AnewUmayyadt axdocument f romAndari n, nort hSyri a For the full article and images see Robert G. Hoyland, Khanira and Andarn (northern Syria) in the Umayyad period and a new Arabic tax document to appear in Alain George and Andrew Marsham, eds., Defining the Umayyad Elite: Power, patronage and memory in early Islam (Oxford, forthcoming). A second Arabic inscription from Andarn was found during excavation of the later of the settlements two bath complexes by a Syrian team headed by Mr Radi al-Uqda. The earlier baths were built around AD 558 and continued in use until abandoned in the late 7th/early8thcentury.Thereafteranewbathcomplexwasbuilt,adjacenttotheoldone and making use of its water source. The inscription is written in what looks like ink on a smallmarbletablet,probablyapieceofthemarblerevetmentfromtheearlierbaths. This might seem strange at first, but the adjacent ruined baths would mean that a lot of marble revetment was just lying around and it does make a very nice flat writing surface. It is then akin to potsherds and simply serves as rough paper, useful for writing the draft of a document before committing it to papyrus or parchment, which was very expensive. Itisacommonenoughphenomenonandwehavenumerousexamplesofdoodles, receiptsandthelikeinscribedonmarble,andevenalettertoacaliph.1 Theother advantage of using a marble tablet is that it is easy to wash off the text and use it again. Unfortunatelyforthemodernscholarthismakesitmoredifficulttodecipher,sincethe latest text is obscured by traces of earlier texts. IwillgivefirstmysuggestedreadingofthisAndarnbathtextandthendiscussits significance afterwards: 1 Baramki 1939, pl. 34 (to Abdallh Hishm, commander of the faithful...); another 20 Arabic texts written on marble fragments in carbon ink are published in Baramki 1953, 105-17; for the Greek texts on marble from this site see Schwabe 1945-46, p. 20-30. For examples from elsewhere see Schlumberger 1939, fig. 29 (Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi: from Hishm); Walmsley et al. 2008, p. 122-26 (a list of accounts from a shop in Jerash). ... 1. In the name of God the Merciful the Compassionate 2. From al-Layth ibn al-Dhiyl, governor for the emir Muawiya, 3. son of the commander of the faithful, over the province of Qinnasrin 4. and its people. You should pay in full the taxes of the district of Rabn al-Awwal 5. of the canton of Cyrrhus (Qri) and then give them to Ghassn 6. son of Muarrif... (the rest of the line and the following line are unclear). Thetextbeginsinthecustomarywayforanitemofcorrespondence:aninvocation, followed by the identification of the sender: min (from) x, of such and such a position. Usuallytheaddresseewouldcomenext:il(to)x;perhapsitisunderstoodtobethe relevant official of the village in question or maybe this is an oversight in the draft, which wascorrectedinthefinalversion.Nextcomestherequest,namelytoremitinfullthe taxesofRabnal-Awwal;otherwiseonecouldreadthisasastatement,namelythat the taxes of Rabn al-Awwal are sufficient, that is, they have been paid in full. Rabn isasmallplacebetweenAleppoandSamosataneartheEuphrates,2 whichwas evidently tributary to the canton of Cyrrhus (Qru), a famous city in Late Antiquity, lying some70kilometresnorthofAleppo.Thewordfortaxeshere,muks,appearsinboth contemporarypapyriandliterarysources,thoughusuallyinthesingular(maks).The administrativehierarchyisthesameasthatfoundintheNessanapapyriofsouthern 2 Yqt, Mujam, s.v. Rabn. The identification is not certain, since on the tablet it seems to be accompanied by the epithet al-Awwal/the first (though the word is not very clear), which does not feature in Yqt, and the place where a b would be is overlaid by an aliph from the line below. However, the location of Rabn would fit well. Palestine: the smallest unit is the iqlm, which is part of a larger unit called a kra, which isitselfpartoftheprovince,heredesignatedar,ofwhichtherewerefiveinGreater Syria(Palestine,Jordan,Damascus,HomsandQinnasrin).Thisisalsoneatly demonstrated by a lead seal from the province of Homs, probably of the eighth century AD(fig.6),whichincludesthesamethreeadministrativelevels.Thetaxes,once collectedinfull,arethentobehandedovertothedesignatedrecipientandsoweget the command: fa-iih (so give them to) x. We see the same construction used in the tax documents of the Nessana collection of the 60s AH/680s AD. So who is the emir Muwiya? The first three words of line three are very faint except for the letters al-mu of the third word. Given that some sort of title is expected here, amr al-muminn (commander of the faithful) immediately springs to mind, and it is certainly possible to read the second word as amr. Since Muwiya has already been designated as emir, he cannot himself be the commander of the faithful, and so the only solution is toreadthefirstwordasibn(sonof),whichthenyieldsthestandardformulaemirx, sonofthecommanderofthefaithful.3 Sincethescriptismostlikelyofthe8thcentury AD,4 the reference must be to Muwiya son of the caliph Hishm (724-43). He is closely connectedwiththeprovinceofQinnasrin,launchingnumerousraidsfromitinto ByzantineterritoryandresidinginDayrann,nearRusafa,whichlaywithinthat provinceandservedasaresidenceandbaseofthecaliphHishmandhisson Sulaymn.5 An interesting question is how did these marble tablets end up in the baths in Andarn? The latter is only about 80 miles west of Rusafa, as the crow flies. It has excellent water 3 Thus the Qar Burqu inscription from northeast Jordan (al-amr al-Wald ibn amr al-muminn) of AH 91 (Gruendler 1993, p. 18-19) and a Jabal Says inscription from southeast Syria (al-amr Khlid ibn amr al-muminn) of AH 91 (Ushsh 1964, p. 357, no. 21). 4 In an earlier article (Hoyland 2006, p. 446), having only a bad photograph to work from, I had linked the text with Muawiya I (660-80), but with the permission of Jamal Ramadan, director of the Antiquities of Hamah, I was able to examine the tablet itself and I am now convinced that a 2ndcentury Hijra date is the most plausible. Professor Petra Sijpesteijn kindly looked at the text for me and she corroborated this dating for the script. I am grateful to Jamal Ramadan and Radi al-Uqda for allowing me to publish this inscription. 5 abar, Tarkh, 4.120-57, has him lead raids into Byzantine territory in the years AH 107, 109 and 110-117; Yqt, Mujam, s.v. ann; Hoyland 2011, p. 252. sources and so would make a good stop if one were then travelling on to Hama (ca. 45 miles to the southwest) or Aleppo (ca. 50 miles to the north). The barracks had already beentransformedinthelatesixth/earlyseventhcenturyintoanintra-muralmonastery, with a church erected at its centre. However, in the late seventh/early eighth century this phaseofthebuildingslifecametoanend,dueperhapstothesamephenomenonas causedtheabandonmentoftheearlierbathsataboutthesametime.Thereafterthe former barracks apparently served an administrative function, perhaps dealing with fiscal matters on behalf of the Umayyad government in Damascus.6 Certainly there is material evidencetosuggestthatAndarnwasstillflourishinginthelateUmayyadandearly Abbasid period, such as ceramic and glass finds of the 7th8th centuries in the east hall ofoneofthehouses,andtwocoppercoinsfoundinexcavatedcontexts.Oneofthe coins, from the late Umayyad period, was found in a kiln near the settlements southeast reservoir, and the second, from the early Abbasid period, was uncovered at the bottom of the same reservoir, at its northern end. It is possible, then, that al-Layth ibn al-Dhiyl stayed here for a time with his scribe and dealt with some of his correspondence. It may evenbethatthenewbathswerebeingconstructedwhilehewasthereandhisdraft correspondence,oncefinishedwith,wastossedintotheearlyconstructiontrenches. The tablets were certainly buried quite deeply, rather than lying amid general debris, and this is how they were preserved from the deleterious effects of the rain. Though they are not much to look at, they are a witness to the increasing presence of the Umayyad family andtheiralliesinthisregioninthefirsthalfoftheeighthcentury,apresencemore solidlyattestedbytheestatesandirrigationprojectsthattheycommissionedalongthe River Euphrates from Balis to Raqqa. 6 Personal communication from Christine Strube and see Strube 2008, 57-58.