The View from the Monasteries: Taxes, Muslims and Converts in the “Pseudepigrapha” from Middle Egypt

This article analyzes a group of homilies composed in Middle Egypt around the early ninth century CE by monastic leaders who had to cope with unsettling changes in local politics and society. The corpus deals with issues of taxation, economic distress and conversion to Islam in subtle and indirect ways, showing the inside perspective of Christian leaders on developments on which we are informed primarily from documentary papyri and historical works. It highlights the view of a certain segment of Egyptian Christianity on Islam and ongoing processes of Islamization, adding to the better-known literary sources from the area of Alexandria, and revealing the existence of internal tensions within the monastic world.Middle Eastern Studie