وثيقة رسميّة: T-S Ar.38.95

الوصف

Fiscal or para-fiscal document (i.e., prepared by state officials or by the Jewish community for the government). List of indigent people equally divided between natives of the capital and residents originating from Alexandria, the Sharqiyya and Gharbiyya provinces, the villages around the capital (all entirely destitute), and towns such as Ashmum, Damietta, and Qūṣ. The document refers to three groups with different capacities to pay the capitation tax: (1) those who cannot afford to pay anything, (2) those who can afford to pay 2 dīnārs, but only in instalments and (3) the remainder, from whom 4 dīnārs should be exacted. Khan notes that Rabie (The Financial System of Egypt, 109–10) overlooked the last line of the list, which refers to the payment of 4 dīnārs. Rabie therefore concluded that the document reflected the payment of a flat rate of capitation tax at 2 dīnārs per head. Khan argues that there was variation in the rate of capitation tax in different historical periods (commentary to T-S H15.62, Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, doc. 89, and commentary to this document, ibid., doc. 136): at the beginning of the Ayyubid period, the rates were fixed at 4⅙ dīnārs, 2 1/12 dīnārs and 1⅝ dīnārs. In the middle of the Ayyubid period, the high and intermediate rates were rounded down to 4 dīnārs and 2 dīnārs. Toward the end of the Ayyubid period, a flat rate of 2 dīnārs was introduced. On the basis of this periodization, Khan concludes that our document comes from the middle of the Ayyubid period, around 1200. (Information from Khan and from Mediterranean Society, II, p. 468, App. B 110)