Abstract
In a 9th century letter on papyrus from the Fayoum oasis, the sender wrote: "Ḥasan told me that you had mentioned that I had been rude to you in my letter. But my rudeness, coming from someone like me to someone like you, is actually a mark of affection. And my words were only meant to remind you of your rights and obligations." Unfortunately, the letter to which the addressee refers to Ḥasan has not come down to us, and we cannot reconstruct precisely the rudeness to which he refers. This passage does, however, draw our attention to the complexity of the rules and expectations surrounding calls and requests, and reminds us that these rules were both predictable and yet not entirely stable, reflecting the fact that the social relations they embodied were themselves both highly structured and subject to negotiation. In this concluding lecture, I will relate the letters of petition to the history of the nascent caliphate, and in particular to the successful process of imperial construction during the first centuries of its existence. Starting from the significance of the very existence of the institution of appeal, as reflected in letters of appeal on papyrus, I will analyze the underlying expectations that governed epistolary exchanges in early Islamic Egypt, and what this can tell us about that society.
