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 مكوس 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.
The text is a letter from al-Layth ibn al-Dhiyāl, governor ( ʿāmil ) for the emir Muʿāwiya, son of the Commander of the Faithful, over the province of Qinnasrīn. It orders the payment in full of the taxes ( mukūs ) of the district of Raʿbān al-Awwal, in the canton of Cyrrhus (Qūruṣ), which are then to be handed over to Ghassān ibn Muṭarrif. The addressee is not named, perhaps an oversight in the draft. The three administrative levels it names, district ( iqlīm ), canton ( kūra ) and province ( arḍ ), are those of the Nessana papyri of southern Palestine, and the closing command fa-aʿṭihā (“then give them”) has parallels in the Nessana tax documents of the 660s–680s. Raʿbān is placed by Yāqūt between Aleppo and Samosata; the identification is not certain. Several letters of the names al-Layth, Ghassān and Muṭarrif are unclear.
The sender gives his master as “the emir Muʿāwiya, ibn (read) the Commander of the Faithful.” The title is faint, but since Muʿāwiya is already called emir he cannot himself be the Commander of the Faithful, and the formula “the emir X, son of the Commander of the Faithful” is the one used for the princely builder of Qaṣr al-Burquʿ ( QMI-INS-028 ). With a script of the 2nd/8th century, the emir is Muʿāwiya, son of the caliph Hishām (r. 105–125 AH), who is tied to the province of Qinnasrīn, launched raids into Byzantine territory from it (reported in 107, 109 and 110–117 AH) and lived at Dayr Ḥanīnā’ near Ruṣāfa, where his father also had his residence and base. The tablet is therefore placed in Hishām’s caliphate, as are the pool inscription ( QMI-INS-055ab ) and the foundation text of Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Sharqī ( QMI-INS-055o ). Hoyland had earlier linked the text with Muʿāwiya I (r. 41–60 AH), working from a poor photograph (2006); after examining the tablet itself, with the support of Alain George, he now judges a 2nd/8th-century date most plausible. A second Arabic text from Andarīn, a graffito on a limestone block in the same excavations, is also of the 2nd/8th century.
Writing drafts and accounts in ink on marble fragments is a known practice of the period. The closest parallel in this catalog’s period is a letter to the caliph Hishām on a marble fragment from Khirbat al-Mafjar near Jericho, addressed “to ʿAbd Allāh Hishām, Commander of the Faithful,” published by Baramki (1939, p. 53 and pl. XXXIV, no. 2); Baramki published about twenty more Arabic texts in carbon ink on marble from the same site (1953), and Hoyland adds Greek examples there and an account list from a shop at Jerash.
Hishām is also named in the meadow inscription from al-ʿUlā ( QMI-INS-055ad ), recording an award of land.
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.