They describe the last wishes of a woman wishing to please God, the means of assessing and collecting taxes in a new state, and the nicer points of transferring property between Muslims and Christians. Based on those given at the second International Society for Arabic Papyrology held March 2004 in Granada, these 13 papers cover research on epigraphy and in areas of Al-Andalus, Sicily, Egypt and Khurasan. The editors and contributors note that although a rich bank of documents on medieval Islamic history exists, a bank of specialists does not, and they correct this situation with such topics as the intricacies of bilingual documents, estates in the Arabic documents of Granada, legacies of notaries, roles of the scribe, Arabic business correspondence, the archival mind in early Islamic Egypt, and how epigraphy works in emergence of Arab identity. The illustrations are uniformly well-chosen. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)