Shaping a Muslim State is one of the most useful studies on the history of Arab/Islamic Egypt to appear in many years. As the title suggests, it treats the further consolidation of Umayyad imperial control some three generations after the Muslim conquests. It is, in this sense, a significant contribution to Late Antique and early Islamic studies alike. The scholarship on display is admirable: the book is clearly written, closely and sensibly argued, and thoroughly documented (Sijpesteijn's notes contain very nearly as much information as the main text). One is accustomed to being told that this or that new book is essential reading. The phrase has become hackneyed, which is a shame: one needs it still precisely for this sort of work. There is very much to learn here and, indeed, a single reading of Shaping a Muslim State hardly suffices.

On offer, in part, is a close study of a partial second/eighth-century archive from the Fayyum (Arsinoite in the Greek/Byzantine record). It contains thirty-nine letters, the surviving portion of what was certainly a much larger body of documents. Sijpesteijn, a dogged researcher, uncovered these from the holdings at the University of Michigan and other collections, and on the basis of previous discoveries by fellow papyrologists. Oxford University Press, to its credit, chose to reproduce the documents in a set of very legible plates, allowing one, in effect, to read along. This is no easy task given the age and physical condition of the documents and the fact that they were often written in a quick and informal style. It is a further measure of Sijpesteijn's abilities that she has been able to assemble the archive and make it so readily accessible.

The letters were held by one ʿAbd Allah ibn Asʿad, a previously unknown mid-ranked Arab administrator. The bulk of the letters are those sent to Ibn Asʿad by Najid ibn Muslim, his immediate superior, the pagarch of the Fayyum. These have mostly to do, as one would expect, with the collection and dispersal of tax revenue, although, as Sijpesteijn indicates, they speak as well to the commercial and private affairs of the Arab administrators and their interlocutors. The Arabic literary sources appear to say nothing of either Ibn Asʿad or Najid ibn Muslim: the letters offer all that can be made of their careers in service to the late Umayyad state. There is unfortunately too little therein to allow for more precise dating. Sijpesteijn, in a discussion of amir, a term that occurs in a number of the letters, sees it as a reference to the Umayyad governor of Egypt (rather than, say, the finance director). Using such evidence, she seems to suggest a time frame for the documents of roughly 107/725 to 133/750 (pp. 123–4).

The book, then, concerns the early Arab/Islamic documentary record. It should lay to rest any remaining questions as to the value of this material, if indeed such questions persist. The merits of this particular archive, previously unpublished, are twofold (p. 10): it is a coherent body of material and it permits a view of the dynamics of Arab/Islamic rule at a level that is sadly unavailable for any other early Islamic province. It is nothing short of astonishing, really, to have access of this sort. Thus, in part, the book considers a series of mundane and typical decisions by officials much lower placed than the governors and heads of fiscal bureaus about whom one is accustomed to reading. Sijpesteijn argues, on this basis, for a re-evaluation of Umayyad rule over Egypt. The classic view of an “extreme centralization under the total control of Fustat” (p. 200) sits uncomfortably with what the letters suggest of a flexible and decentralized system. It seems obvious that both Ibn Asʿad and Najid ibn Muslim enjoyed a fair degree of autonomy in running their respective offices.

But alongside the discussion of a provincial administrative history, the book provides a careful assessment of an emergent Arabic-language culture of correspondence. Sijpesteijn is careful to relate the early history of Arab/Islamic Egypt to its wider setting: “[this] new country was … an integral part of the late antique Mediterranean and Sasanian worlds” (p. 259). But she is just as careful to underscore the contributions of the new Arab/Muslim era. Among these is the introduction of a new and increasingly standardized system of legal and fiscal letter writing that joined Arab/Egyptian society to the wider Islamic realm. Letters demanded revenue or more rigorous attention to policy, but carried as well an unmistakeable underlying message regarding the presence and ambitions of the Arab/Muslim state. The letters were tokens of empire. This feature of the documents is particularly clear in Letter 8, a large format letter in which Najid ibn Muslim asks Ibn Asʿad to proceed with the levy of sadaqa and zakat taxes from the villages of his district. Sijpesteijn proceeds with an important discussion of why a district official, serving Umayyad Damascus, should have seen fit to dispatch a long and highly visible document of this sort. It had to do with the effort to stabilize the flow of revenue, institute a more efficient system of extraction and offset the loss of particular forms of payment that followed on conversion to Islam by native Egyptians.