In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

by Tom Holland

  106 As with virtually every aspect of the Arab invasions, precision is impossible. One source claims that the task force numbered three hundred, another that it amounted to five thousand.

  107 It is typical of the murk of the sources for the Arab invasions that in one account he is named “Bryrdn.”

  108 The unusually specific time and date derive from a notice in a Syrian chronicle written some time around the year 640, and which in turn seems to draw on a near-contemporary record. See Palmer, Brock and Hoyland, pp. 18–19.

  109 Procopius: On Buildings, 2.9.4.

  110 For the decayed state of towns in Syria and Palestine in the wake of the plague, see Kennedy (1985).

  111 Sozomen: 6.38.

  112 Anastasius of Sinai: 1156C.

  113 As with the origins of the Qur’an, so with the course of the Arab conquests: the range of scholarly opinion is dizzying. Christian sources are contemporary, but too patchy to provide anything like a coherent narrative; Arabic sources are plentiful, but frustratingly late. The contradictory nature of the evidence from Arab historians for the Battle of the Yarmuk is best set out in Donner’s magisterial survey of the Islamic conquests (1981, pp. 133–48). However, even he comes across as a model of guarded optimism when compared to Lawrence Conrad, whose ground-breaking essay on the conquest of the obscure Levantine island of Arwad served as a landmine beneath the entire project of reconstructing the Arab invasions from Muslim sources. For the most recent attempt to clear up the mess, see Howard-Johnston (2010), who locates the decisive Roman defeat not at the Yarmuk but near Damascus.

  114 Anastasius of Sinai: 1156C.

  115 Baladhuri, p. 210.

  116 Given, as Donner (1981) wistfully comments, “the chronologically ambiguous nature of many of the accounts about the conquest, it is impossible to do more than guess at the true dates involved” (p. 212).

  117 Sebeos, 137.

  118 Tabari: Vol. 12, p. 64.

  119 Qur’an: 4.36.

  120 Contemporaneous reports on the battle outside Gaza seem to imply that Muhammad was still alive at the time. The first text to mention the existence of an Arabian prophet, and which has been most plausibly dated to the summer of 634, refers to “the prophet who has appeared to the Saracens” (Teachings of Jacob: 5.16) Another, dated to around 640, and the first to mention him by name, describes the battle as having been won by “the Arabs of Muhammad” (quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 120.) For a survey of later Christian and Samaritan sources that presume the survival of Muhammad into 634, see Crone and Cook, pp. 152–3, n. 7. As they point out, “The convergence is impressive”—and proof of just how slippery is our evidence for the Prophet’s life.

  121 The saying is attributed to an early eighth-century scholar, Mujahid bin Jabr (quoted by Hakim, p. 161). Muslim opinion on the virtues—or otherwise—of Umar covers a broad spectrum.

  122 Sebeos, 139.

  123 Qur’an: 5.33.

  124 Constitution of Medina: Document A.9, as reproduced in Serjeant (1978), p. 19.

  125 My thanks to Michael Kulikowski for this.

  126 It is only fair to point out that Christian authors, looking to explain the defeat of the Romans, cast the Saracen armies as no less teeming. In fact, as Donner (1981) has pointed out, “perhaps the most striking fact about the armies that carried out the Islamic conquest of the Fertile Crescent was their small size” (p. 231).

  127 Sebeos, 136.

  128 According to the best estimate, Arab foederati “may have numbered two to five times the size of the available regular and garrison troops” (Kaegi (1992), p. 43).

  129 Sebeos: p. 141.

  130 Teachings of Jacob: 5.16.

  131 Qur’an: 5.20.

  132 Hans Jansen has suggested, very plausibly, that “these stories about Jews who had entered into talks with the enemies of Islam and were killed as a consequence had as their primary aim the cowing of the Christians of the Middle East” (p. 134). (My gratitude to Liz Waters for the translation.)

  133 Sebeos, 135.

  134 From the so-called “Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai,” quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 309. The rabbi had lived back in the second century AD, but the vision of the Arab conquests attributed to him seems to have been contemporaneous with the events it describes.

  135 Ibid., p. 311.

  136 Subsequent Islamic tradition would explain this as a title bestowed on Umar by Muhammad. However, it is clear—from both contemporaneous Jewish records and later Muslim histories—that the title actually derived from the Jews of Jerusalem and was prompted by Umar’s activities on the Temple Mount. See Bashear (1990).

  137 Qur’an: 16.41.

  138 John of Nikiu, p. 200.

  139 A recently discovered inscription in the Arabian desert south of Palestine reads simply, “In the name of God, I, Zuhayr, wrote [this] at the time Umar died in the year twenty-four.” Quoted by Hoyland (2006), p. 411.

  140 Qur’an: 2.177.

  141 Sebeos, 175.

  142 Qur’an: 49.9.

  143 Sebeos, 176.

  144 From a Christian tract written around 680 and quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 141. Although the author was a Syrian, Hoyland convincingly argues that his informant was an Arab.

  145 Dhu al-Thafinat, quoted by Sizgorich (2009), p. 206.

  146 Qur’an: 16.106.

  147 Muhamad b. Ahmad al-Malati, quoted by Sizgorich (2009), p. 215.

  148 From the Christian chronicle mentioned above, and quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 136.

  149 Ibid.

  150 Padwick, p. 119.

  151 From an inscription on a dam near Ta’if, in Arabia, quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 692.

  152 John bar Penkâye, p. 61.

  7 The Forging of Islam

  1 Arculf, p. 41.

  2 Fredegarius: 154.

  3 Arculf, p. 43.

  4 “A Jewish Apocalypse on the Umayyads,” quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 317.

  5 The monk was Anastasius of Sinai. See Flusin, pp. 25–6.

  6 Arculf, p. 43.

  7 Quoted by Humphreys, p. 11.

  8 Mu’awiya is hailed as “Commander of the Faithful” on an inscription in the main hall of the bath-house of Hammat Gader, a few miles from Tiberias, which was one of the Amir’s favourite winter resorts. Accompanying this very public articulation of Umayyad legitimacy is a cross—which, inevitably, has always deeply puzzled scholars committed to the notion that Mu’awiya was a Muslim. In the words of Clive Foss (2008), “the further implications of this phenomenon remain to be explored” (p. 118).

  9 Abu Hamza, quoted by Crone and Hinds, p. 131.

  10 John bar Penkâye, p. 61.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Jacob of Edessa, quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 566.

  14 Qur’an: 2.142.

  15 John bar Penkâye, p. 61.

  16 Quoted by Hawting (1982a), p. 44.

  17 Syriac Common Source, in Hoyland (1997), p. 647.

  18 John bar Penkâye, pp. 68–9.

  19 Ibid., p. 66.

  20 Qur’an: 21.1.

  21 From a coin issued in 688–9, quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 695.

  22 Quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 694.

  23 Qur’an: 33.57.

  24 Syriac Common Source, in Hoyland (1997), p. 647.

  25 Al-Akhtal, 19, in Stetkevych, p. 92.

  26 Al-Muqqadasi, quoted by Rabbat, p. 16.

  27 Al-Muqqadasi, quoted by Rosen-Ayalon, p. 69.

  28 From a sermon preached towards the end of the Umayyad Caliphate. Quoted by Elad (1992), p. 50.

  29 This phrase dates from the twelfth century: evidence for the fact that Syrians continued to regard Jerusalem, rather than Mecca, as Islam’s holiest shrine for several centuries. Quoted by Van Ess, p. 89.

  30 Qur’an: 61.9.

  31 Syriac Common Source, in Hoyland (1997), p. 648.

  32 Farazdaq, quoted by Kister (1969), p. 182. The literal translation of “the mount of Jerusalem” is “the upper part of Iliy’a.�
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  33 The mosque in Egypt was at Fustat, a garrison city that would ultimately evolve into Cairo. Its qibla was reoriented in 710–11; see Bashear (1989), p. 268. The mosque in the Negev was at Be’er Ora. For a description and illustration of the change in the orientation of its qibla, see Sharon (1988), pp. 230–2. For the change to Kufa’s qibla, see Hoyland (1997), p. 562.

  34 From the Kharijite sermon quoted by Elad (1992), p. 50.

  35 Nu’aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi, in the Kitab al-Fitan, quoted by Sharon (1988), p. 234, fn. 7.

  36 Tabari: Vol. 22, p. 14.

  37 Ibn Asakir, quoted by de Prémare, p. 209.

  38 Quoted by Crone and Hinds, p. 28.

  39 Al-Akhtal, 19, in Stetkevych, p. 91.

  40 Farazdaq, quoted by Crone and Hinds, p. 43.

  41 Qur’an: 3.19.

  42 Quoted by Hoyland (1997), p. 702.

  43 Qur’an: 27.23.

  44 Al-Muqqadasi, quoted by Ettinghausen, p. 28.

  45 John bar Penkâye, p. 61.

  46 Michael the Syrian, in Palmer, Brock and Hoyland, p. 152, n. 363.

  47 John bar Penkâye, p. 67.

  48 Tabari, quoted by Hoyland, p. 198.

  49 Gregory of Nyssa, p. 74. Gregory’s fourth homily on Ecclesiastes is exceptional for being the only document from antiquity—as far as I am aware—specifically and unequivocally to condemn slavery as an institution.

  50 Qur’an: 90.12–17.

  51 These restrictions are conventionally attributed to a pact signed between the Christians of Syria and Umar, but Western scholars have tended to date them to the end of the eighth century, a hundred and fifty years after the time of Umar. Recently, though, it has been convincingly argued that the so-called “Pact of Umar” may indeed date—in its essentials if not its final form—from the period of the early conquests. See Noth (1987).

  52 Qur’an: 33.27.

  53 Ibid.: 33.50.

  54 Al-Suyuti, quoted by Robinson (2005), p. 20.

  55 Qur’an: 89.17–20.

  56 For a sample of the various attempts to make proper sense of it, see Ibn Warraq (2002), pp. 319–86.

  57 A Zoroastrian text anticipating the End Days, from the eighth or ninth century, quoted by Minorsky, p. 257.

  58 Quoted by Brown (2003), p. 314.

  59 The complaint of an eighth-century Muslim governor in eastern Iran, quoted by Dennett, p. 120.

  60 Qur’an: 1.6–7.

  61 Sefer ha-Eshkol: Vol. 2, pp. 73–4.

  62 Qur’an: 24.58. The three prayers specified by the Qur’an are the Dawn Prayer, the Noon Prayer and the Night Prayer.

  63 Sahih al-Bukhari: 1.4.245.

  64 The Talmud, p. 553.

  65 Ibid.

  66 Ibn Qutayba, quoted by Sizgorich (2009), p. 160.

  67 Ibn Hawqal, quoted by Haldon and Kennedy, p. 97.

  68 Artat b. al-Mundhir, quoted by Bashear (1991a), p. 178.

  69 Tabari, quoted by Brooks (1899), p. 20.

  70 Theophanes, p. 396.

  71 Theophanes, pp. 397–8.

  72 Quoted by Bashear (1991a), p. 191.

  73 The first scholars to be recorded on the front line joined Maslama’s expedition against Constantinople in 716. Therefore, although the two examples mentioned here by name were active after the fall of the Umayyads, they can be taken as representative of a trend that spanned most of the eighth century.

  74 Ibn Asakir, quoted by Bonner (2004), p. 409.

  75 Ibn al-Mubarak, quoted by Yahya, p. 33.

  76 Ibn al-Mubarak, quoted by Sizgorich (2009), p. 161.

  77 Ibn al-Mubarak, quoted by Yahya, pp. 32–3.

  78 Qur’an: 9.5.

  79 Ibid.: 2.190.

  80 The words of a Christian scholar of the eighth century, quoted by J. B. Segal (1963), p. 125.

  81 The story dates from the mid-tenth century, and is attributed to the reign of a Caliph who lived some eighty years after Marwan’s Caliphate. The link between the Harranians and the Sabaeans appears to have been made much earlier than that, however. It also seems to date to around the time that Marwan was present in Harran. See Green, p. 106.

  82 Bar Hebraeus: p. 110. The liver inspection recorded by Bar Hebraeus took place in 737.

  83 History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria: 18.156.

  84 Tabari, quoted by Kennedy (2007), p. 288.

  85 Tha’alibi, quoted by Pourshariati (2008), p. 431.

  86 Baladhuri, quoted by Sharon (1983), p. 203.

  Envoi

  1 Abu-Sahl, quoted by Gutas, p. 46.

  2 See Gutas, p. 80.

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