Qurra ibn Sharik

Qurra ibn Sharik ibn Marthad ibn Hazim al-Absi al-Ghatafani was governor of Egypt from 90 to 96 AH, 709 to 714 CE, for the Umayyad caliph al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik. ¹ The Encyclopaedia of Islam notes that the Arabic chroniclers say very little about his governorship, and that the papyri found in Egypt over the last century or so give a far fuller picture of its administration and finances. ¹

He came from the North Arab tribes that had settled widely in northern Syria and the Jazira and stood in the front line of the fighting along the Taurus Mountains with Byzantium. He himself came from the region of Qinnasrin, south of Aleppo, and so belonged to the experienced cadre of Syrian Arabs whom the Umayyads liked to appoint to high civil and military office. ¹ The article adds that al-Walid's mother, Wallada bint al-Abbas, was also of the tribe of Abs, which may well have helped his career. ¹

The early part of his life is very obscure. From hints in the chronicle of Michael the Syrian, Henri Lammens inferred that he may have been governor of Qinnasrin or perhaps of Armenia. The article reasons that he would hardly have been given so elevated a post as Egypt without considerable earlier administrative experience. ¹

Qurra was appointed to Egypt as amir of the prayer and as financial director, in place of the caliph's own brother Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Malik, whose governorship had been made difficult by hardship after the Nile failed to rise sufficiently. He reached the capital, Fustat, on 3 or 13 Rabi I 90, that is 10 or 20 January 709, or shortly afterwards. ¹

The article explains that al-Tabari only records the dates of his appointment and continued tenure and then his death, and that the best narrative sources are local Egyptian ones, above all al-Kindi's book of governors, with al-Maqrizi and Ibn Taghribirdi drawing on earlier authorities; even these are thin. ¹ The papyri serve as a corrective to the unfavourable image of Qurra as a typically tyrannical Umayyad governor of the stamp of al-Hajjaj, an image that grew up in Abbasid and later times and appears in both Muslim and Coptic Christian sources. ¹

One much-repeated saying attributed to Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz lists Qurra in Egypt among the governors of the day in whose time the earth was filled with injustice. ¹ The article also mentions a story that he called for wine and music-making after the rebuilding of the mosque, and describes it as libellous. ¹

Among events of his governorship the article records a plot against his life at Alexandria by a group of Ibadi Kharijites under al-Muhajir ibn Abi al-Muthanna al-Tujibi, which failed. ¹

At the beginning of 92, in autumn 710, the caliph ordered him to demolish some additions made by Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Malik and to rebuild the mosque of Amr ibn al-As entirely. Yahya ibn Hanzala al-Amiri supervised the work. The mosque was enlarged at its north-east end and on the qibla side, and Qurra had the alignment of the qibla corrected from the slightly inaccurate one of Amr. During the rebuilding, Friday prayers were held in the Qaysariyyat al-Asal, and the mosque was finished in Ramadan 93, June to July 712. ¹

Much of his time went on the financial administration of Egypt and the economic and agricultural recovery of the province. The serious famine of 86-87/705-6 under his predecessor had left a legacy of hardship, and Qurra sought to raise agricultural output and to bring disused land back into cultivation. The chronicles mention his restoration of the Birkat al-Habash, planted with sugar cane and afterwards known as "Qurra's stable". ¹

The papyri show him eager to collect the full poll-tax from Coptic converts to Islam, to recover arrears, and to protect the caliph's financial rights, which the article calls a controversial matter. Peasants were fleeing to the towns to escape taxation, as they had already done in Byzantine Egypt, and the fugitives were pursued and sent back to their villages. Yet the same papyri and sources show him punishing tyrannical local officials and keeping control of the provinces through an efficient intelligence service, the barid. Bilingual Greek and Arabic papyri also mention special levies for building ships for raiding, presumably against the Byzantines. ¹

According to al-Kindi, Qurra reorganised the diwans of Egypt in 95/713-14, the third person to do so after Amr ibn al-As and Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan. C. H. Becker observed that this probably increased the Arab element in those departments, whose official language had been changed from Greek and Coptic to Arabic just before Qurra's time. ¹

Qurra died of plague while still in office, in Safar 96, October to November 714, according to al-Tabari, or on 23 Rabi I 96, 6 December 714, according to al-Maqrizi. ² He was succeeded, as amir of the prayer only, by his trusted deputy Abd al-Malik ibn Rifa al-Fahmi, who had been his chief of police, while a man named Usama ibn Zayd (may God be pleased with him) became head of finances in Egypt. ²

The article gives no date of birth and nothing of his family beyond his lineage and tribe, and it calls his career before Egypt obscure. ¹ The papyri from Aphrodito and other archives are its main evidence for the administration of his years, and the museum has not read them directly. ²