Petra Sijpesteijn is invited by the Collège de France assembly at the suggestion of Professor Jean-Luc Fournet.
Daily life in medieval Egypt was marked by many difficulties: crop failure due to water variations, disease affecting livestock, ravages caused by wild animals, as well as sudden illness and death. The difficulties of human origin were no less severe: stagnant markets, confiscations, theft, imprisonment, violence inflicted by the authorities or criminals. Added to this were private conflicts: disputes over inheritance, family or professional disagreements leading to break-ups, divorces or dissolution of partnerships.
Despite these hardships, obligations remained: feeding the family, paying taxes. Non-payment could lead to imprisonment, with no possibility of providing for one's family. However, in times of crisis, people could also seek help. Numerous letters on papyrus, dating from the 7th to the 10th century CE, show that people turned to others—close friends, family members or more or less distant acquaintances, whether or not they held official office—to solve their problems, and that they preferred written requests to violence. These letters of petition, using specific formulas and procedures, offer a valuable insight into the values and social structures of medieval Islamic Egypt. This series of lectures will analyze these documents to better understand the system of appealing for help within the empire.
