QMI-INS-055ac · 105–125 AH
Tax Letter of al-Layth ibn al-Dhiyāl, Andarīn
رسالة الليث بن الذيال في الضرائب، أندرين
Andarīn (ancient Androna), north-central Syria; later bath complex
- بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
- من الليث بن الذيال عامل الامير معوية
- بن امير المومنين على ارض قنسرين واهله
- تكفي مقوص من اقليم رعبان الاول
- من كورة قورص فاعطها غسان
- بن مطرف . . .
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. From al-Layth ibn al-Dhiyāl, governor for the emir Muʿāwiya, son of the Commander of the Faithful, over the province of Qinnasrīn and its people. You should pay in full the taxes of the district of Raʿbān al-Awwal of the canton of Cyrrhus (Qūruṣ) and then give them to Ghassān son of Muṭarrif . . . [the rest of the line and the following line are unclear]
A draft of an official letter written in ink on a small marble slab, found during the excavation of the later of the two bath complexes at Andarīn (ancient Androna) in north-central Syria, by a Syrian team led by Radi al-ʿUqda. The slab is a piece of the marble wall-facing of the earlier baths, which had gone out of use; lying around the building site, it served as scrap writing material, like a potsherd, for the draft of a document before it was committed to papyrus or parchment. Marble can be washed and written on again, so traces of earlier texts obscure the latest writing and the reading is partial. The plate shows the tablet and, below it, a second fragment found with it that Hoyland thinks may be related.
Source: Hoyland, Robert G. “Khanāṣira and Andarīn (Northern Syria) in the Umayyad Period and a New Arabic Tax Document.” In Power, Patronage, and Memory in Early Islam: Perspectives on Umayyad Elites, edited by Alain George and Andrew Marsham, 133–146. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.