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JAMES G. KEENAN
the 1240s A.D. He had been assigned by the last Ayyubid sultan, alSalih Ayyub (reigned 1240-1248), to make a fact-finding tour.2 The
goal was to reverse the province's declining productivity.
Al-Nabulsi's written report is conveniently referred to as
Ta'rikh al-Fayyum. The author, so he tells us, aimed for accuracy
and utility, eager that his reader would come away with a knowledge of the Fayyum equal to that of any native (TF 3-4). The work
starts with nine relatively brief summary chapters. These are followed by a massive tenth chapter, in effect a geographical gazetteer
of the whole province arranged alphabetically by villages. The usefulness of this arrangement for information retrieval is unfortunately compromised because (as usual) the alphabetization is by
initial letter only and a disproportionate number of village names
begin with alpha (largely because of the Arabic definite article) and
mim (largely because of the word for hamlet or satellite village).
The text itself is almost exclusively concerned with the author's
present day, leaving no doubt in the mind of any student of the ancient Fayyum that its landscape had changed significantly since
late antiquity. New to the region were cane fields, sugar mills, and
water buffalo.3 Almost all the village and hamlet names had become
Arabic (TF passim, but especially Chapter 7). The population itself
had been Arabized, or perhaps more accurately "Bedouinized" (TF
passim, but especially Chapter 5)-and Islamicized. The sacred
landscape had been correspondingly reconfigured. Al-Nabulsi (TF
Chapter 8) could count some 80 mosques scattered throughout the
Fayyum, with a concentration of 31 in the provincial capital, Madinat al-Fayyum. Nevertheless, a few villages remained Christian,
and thirteen monasteries remained active. These included the famous, but as yet unlocated, Monastery of Samuel of Qalamun and
the monastery at Naqlun, still active today and the object of Polish
excavation from 1986 to 1993.4 Twenty-five churches survived, but
five of these were reportedly in unredeemable disrepair. Also note2 B. Moritz (ed.), Description du Fayoum au VI" siecle de I'Hegire par Abou
'Osman il Naboulsi ii Safadi (Cairo 1899). [Abbreviated in my text as TF.]
3 Cf. R.S. Bagnall, Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History (London and New
York 1995) 70-71.
4 See the forthcoming chapter on Naqlun in G. Gabra (ed.), Christianity and
Monasticism in the Fayoum Oasis (Cairo).
