Arghandehpour, Mateen

English

Oxford University Research Archive

 Instagram  Facebook  X  YouTube  LinkedIn powered byOXFORD MOSAIC About  Publications & news Events Outreach Research tools فارسیDigital Corpus🔍Document of the Month 2/25: A Land Sale Deed in Old Uyghur26 February 2025  Mateen Arghandehpour How to 'Acknowledge' a Land Sale in Old Uyghur:An Iqrār Document from Qarakhanid Yarkandby Mateen Arghandehpour  This month’s document comes from a cache of documents discovered in a garden on the outskirts of modern Yarkand, in today’sXinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, at the southwestern end of the Tarim Basin. Found in 1911, the documents wentmissing again, and only the photographs of some of them are available. (To learn more about the discovery and fate of thedocuments, read this blog.) Map 1. Yarkand can be found on the Yarkand River. Above snapshot is taken from the interactive map onthe homepage of this website.    Between ca. 1041-1210 CE, Yarkand was part of the Eastern Qarakhanid Khanate. The Qarakhanids were the first Muslim Turkicdynasty, and the Qarakhanid Khanate was ruled by a Muslim ruler from 955 CE. The Khanate split into eastern and western partsin c. 1041 CE, roughly separated by the Tien Shan mountain range.  Map 2. Qarakhanid Khanate as of 1006 CE, when it reached its greatest extent; By SY - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68158198Yarkand legal documents The Yarkand collection consists of 11th- and early 12th-century legal documents in Arabic and Old Uyghur. All of the Old Uyghurdocuments are land sale contracts. As observed by Yarkand documents' editors Marcel Erdal and Monika Gronke, thesedocuments demonstrate clear similarities with contemporary Arabic deeds of land sale. At the same time, they differ significantlyfrom their non-Muslim Turkic counterparts, which according to Erdal follow Chinese models. As such, Yarkand Old Uyghurdocuments provide first-hand evidence of the penetration of Arabic legal terms, formats and formulae into the legal practice ofthe Eastern Qarakhanid Khanate.     It is fruitful to compare Yarkand Old Uyghur documents not only with Arabic but also with Persian language land sale deedsfrom medieval Afghanistan. As will become clear below, such a comparison provides additional evidence for the spread ofcommon Arabic-language substrate of legal practices to the Islamicate East, while also allowing us to observe how thesetraditions were adapted and localised. A comparison of an Old Uyghur vs. a Persian land sale deed For this comparison, I have selected a Yarkand Old Uyghur document, edited and translated by Erdal (1984, pp. 269-77, documentI, plates I, II: Turki 4 and Turki 5) and a Persian language document, Afghanistan National Archives, Firuzkuh 6 (unpublished editionand translation available online through the Invisible East programme).      Photographs Turki 4 and Turki 5 (Figure 1) show the recto and verso of this Old Uyghur document recording a sale of a piece ofland in Rabul, a village near Yarkand. Written in 473 AH / 1080 CE, this is one of the oldest extant legal documents in a Turkiclanguage. The document is written in neat lines on the recto and verso of the folio.      Line 8 of Turki 4 contains a key word of Arabic origin: iqrār. In translation, it means ‘acknowledgement’, but the word has legalconnotations. An iqrār was considered a voluntary declaration, made by the declarant (muqirr), in favour of a beneficiary (al-muqarr lahu) concerning an object of recognition (al-muqarr bihi). Legal documents using iqrār formats are known to have existedin the Bamiyan area (see Map 1) as early as the beginning of the 11th century. Their appearance in the Tarim Basin is indicative ofthe influence of Islamic legal practice and bureaucracy much further east.      My comparandum, Afghanistan National Archives, Firuzkuh 6, is a land sale document written in New Persian. It is in a betterphysical condition than its Old Uyghur counterpart above. It acknowledges (the term used is again iqrār) the sale of a plot of landnear a village called Ṭāq in 587 AH/ 1191 CE (Firuzkuh is shown as Ghur on Map 1; Ṭāq’s location remains unidentified).  Figure 2. Afghanistan National Archives,Firuzkuh 6, image courtesy of Nabi SaqeeThe structure of iqrār documents Iqrār contracts are very common among Islamic legal documents and they follow a common structural format. Here I adoptGeoffrey Khan’s analysis of such a structure (which he developed based on texts from the Cambridge Genizah collections), alongwith Ofir Haim’s structural amendments for contracts concerning land (which he used for texts from the Bamiyan Papers); I havemade minor modifications and taken the more relevant aspects of their more comprehensive list. As per this structure, we expectto see the following clauses, with attention to the order in which they appear: 1. The basmala  2. Opening formula (where the iqrār is announced) 3. Identification of the muqirr (here, the seller) 4. Confirmation of the muqirr’s legal capacity 5. Object of recognition (muqarr bihi/lahu, here the land sale)         a. Name of buyer          b. Location and boundaries of land for sale          c. Price of sale and half that figure (to avoid illegal alteration of the document)          d. Confirmation that the seller has received the agreed sum          e. Muqirr renounces all claims on the sold property 6. Acceptance formula 7. Confirmation of witness statements 8. Date 9. Witness clauses     To determine if the same structure is also followed in the Old Uyghur and the Persian land sale deeds, I have provided anEnglish translation of both documents side-by-side, where I have fitted each clause into its own cell (I have inserted severalclauses in their own rows to better represent the similarity between the documents). Next to each I have noted how the clausecompares to the structure suggested by Khan and Haim. To do this I insert the number referring to the list above.   Commoniqrārstructure Firuzkuh 6 (Trans. from Haim et al. on Invisible East Digital Corpus) Turki 4-5 (Trans. from Erdal1984) Commoniqrārstructure 1 [+ 1] b. Aḥmad the qāḍī acknowledged [+/- 2] and wrote [it]. In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. (Lines may bemissing)     The names of thewitnesses have beennoted at the lowerpart of this document.The witnesses giveconscious testimony. 7 2, 3 The khwāja raʾīs Rashīd al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. ʿAlī b. Masʿūd Maymanī, hisbrother Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, his full sister, the noble woman, thedaughter of ʿAlī b. Masʿūd, and the wife of this Maḥmūd, the noblewoman, the daughter of the amīr and raʾīs Shujāʿ al-Dīn al-Ḥasan b.Bahrām, acknowledged, I, commander BäkTüzün's son, theveteran commanderʿAlī (and) I,commander BäkTüzün's son AḥmadArslan,  2 4 all of them with their consent and of their own volition, of soundmind, legally capable of conducting their affairs, without coercion orforce, the following: we two, being clear ofmind, free of illnessand sound of body,our mental powersbeing unimpaired,acknowledge: 4, 3 5b, 5a They sold, in mutual agreement, a plot of land which they possess inthe environs of the village of Ṭāq, in a place [+/- 2] known as Zamīn-iGūr. The first boundary is the land of Khwājagī b. ʿAlī the turner. Thesecond boundary is the land of the heirs of Rashīd al-Dīn Abū BakrShāh. The third boundary is the canal of the partners of [+ 1]. Thefourth boundary is the land of the khwāja raʾīs Zayn al-Dīn Maḥmūdb. Ḥamza. This delimited and mentioned land which has beendesignated has been sold, with all the boundaries, rights andcontents, interiors and exteriors, what is within it and what comeswith it: its vines, its earth, its walls, its trees - fruit-bearing and barren -until the nut [+ 1] tree area, which is indivisible, (and) the waqf [landadministered by] the imām of the mosque at the beginning of thevillage of Ṭāq. They sold all of what has been mentioned anddelineated to khwāja Maḥmūd b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Jūzjānī, also knownas [+1]-miyānī, I, commander ʿAli(and) I, Aḥmad Arslanhave sold MasterIsḥaq a piece of landin Rabul 5a, 5b  (5b appearsagain belowto delineatetheproperty’sboundaries) 5c for 42 and a half Mālikī gold dīnārs, half of this sum is 21 dīnārs andone-and-a-half dāng. [It is] a proper, lawful, effective, valid, absolutelydefinitive.  for 800 yarmaqs. Thehalf of this amount is400 yarmaqs. Wehave sold this land,with its fourboundaries, [to]Master Isḥaq. Therewill, after us, be nolitigation or legal trickby our sons, ourdaughters, our wives,our family or byanybody. Whoever,not being satisfied,starts litigation, (that)is null and hiswitnesses are false. 5c, 5e    The first [boundary] ofthis land is the landwhich Buġra bäg sold;the second boundaryis the mill-race; thethird boundary is theland of B. tuδun; thefourth boundary isBuġra ögä's (?) [land. 5b (Theboundariesare detailedhere) 5d This seller handed over this object of sale to the buyer in a properhandover free of burdens [made by any claimants]. At the time ofsale, this land was the rightful property of the seller's and it was attheir disposal and use. There was no obstacle to the sale of this land.They acknowledged the receipt of the full amount at the meetingconcluding the sale contract.    5e These sellers confirmed the guarantee against defects. If a claimantcomes forward and legally revokes the buyer’s access, the resolutionof all aspects of this [dispute] rests with the seller. 8  This [was written] on the 20th of Muḥarram in the year 587. In the year 473, in amouse year, in themonth of rabiʿ al-āḫir,this document wasdrawn up. 8 9  [witnesses]  [witnesses]  9 Results of the comparison The table shows that the two documents closely resemble one another. The similarities are not simply because both are landsales, but rather due to the order of appearance of their clauses. To make the comparison easier, I have shown the layout orderwithout the translations in a more concise table below.  Firuzkuh 6  1    2,3  4  5b, 5a  5c    5d  5e  8  9 Turki 4-5    7  2  4, 3  5a, 5b  5c, 5e  5b      8  9     The body of the documents follows a very similar order and layout. Both texts have the iqrār formula (2), followed by theidentification of the seller (3) and a verification of their legal capacity (4). The object of acknowledgement (5) appears with itssubsections in both documents, with some complications that are discussed in greater detail below. Both documents omit theacceptance formula (6). The date (8) and witness statements (9) appear in the same position, but the date in the Old Uyghurdocument includes not only the Hijri year and month (the day is omitted) but also the Sino-Turkic animal year. The Persian textmentions the full Hijri date of the contract. Both documents follow the structure of Arabic-language iqrār documents asestablished by Khan and the described similarities between them must stem from their common origins in the Arabic-languagelegal tradition.      Despite this, the documents’ format is not identical. Thus, the order of the elements in the description of the sale (5) issomewhat different in the two texts. Most notably, in the Old Uyghur document, point 5b is split, so that the location andboundaries of the plot are mentioned in two separate parts of the document. This format of the split 5b clause recurs in Turki 3:another Old Uyghur text from the collection.     The greatest difference between the Old Uyghur and the Persian documents is found in the introductory sections. Firuzkuh 6starts with a basmala. This is, of course, the case in most Islamic texts, including the Arabic texts from the same collectionpublished by Gronke (1986). Whether this was also the case in Old Uyghur texts in the corpus is unclear. All Old Uyghur texts fromYarkand, including Turki 4 (Figure 1), are damaged in such a way that the top section – and the would be basmala – is missing. Theonly complete Old Uyghur document from this collection is Erdal’s document VI (the Old Uyghur document in Arabic script). Thisdocument begins with a basmala. However, even its photograph is lost, and the document survives only as a 1942 transcript (Erdal1984, p. 291 and plate VII) – not the most favourable piece of evidence. Erdal and Gronke conclude on this basis that Yarkand OldUyghur documents display no religious affiliation. The present study finds this argument unsubstantiated due to lack of evidence.     After the basmala, Firuzkuh 6 starts with the iqrār opening formula (2). In contrast, the Turki document starts by confirming thevalidity of the witnesses (7). Erdal points out that other Old Uyghur documents from the collection open in the same way. Erdaland Gronke are agreed that non-Islamic Old Uyghur documents, influenced vastly by Chinese models, do not begin in this wayeither – those documents begin with the date. Further study is required to understand where this commonality among the OldUyghur Yarkand documents stems from. The opening style of Old Uyghur Yarkand documents does, however, suggest that theQarakhanid practice of writing legal documents outside the Chinese format was not borrowed wholemeal from the Islamic world.Instead, the Islamic models were adopted as a standard, but not an exact template.  Conclusions It is striking that legal documents written not only in Persian but also in Old Uyghur reflect so much of the Arabic-languagesubstrate of legal terminology, format and style. The Yarkand land sale documents therefore are testament to the legacy ofIslamic law beyond the eastern boundaries of Afghanistan before the Mongol conquests. However, Old Uyghur land saledocuments also diverge in places from their Arabic- and Persian-language counterparts, furnishing evidence for the adaptationand localisation of legal traditions in different parts of the Islamicate world.    + Expand AllAbout the authorMateen Arghandehpour is Digitisation Officer with the Invisible East Programme. He received his PhD from UCL in 2024, and his thesis considered how Persians attempted to manipulate theGreek states by means of their religious culture during the Greek-Persian Wars of the 5th century BC. His work deals mainly with historiography and intercultural interaction. He is interested inancient languages, cultures and religions. The online series, Document of the Month, presents some of the most interesting and revealing medieval documents from the desks of Invisible East researchers and their colleagues worldwide.Each piece in the series is dedicated to a single document or a closely related group of documents from the Islamicate East and tells their story in an engaging and accessible way. You will alsofind images, editions and translations of the documents. If you would like to contribute to the Document of the Month series, please, get in touch with Nadia Vidro.Figure 1. Turki 4 (left, recto) & Turki 5 (right,verso); photographed in 1910s by Sir DenisonRoss; images after Erdal (1984, plates I, II).Bibliography Document of the month seriesBy the same author  FOLLOW US             Invisible EastDepartment for ContinuingEducation,University of OxfordEwert House, Ewert Lane, Oxford,OX2 7DDUnited KingdomCopyrightPicture creditsAccessibility statementPrivacy statementThis project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 851607)Document of the Month 11/25:The Festival of SadaSimone Cristoforetti, 18 November 2025Document of the Month 10/25: AQajar Endowment DeedMaryam Heydarkhani, 21 October 2025Document of the Month 9/25:An Early “Joseph and Zulaykha”Gabrielle van den Berg, 17 September 2025Document of the Month 8/25:Template Funerary InscriptionsTeresa Bernheimer, 20 August 2025Document of the Month 7/25:Invisible East Qur’ansAlya Karame, 2 July 2025Document of the Month 6/25:“She Smells with a FragrantNose"Geert Jan van Gelder, 16 June 2025Document of the Month 5/25: AVersatile AmuletSarah Kiyanrad, 16 May 2025Document of the Month 4/25: AJudeo-Arabic Bible CommentaryNadia Vidro, 24 April 2025Document of the Month 3/25: AFemale Farmer with a StrongVoiceArezou Azad, 6 March 2025Document of the Month 1/25: AnEarly Calligraphic SignatureEdward Shawe-Taylor, 22 January 2025Document of the Month 12/24: ALost Arabic PapyrusRobert Hoyland, 18 December 2024Document of the Month 11/24: AHidden ThreatOfir Haim, 8 November 2024The Yarkand Documents: From aGarden to a Digital Corpus26 February 2025

How to 'acknowledge' a land dale in Old Uyghur: an Iqrār Document from Qarakhanid Yarkand: A land sale deed in Old Uyghur

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How to 'acknowledge' a land dale in Old Uyghur: an Iqrār Document from Qarakhanid Yarkand: A land sale deed in Old Uyghur

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