, toll, customs duty, is a loanword in Arabic and goes back to the Aramaic maksā, cf. Hebrew mekes and Assyr. miksu; from it is formed a verb m-k-s I, II, III and makkās, the collector of customs. According to the Arabic tradition preserved in Ibn Sīda even in the Ḏj̲āhilīya there were market-dues called maks so that the word must have entered Arabic very early. It is found in Arabic papyri towards the end of the first century a. h.

Becker has dealt with the history of the maks, especially in Egypt, and we follow him here. The old law books use maks in the sense of ʿus̲h̲r, the tenth levied by the mer…