Sijpesteijn, Petra M.

The Barābra (Ar., al-Barābira, al-Barbar, sing. al-Barbarī) were Nubian-speaking Muslims inhabiting the banks of the Nile between the First and Third Cataracts (between Aswan and Dongola). The name “Barābra” seems to be a conflation of the name of an ancient people, known alread…

The Arabic term baqṭ was used in Egypt for 1) a fiscal land category and 2) a quota of slaves. It is unclear whether the word is derived from the Latin pactum , via the Greek pakton , referring to a set of mutual oligations and its connected payments, or from the Egyptian bak (“…

Al-Fayyūm is an oasis and administrative district in Egypt’s Libyan Desert, about 90 kilometres southwest of modern-day Cairo. Only the lowest part of the approximately 12,000-square-kilometre depression in which the district is located is cultivatable, about one sixth of the to…

Akhmīm , with almost 150,000 inhabitants one of the most populous cites in Upper Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile, was an important religious, economic, and administrative centre from antiquity to the mediaeval period. In ancient times, this was the town of Panopolis. The Ara…