books coinciding with the emergence of a so-called literate mentality.33 Not
only in bureaucratic circles, but also among hadīth scholars, legal specialists
and literati the advantages and disadvantages of writing were discussed.
Archives were certainly not invented in the Abbasid era, but archival and
administrative practices seem to have extended and exceedingly flourished in
the context of a broader culture of appreciation for writing.

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