Eleven Islamic Tombstones from Egypt: A Window into the Histories of Early Islamization and of Modern Dislocation

Abstract This article introduces eleven hitherto unknown Islamic tombstones from a private collection in Germany with an edition and translation of their inscriptional content. From a close analysis of their formulae, selection of Qurʾānic quotations, epigraphic style, fabric of the stelae, and marginal ornament, the stelae are attributed to Egypt during a period c. 180–270/c. 795–885. While this is but a small addition to the vast corpus of tombstones that survive from early Islamic Egypt – accessible, for example, through the Thesaurus d’Épigraphie Islamique – this study highlights the great potential of this material to pinpoint the local specificity of the Muslim community, often neglected in extant literary sources, while at the same time revealing the broad connectivity of an emerging Islamic empire with its movement of ideas, writings, people, and craftsmanship. Moreover, the article highlights the contribution of these objects in the evolving perception of Islamic material heritage through the history of provenance: While the exact route on which the stelae traveled from Egypt to Germany is not known, it can be concluded from the circumstances of the exhibition of Islamic Art in Munich 1910 and likely parallels in other collections that the tombstones were part of those materials that were brought to Germany in the context of this important exhibition.