Ex-collection Dr Adolf Grohmann (188🐽7-1977). 

Sotheby's London, 14 December 1987, lot 148.

Ex Private Collection, Europe, since 1987.

This collection of fragments is a fascinating fragment of Arab history and the cosmopolitanism which characterised Fustat until its destruction in the end of the twelfth century. The existence of such a large group of papyrus documents from this period is interesting evidence of the uses of different writing materials and of the spread of the technology of paper-making across the Islamic lands.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century several discoveries of Arabic papyri were made in Egypt, mostly in Upper Egypt, where the soil was more conducive to the preservation of organic matter. These discoveries are now mostly in Institutional collections around the world, including the National Library, Cairo; the British Library, London; the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Bibliotheque Nationale and the Musee du Louvre, Paris; the Staatliche Museen, Berlin; the Staats-und Universitats-Bibliotek, Hamburg; the Institut fur Papyrologie, Heidelberg and the Oriental Institute, Chicago. Of the discoveries unearthed at Fustat, only the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo and Cambridge University Library possess substantial collections♔. 

The existen𒊎ce of such a large group of papyrus documents from this period is interesting evidence of the use of different writing materials and of the spread of the technology of paper-making across the Islamic lands. While parchment was extremely expensive to produce and was reserved primarily for the writing of Qur'ans, papyrus was the common material to use in the day-to-day life. With the advent of paper in the end of eighth century, this material slowly spread across Central Asia and the Near East, often going hand-in-hand with the explosion of intellectual activity which occurred in the region from around 800-1100 AD.

After receiving his Phd in Egyptology in the university of Vienna in 1911, Dr Adolf Grohmann became the Head of the Papyrus Collection a♛t the National Library of Austria; he later moved to Prague in 1923 where he taught Semitic Philology until 1945. He travelled often toꦜ Egypt, being responsible of the publication of the papyri in the Royal Egyptian Library of Cairo in 1930 and holding a chair at Cairo’s university between 1949 and 1956.