The Islamic dating system is today called "Hijri". But in the earliest Arabic-invasion documents known to us, we read nothing to do with Hijra; we just read "the year of the Arabs". But sometimes, when they mark the year, it is sanat qaḍāʾi 'l-muʾminīn; as vocalised Shaddel a sana ago.
Shaddel's reading of qaḍāʾ here was Madinan, with reference to the Revolution's Year One. For Hoyland that qaḍāʾ was semi-famously "the dispensation of the believers". That reading even in the early 2000s struck me as more Schofield - Darby than Muhammad - 'Umar. It seemed more in line with modern Anglo-Protestant universities' theological theories than with anything that might make sense to the average Late Antique Syrian.
Mathieu Tillier and Naïm Vanthieghem are on this case now. They've been looking at Fusṭāṭ, that fossatum near modern Cairo. Here, that "SQM" notation appears only in the dates for debt notices.
As for how Islamic finance worked (and works) outside Egypt, let's not delve into that in scope of this blog-post. I will note, here, that religious reformations have, in Biblical contexts, proposed a Jubilee, to forgive all debts public and private. Certainly the Arabs' takeover of Egypt commenced a stark religious shift. My Muslim readers should recall, also, that no Muslim as of the 20s / 640s could agree upon one Quran; 'Uthman's collection would come 30 / 650. All the Arabs had to go on, was what the Egyptians had to go on: the Bible.
Tillier and Vanthieghem do not utter the word "jubilee" in their article. So let's do it right here and now: the sanat qaḍāʾi 'l-muʾminīn was the year after the Zero-Year of accounts being settled. It was the year after the Arabs proclaimed the Jubilee. Where and when they conquered, their subjects canceled what they owed to their prior (Greek and Persian) creditors.
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