Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 25. (1972) - Festschrift für Hanns Leo Mikoletzky

POSNER, Ernst: Twelfth Century „Job Descriptions“ for the Registrar and the Archivist of the Faţimid State Chancery in Egypt

Twelfth Century “Job Descriptions” for the Registrar and the Archivist of the Fätimid State Chancery in Egypt

Von Ernst Posner (Arlington, Virginia)

The concept of rational government implies that major administrative functions are assigned to distinct agencies and that within these agencies responsibilities are defined and properly allocated to offices or officials J). The development of this concept is the result of a long process not yet satisfactorily traced by students of the history of public administration. In the study of this process, the Manual for the Fätimid State Chancery in Egypt by Ibn al-ipayrafi will deserve their careful attention* 2). To archivists the Manual is of particular interest since it apparently contains the first “job descriptions” for the registrar and the archivist of a key medieval agency in a non-feudal setting.

To understand these job descriptions 3), it is necessary to first under1) Max Weber The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, transl. by A. M. Henderson und Talcott Parsons (New York 1947) 330 speaks of “a sphere of obligations to perform functions which has been marked off as part of a systematic division of labour” as one of the categories of rational legal authority.

2) This account is based on Ibn el-Ca'irafl Code de la Chancellerie d’Etat (Periode Fá(imide), traduit par M. Henri Massé in Bulletin de ITnsti- tut Frangais d’Archéologie Orientale 11 (1914) 65—120. This is a translation of Ibn al - §ayraf i Qänün dlwan al-rasä’il, ed. by ’Ali Bahjat (Cairo 1905). Brief résumés of the Code are found in Walther Björkman Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatskanzlei im islamischen Ägypten (Hamburg 1928) 21—25 and in the article Daftar by Bernard Lewis in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam 2 (Leiden and London 1965) 80. Hereafter the first edition of the Encyclopaedia will be cited E I and the new edition E I2. See also B j ö r k m a n’s earlier Die Bittschriften im diwän al-insa in Der Islam 18 (1929) 207—212.

3) At this point a word of caution is in order. In Western Europe the understanding of medieval documents is based on the highly developed discipline of diplomatics with its precise terminology. No such discipline exists for the Muslim countries nor can one be expected before many more specialized studies have been published. In the absence of a reliable terminology, it is possible that some details of the procedures described by Ibn al-Sayrafl have been misinterpreted. — On the underdeveloped status of Muslim diplomatics, see Hans Robert R o e m e r Christliche Klosterarchive in der islamischen Welt in