Publisher's Synopsis
The Khalili Collection is the greatest collection of Islamic art in private hands. This volume catalogues approximately 250 Arabic documents written on papyrus and owned by the Collection. The entries are catalogued according to the type of document: firstly accounts, secondly legal documents, and thirdly letters. Most of the documents date from the 8th or 9th centuries AD. A large number of the papyri came from Fustat, the old Arab capital of Egypt. Nearly all published Arabic papyri came from southern Egypt. The Khalili Collection contains the first Arabic document that has been discovered to have been written in northern Iraq.