The history of Eastern Iran (Khurasan) in the Abbasid period has so far been based on literary sources, which, regrettably, tell us practically nothing of its administration, and the documentary material in Arabic has related almost entirely to papyri from Egypt.
The lacuna has now, however, been dramatically filled by the discovery of the documents published in this volume, apparently from a private archive of landowners in northeastern Afghanistan dating between 755 and 777. They appear to complement many contemporary Bactrian documents also in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, published by Nicholas Sims-Williams in Volume III of this series, which mention many of the persons and place-names in the Arabic documents. Together the two collections are of prime importance for the history of daily life in early Islamic Khurasan.
Professor Geoffrey Khan – Fellow of the British Academy; Regius Professor of Hebrew, Cambridge University; fields of expertise include Arabic papyrology
184 pages; 31 x 22 cm hardback; ISBN 1-874780-71-4 (10 digit), ISBN: 978-1-874780-71-7 (13 digit)
