ABSTRACT
A person who has no knowledge of any Oriental language, not even Coptic, should appear at a congress of Orientalists and read a paper on the administration of Egypt under the early Khalifate is an audacity which requires a word of apology. Equally unsatisfactory were the conditions within the provinces. In theory the units of these were the civitates, each with its or surrounding territory. In fact, the authority of the municipal curiae was very limited. The Arabs, a people of relatively primitive organization and with no experience of empire, naturally took over much of the machinery of government which they found in the more advanced provinces which they conquered. The new evidence of papyri has shown us in what wholesale measure they borrowed from Byzantium. It shows also with what judgement they modified these borrowings so as to avoid at least the obvious faults of the old system.
