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Recent archaeological investigations in eastern Tigray, Ethiopia, have revealed extensive evidence for medieval Muslim communities. Although the settlement of Muslims near modern Kwiha was previously attested by epigraphic evidence, its exact location remained unknown. Fieldwork, with the support of the ERC project ‘HornEast’, has identified and excavated the cemetery at Bilet—the first excavation of a Muslim cemetery in the Ethiopian Highlands. The results reveal the existence of flourishing cosmopolitanism among Muslim communities in the very heart of the Zagwe Christian kingdom. These Muslim communities developed from both foreign and local populations and were well connected with the wider Islamicate world.

This paper investigates three linguistic features—wawation, the 1CS genitive clitic pronoun, and the relative pronoun—that are shared between the ancient epigraphic forms of Arabic and modern dialects, to the exclusion of Classical Arabic. I suggest that these features represent the earliest linguistic layer of the modern dialects.

This contribution reconstructs and contextualizes two decrees abolishing specific imposts. Both were inscribed into the eastern entrance vestibule of the great mosque of Mardin connecting the mosque to the main market area of the town in the name of Qaraquyunlu and Aqquyunlu ‘Turkmen’ rulers in the mid-15 century CE. As argued in this article, the decrees pertain to the immediate context of the civil revolt of Mardin against Jahāngīr Aqquyunlu in 1450 CE. Accordingly, the inscription of fiscal decrees into highly visible and institutionally protected locations of the urban fabric emerges as a crucial interface negotiating civil (dis)content and the pragmatics of rule. Together with the exceptionally dense attestation of the history of Mardin during the first half of the 15 century CE in a variety of mediums and narrative and linguistic traditions, this enables an exemplary reconstruction of subaltern and non-rulerly agency during this period of frequently changing rulers. By historicizing the fiscal ordinances decreed in both inscriptions, fiscal imposts emerge as one of the strands along which civil (dis)content could be negotiated. In addition, the continued preservation of both inscriptions attests to the resilience and stability of the ‘inscribed public sphere’ of Mardin. Accordingly, inscriptions 853 and 854 Mardin are presented as the centerpiece of an exemplary micro-study of non-rulerly agency and the pragmatics of rule in the 15 century CE pre-industrial Middle East.

The paper presents the publication of several inscriptions in the Arabic Kufic script carved on stone in the period of the 10th-13th centuries and discovered in the Avar ethnic area of Dagestan. All of them, except the first one, are published for the first time. This epigraphic material indicates that the process of the gradual spread of Islam started in Dagestan already at the end of the 10th century.