Fatimid Messages, Roads and Information

Written messages helped connect the Fatimid court with officials, religious communities and merchants. Between the dynasty’s establishment in North Africa in 909 and its abolition in Egypt in 1171, the location of government and the extent of its authority changed. From 973 the court operated in Cairo, beside the older commercial city of Fustat. Orders sent outward and requests arriving at the capital were part of governing this changing realm.

Communication also served people outside government. Merchants needed information about prices, shipments and debts, while families and religious leaders exchanged news and requests. A letter’s progress depended on someone carrying it, an intermediary knowing where to send it next, and a recipient able to act on its contents. Paper, roads, riverboats, sea routes and personal connections all had a role.

On this page6 sections

Producing and using government documents

The chancery was the office responsible for formal government writing. Officials prepared decrees, the ruler’s written orders, as well as communications directed to administrators and communities. Financial business produced a different range of documents: accounts, registers and receipts recorded what had been assessed, issued or paid. The forms helped distinguish an authoritative instruction from a request or a record of a transaction.

Fatimid decrees could be long vertical scrolls with large spaces between the lines of Arabic writing. This gave the document a conspicuous appearance as well as carrying its text. The chancery in Cairo sent decrees to provincial governors or local communities, where they could be posted or read aloud. Written communication therefore reached listeners as well as readers.

Some decrees later became useful scrap paper. A document reused in the first half of the eleventh century by Efrayim ibn Shemarya, or a scribe associated with him, carried a Jewish religious text on its other side. Efrayim led the Palestinian Jewish congregation in Fustat from 1016 to 1055. The scroll’s blank surface made it suitable for a new manuscript after its official purpose had ended. Such reuse brought state documents into the Cairo Geniza, the storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue where worn or unwanted writings accumulated.

Petitions and replies

A petition was a formal request addressed to a ruler or official. Petitioners explained their circumstances and asked for an action, such as assistance, release from custody or intervention in a dispute. Honorific addresses and declarations of service placed the request within the hierarchy of government. An official reply could then direct another office or administrator to carry out the decision.

One surviving petition to a Fatimid judge concerns Habib, whose family described their dependence on him during his imprisonment. The petition appeals to the judge’s influence with the minister al-Afdal, who held office from 1094 to 1121. An endorsement records the registration of an order for Habib’s release. Access to government was partly a matter of turning a problem into an acceptable written request and getting it before someone with the power to intervene.

Financial records also communicated decisions and obligations. A fiscal account from the agricultural year around 1040 records seed advances and produce in measured quantities. It identifies an official responsible for the account and distinguishes what had been issued for cultivation from other entries. Such writing allowed information about crops and resources to move within the administration, where someone receiving the record could check or continue the reckoning.

Merchant letters and practical information

For merchants, correspondence supplied information that was difficult to obtain in person from another city. Letters might describe the loading of a ship, the condition of goods, a price or a payment due. Some were written in Judaeo-Arabic, Arabic expressed in Hebrew letters, by Jewish traders who used Arabic in everyday and commercial life. Religious and family expressions commonly accompanied business instructions.

A letter sent from Alexandria to Yosef ibn Awkal in Fustat on 2 April 1030 reports ship loading and merchandise prices in the Maghreb, the western Islamic lands of North Africa. Its recorded arrival in April or May shows that dispatch and receipt were separate stages worth noting. Once received, information from a port could guide decisions made in the inland commercial centre.

Accounts could travel with letters or as separate messages. Ibn Awkal’s flax account of May–June 1038 distributed responsibility for bales, shipping and storage among several agents. It also used hawala, a transfer of a financial claim or obligation to a third person. The written entries told associates not only where goods or money were involved, but who was responsible for settling each part of the transaction.

Carriers, urgency and delay

A message could accompany a traveller already making the journey or be entrusted to a hired carrier. The choice affected cost and urgency. Waiting for a convenient departure might suit ordinary correspondence, while a threatened shipment could justify paying for a dedicated journey.

In March 1135, Mahruz ibn Yaqub in Fustat warned his relative Abu Zikri in Alexandria to remove merchandise from a warehouse. A man associated with the business was dying, and Mahruz feared that the Office of Estates would seize the stored goods along with the man’s property. He hired a private camel courier to carry the warning overland and urged Abu Zikri to act regardless of the expense. A postscript repeated the urgency when the courier’s departure was delayed.

The letter combined business instructions with family news and the wish that Abu Zikri would return for the approaching festival. It was therefore more than an isolated commercial order. The same connections that carried urgent information also sustained family relationships between the two cities. Paying for a courier did not remove the practical need to find a carrier who would actually set out.

Routes linking different communities

Egyptian correspondence used the country’s river and land routes as well as the Mediterranean and Red Sea connections. Fustat and Alexandria joined inland trade to Mediterranean shipping. Qus connected the Nile with the desert crossing to Aydhab, from which travellers continued by sea towards ports farther south. Letters could move along routes also used by goods, passengers and religious travellers.

An account of an aspiring India trader’s journey in 1103 makes the effect of season visible. His upstream journey from Fustat to Qus took two months after a May departure, when the Nile was low. Later stages required a desert crossing and Red Sea sailing before an Indian Ocean voyage. A person waiting for news from someone following such a route depended on the traveller’s changing location and available onward connections.

Trade correspondence reached beyond Fatimid territory. Around 1135, Madmun ibn Hasan in Aden wrote to Avraham ibn Yiju about copper, pepper, freight and customs expenses. Aden and the Indian coast belonged to the wider commercial world connected with Egypt, and a message could pass between traders operating under different political authorities. The usefulness of a correspondent depended on his location, knowledge and relationships, rather than simply on whether he lived within the caliph’s realm.

Information, intermediaries and authority

Letters also helped people seek support from those with influence. In a mercantile letter tentatively dated to the first half of the twelfth century, a trader complained that a cultivator holding his goods was trying to appropriate them. He asked the recipient to speak to the governor on his behalf. Commercial correspondence could thus become a way to secure representation before an official.

Government documents, merchant accounts and personal appeals served different purposes, but all required people to produce, carry and interpret writing. A decree could make a ruler’s command public; a petition could bring a local grievance to a minister; a private letter could warn a partner before property was seized. Fatimid communication worked through these particular offices, carriers and relationships, which linked the court’s authority with the practical movement of information.