In the early 690s, the Umayyad court began a broad program of state consolidation (fiscal oversight, tighter provincial control). Arabization of record-keeping and chancery practice emerged as part of this larger centralization effort.
From 77 AH / 696–697 CE, Abd al-Malik’s coinage reform moved toward a distinctively Islamic, Arabic-inscribed currency. This monetary standardization reinforced the broader push to make Arabic a state language across fiscal and documentary systems.
In 697, under the powerful governor al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf, the Iraqi fiscal administration (dīwān) was converted from Persian (Middle Persian/Pahlavi administrative practice) to Arabic, a landmark step in Umayyad bureaucratic arabization.
By the late 690s–699, Umayyad coinage increasingly adopted Arabic inscriptions (reducing or eliminating figural motifs), helping normalize Arabic as a prestige administrative-and-imperial medium across the caliphate’s domains.
In 700, the Syrian tax administration’s dīwān was converted from Greek (a Byzantine bureaucratic legacy) to Arabic, implemented under Abd al-Malik by the administrator Sulaymān ibn Saʿd al-Khūshanī.
In 705–706, Arabic replaced Greek and Coptic in the Egyptian fiscal administration, extending the language reform to another major former Byzantine province and reducing reliance on older documentary conventions.
Britannica summarizes Abd al-Malik’s reign as one that reorganized and strengthened administration and adopted Arabic as the language of administration throughout the empire, framing the dīwān conversions as part of an imperial standardization project.
Under al-Walīd I (r. 705–715), the Umayyad state continued integrating provincial practice into a more uniform imperial administration, building on the arabized dīwāns and associated fiscal routines established under Abd al-Malik.
During Qurra ibn Sharīk’s governorship of Egypt (709–715), a large corpus of administrative papyri survives, illustrating routine governance and correspondence within an increasingly Arabic-document administrative environment.
Even after reforms in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, arabization proceeded more slowly in distant provinces. Standard references note that transitions in faraway regions (e.g., parts of Khurāsān) could lag substantially behind the core reforms.
By the 730s, the Umayyad program of replacing Greek, Persian, and Coptic in key bureaus had largely established Arabic as the empire’s dominant language of state record and fiscal practice—an institutional baseline inherited (and expanded) by later caliphates.
After defeating key rivals in the Second Fitna, Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān was positioned to centralize governance and standardize provincial administration—preconditions for later language reforms in the dīwāns (state bureaus).
Arabization of Administration under the Umayyads (690s–730s)
