If literary sources are to be believed, it wasn't until the end of the 6th century that a genuine Arabization policy was put in place. The first account is by al-Balāḏurī: it concerns a decision taken in 693/694 by Caliph 'Abd al-Malik to Arabize and Islamize the Protocols (stamps applied with a brush to the first leaf of a scroll). As Egypt continued to supply the Byzantine state with papyrus scrolls in exchange for gold coins ( solidi) put into circulation in the Umayyad Empire, the Byzantine emperor threatened the caliph with the minting of gold coins with inscriptions infamous to Islam if he did not revert to the Greek Protocols. This dispute thus had two consequences: the replacement of solidi by dinars and the substitution of Arabic protocols with basmala for Greek protocols . However, this account appeared suspect, if only because of the existence of a Greco-Arab protocol dating back to 674(P.Ness. III 60). However, this precedent has recently been called into question. The earliest protocols we know of containing Arabic therefore do indeed date from 'Abd al-Malik and confirm al-Balāḏurī's account (except that they are not only Arabic but Arabo-Greek).
The second decision, according to literary sources, was also made by 'Abd al-Malik. Again according to al-Balādurī, in 700 he ordered that Greek, still used in the Damascus chancery, be replaced by Arabic. This text, although used to support generalizations about the Arabization of the Umayyad administration as a whole, only concerns Syria. To measure the real impact of this Arabization process, we must turn to the papyri.
