Exploring the Socio-Pragmatics of Early Byzantine Request Letters on Papyrus

Our understanding of Medieval Greek letter writing (4th–15th century) is shaped primarily by two corpora: papyri and manuscripts. Papyrus letters, typically autographs dealing with private and administrative matters, are mostly preserved from Egypt and disappear after the 8th century CE. While letters from the Late Antique period have been extensively studied, those from the early Islamic period remain comparatively understudied, due in part to their smaller number. This is nonetheless a pivotal era, as we witness shifts in the Greek epistolographic tradition, shaped in part by contact with Arabic administrative practices (Grob 2010). A notable development is the emergence of new prescript conventions in Greek letters authored by or addressed to Muslim officials (Luiselli 2008). The best-documented case of this transformation is the archive of Basil the Pagarch, which consists of over one hundred Greek request letters originating from the Arab provincial administration. These texts have recently drawn attention for their distinctive pragmatic structure and visual layout (Bentein & Kootstra 2024; Kootstra & Bentein 2025). This contribution aims not only to (re)introduce the archive of Basil but also to contextualize it within the wider spectrum of seventh- and eighth-century papyrus letter writing, a period that has yielded roughly 150 additional letters from a variety of contexts—including superior-to-subordinate, peer-to-peer, and subordinate-to-superior exchanges. Special attention will be paid to the way requests are formulated, with a focus on both linguistic and visual strategies. By comparing the phraseology and layout of these letters to those in the Basil archive, this study seeks to highlight patterns of continuity and innovation in the evolving culture of Greek administrative communication under early Islamic rule.