Arabic versus Greek (5) : the decisive decades (end of the Umayyad period) (end)

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According to al-Kindī, it was governor 'Abd Allāh who decided in 705/706 to impose Arabic as the exclusive language of the central chancellery, continuing a policy begun under his father the caliph 'Abd al-Malik. His immediate predecessor, his uncle 'Abd al-'Aziz, had already begun to purify " his high administration in 705, replacing the Christian Athanasios at the head of the diwān with the Muslim Ibn Yarbū' al-Fazari. TheHistory of the Patriarchs gives a very biased version of this policy, blaming it on a hatred of Christians on the part of the governor's son al-Aṣbaġ. This account should not be taken literally; behind its author's willingness to knowingly confuse Arabization with Islamization lies a Christian etiology of the policy pursued under 'Abd al-Malik. Indeed, it was under this caliph that the first senior Muslim officials appeared in Egypt's institutional network, a phenomenon that became more pronounced during the third decade of the ^8th century.

The mobility of these Muslims contrasts with the situation in the Byzantine period. This can be explained by the total absence of any link between this new Arab civil service and land ownership, unlike in earlier times. umar ^Idid not want soldiers to be allotted plots of land in conquered countries. This decision avoided land confiscations that would have displeased the locals; it kept the conquerors in a strictly military status necessary for the continuation of the conquest; and finally, it delayed any adulteration of the spirit of Arab culture which, to paraphrase the caliph, lay in the handling of weapons and not ploughs. A few decades after the conquest, this decision took on a new dimension: it made it possible to have at one's disposal civil servants who were as mobile as one wished, and not affiliated to local interests.

At the same time as the administration was becoming more Arabized, there were continuities which should not lead us to exaggerate the break constituted by the Arabization of executives: Arabo-Muslims continued to wear the gentilice Flavius and Byzantine honorific epithets. The Arab regime did not wish to wipe the slate clean of the old system, especially when this mitigated the impression of rupture that the Arabization of administrative executives could nourish in the population.

The other, more decisive strategy was not to shake up the population's linguistic habits too brutally. To achieve this, Arabic-speaking staff had to be experts in the Greek language and script - training attested by a large number of writing exercises on papyrus -, although this did not prevent them from making increasing use of Arabic, which was beginning to penetrate certain documentary genres.

Arabic was still largely confined to the administrative sphere. But from the ^8th century onwards (especially in its second half), Arabo-Muslims became much more visible in the country, either as merchants or farmers. This inevitable phenomenon was even encouraged, according to Maqrīzī, to respond to the growing revolts among the population, caused by excessive taxation, by multiplying marriages with Christian women and thus conversions. In any case, Arabo-Muslims were now deeply integrated into the social fabric of the conquered country.