Governor of Egypt and the policies of Kherraj (Land Tax) The era of Umayyad, Marawan branch “65 – 132 H / 684 – 749 AD” Between abuse and justice – An Analytical study

The Umayyad era formed a distinctive and characteristic part of the Islamic history. The state which lasted for a hundred years played an important and prominent role in the service of Islam and building the Islamic community and provided loads of effort. Despite these contributions, it attains little mention, attention and praise in research papers. Over more, the distinguished era of Umayyads and their rule was ignored. Old and recent historians alike in addition to orientalists attempted to tarnish it which motivated me to research and study topics of that era and select a topic related to civilization in an attempt to stop the injustice inflicted on this distinguished time and disambiguate this section of the Umayyads’ history and the history of Islamic Egypt in particular. I preferred to select a topic related to economics and chose Kheraj or land taxes which was one of the essential sources for Muslims’ Bayt-al-Mal in the Islamic era. The Umayyad caliphs, and in particular those from the Marawan branch, gave great attention to administrative organization and restructuring the Islamic State to render it more coherentsuch as coining the Islamic currency and Arabization of bureaux in all nations that joined the State of Islam and including the kheraj bureau. They worked in improving how it was collected and increasing its revenues and hence improved the care given to the land and selected the workers and managers carefully to carry out this task.

The Umayyad caliphs, and in particular those from the Marawan branch presented many examples of how to collect the land tax and increase its revenues which oscillated between two styles: Abuse and Justice. Justice though was the predominant as most of the Umayyads were following the curriculum of the second Caliph Omar who placed a just law for collecting the land tax which will be presented in the research paper along with showcasing the style of Egypt’s rulers during the Umayyad era, reasons for their style and the results the style led to and how did they succeed, by justice or abuse?