Acknowledgements
The origins of this volume lie in the third congress of the International Society for Arabic Papyrology, held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) in March 2006. We would like to thank the BA, and Mostafa El-Abbadi and Mona Haggag in particular, for their hospitality and generosity during the conference. Other sponsors were the British Academy, the Egypt Exploration Society, and Princeton University. We would also like to thank the Swedish Institute and the Centre d’Études Alexandrines who welcomed us for a reception and lecture during the conference.
The papers presented are the result of ongoing discussion and exchange since that conference, and the authors have continued to update their work and references during the editorial process. We would like to thank the series editors, Wadad Kadi and Sebastian Günther, for their helpful remarks on this volume, as well as the anonymous readers for their suggestions regarding the individual papers. Olly Akkerman and Willem Flinterman also deserve special thanks for their assistance during the editorial process at Leiden University, and we would like to thank the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) for making the work of these student assistants possible. As our Brill editors, Kathy van Vliet and Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar have offered unfaltering encouragement throughout, and for this too we offer our thanks.
Leiden, 10 November 2014