The Checklist of Arabic Documents (Last Update 11. November 2011) by Petra M. Sijpesteijn, John F. Oates (✝), Andreas Kaplony, and Eva M. Grob
The Checklist of Arabic Documents aims to facilitate and advance the use of Arabic documents. By providing this inclusive bibliography of editions of Arabic documentary texts - on papyrus, paper, parchment, leather, ostraca, wood, stone and bone - in monographs and articles, and setting out a standardized system of abbreviations for monographs of Arabic document editions, we hope it will serve to enhance the transparency of citations and improve the accessibility of editions, functioning as a useful point of reference for Arabists and non-Arabists, specialists and non-specials alike.
Arabic Papyrology
Scholars have long acknowledged the importance of papyri and other documents for our understanding of early and medieval Islamic culture and society. Tens of thousands of papyrus documents survive, in Greek, Coptic and Arabic, and among the vastly diverse and significant information they contain are the only contemporary records of the Muslim conquest of Egypt in the mid-seventh century, a cornerstone event not only in the history of Mediterranean civilization but in the development of one of the most populous religions of the world. Never intended to be read by later generations, the documents not only offer a useful check on the data preserved in narrative and literary sources, but also record aspects of life and strata of society to which we would otherwise have no access, and with a richness, immediacy and variety unmatched by any other source. Together, these documents have the potential to shine a fresh and detailed new light on early Islamic Mediterranean culture and society. The field can no longer afford to be without them.
Despite their importance, however, papyri from the Islamic period continue to be underused. The philological complexity of Arabic papyri combined with the poorly developed infrastructure of the field (with few catalogues and handlists) seriously impedes the edition of new documents. Of the tens of thousands of Arabic documents preserved in museum and library collections around the world, only some two thousand have been published so far. The relative neglect is especially striking when Arabic papyrology is compared to older disciplines such as Greek, Latin and Coptic papyrology, all of which have benefited from such essential tools as electronic and printed databases, lexicographic, geographical, onomastic and linguistic reference works and compilations of corrigenda - all of which Arabic papyrology lacks.
