by Douglas Boin
An apocalyptic component
In order to gain a fuller perspective of the social profile of the “Believers,” we should examine some of the characteristics we can glean about them from the Qur’an. According to Islamic commentators, Muhammad’s first revelations had come between 610 and 622 CE while he was living in Mecca. After the emigration to Yathrib, more followed. Taken together, these texts comprise the 114 chapters, or suras, of the Qur’an.
Among the many historical details that can emerge from a close reading of the text are two that deserve comment here. The first relates to the urgent nature of Muhammad’s message. In many suras, listeners and readers are urged to change their ethical behavior because of the looming nature of the end times. This cosmic catastrophe lurks in the following verses, thought to have been revealed at Mecca:
How many a sign is there in the heavens and the earth, which they pass by with face averted! And most of them believe not in God [Allah] except that they attribute partners (to Him). Deem they themselves secure from the coming on them of a pall of God’s punishment, or the coming of the Hour suddenly while they are unaware?
(Qur’a̵n 12 [Mecca]: 105–107, trans. by M. Pickthall [1938])
Here, those who have not joined the community of Believers are castigated for not recognizing the divine signs “in the heavens and the earth,” cosmic signs which forecast the coming wrath of Allah. By contrast, those who have joined the movement, people who now follow the revelations to Muhammad, know that God’s “punishment” demands they reset their moral and spiritual compass, especially when one considers the “coming of the Hour” (Political Issues 14.1: What Effect Did the Rise of Islam Have on Daily Life in the Christian Roman Empire?).
Political Issues 14.1 What Effect Did the Rise of Islam Have on Daily Life in the Christian Roman Empire?
After Muhammad’s death (632 CE), the Believers’ movement and its leaders expanded their territorial possessions via military means. By 633, the entire Arabian peninsula, not just isolated cities like Medina and Mecca, would be brought under their authority. During these battles, the Believers thought of themselves as striving, or fighting, for God. The Arabic word that expressed that idea is jihad.
The campaigns to acquire political authority across the peninsula, combined with an ideological belief that the Believers were doing God’s work, pushed the community to wage even bolder campaigns. Soon, Muhammad’s followers would arrive at the border of the Roman and Sasanian Empires. By 636 CE, the Roman army would be forced to engage this new military threat. At the battle of Yarmuk, in Roman Syria, fortune favored the Believers’ army. Within two years, the territory of Roman Syria, as well as the land to its south – including Jerusalem – would fall from Roman hands.
The images of a fierce, relentless Islamic conquest, especially associated with the word jihad, can cloud our picture of daily life in the seventh century. Two documents, both written in Greek, offer a substantial rebuttal to those who think that the eastern Mediterranean was thrown into chaos with the spread of the Believers’ movement. Both texts were laid in the ground as mosaics.
In Gadara (Hammat Gader, in Israel), we learn about an important repair to the city’s baths that dates to the period of the Believers’ expansion. According to the mosaic:
In the days of the servant of God, Mu’awiya, the commander of the faithful, the hot baths of the people there [in Gadara] were saved and rebuilt by ‘Abd Allah son of Abu Hashim, the governor, for the healing of the sick. [It was done] under the care of Ioannes, the official of Gadara on the 5th of December, on the second day of the week, in the 6th year of the indiction, in the 726th year since the colony’s foundation, in the 42nd year according to the Arabs.
(Translation adapted from R. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It [Princeton: Darwin Press, 1997], p. 690, no. 7)
The year A.H. 42 corresponds to 662–663 CE, which means this text dates about a generation after the Believers had conquered Roman Syria and the land around Jerusalem. Instead of speaking to an irreconcilable age of conflict, however, the announcement emphasizes the opposite. In Gadara, the new governor worked with residents to preserve and repair their hot springs. They did so likely because they shared a common goal in bringing the facilities back to life: boosting tourism.
Since Roman times, Gadara had been a destination for pleasure‐seekers. One fourth‐century CE writer dared to claim: “Gadara, a place which has warm baths in Syria, [is] inferior only to those at Baiae in Italy” (Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers, section 458, LCL trans. by W. Wright [1921]). No doubt the town council approved of this publicity. Intense local pride, combined with steady revenue from visitors, likely explains why the Believers joined with locals to repair the springs in the seventh century CE. Even “the commander of the faithful” could recognize their benefits.
When did the early Believers expect this “Hour” to arrive exactly? It is an important question. As we have repeatedly learned from our studies of Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity, apocalyptic thinking – even when it dwells on a Last Judgment and the end of the world – does not need to specify an imminent, or immediate, event for the speaker’s message to have a certain energetic quality. What, then, can we deduce about the Believers’ movement?
Evidence from the Qur’an suggests that they not only understood “the Hour” was approaching, soon, but that some of the first signs of this divine reckoning had already come: “The Hour drew near and the moon was rent in two,” reads one sura (Qur’a̵n 54 [Mecca]: 1–5, trans. by M. Pickthall (1938]). “And if they behold a sign they turn away and say: ‘Prolonged illusion.’” The text implies that people in Muhammad’s lifetime have already been exposed to the warning signs that the “Hour” was near. It chastises anyone who interprets these signs as an “illusion.”
An initial focus on Jerusalem
A second aspect of the Believers’ movement is apparent when examining the chapters of the Qur’an. We can see that the Believers’ understanding of which direction to pray was not the one handed down through Islamic tradition. Today, Muslims pray towards Mecca. The earliest Believers – driven from that desert sanctuary city, in effect, locked out of Muhammad’s hometown – prayed the opposite direction: to Jerusalem.
From their earliest formation, a shared “direction of prayer” (qibla, in Arabic) had contributed to the Believers’ strong sense of communal identity. When, in 630 CE, Muhammad marshaled the forces in Yathrib to march on Mecca, that community was given a new directional focus: the Ka’ba. Cleansing the shrine of its “pagan” character and taking forceful control of the city from the tribe who had managed it, Muhammad thus established Mecca as the center of the Believers’ movement.
One important hint that the community’s first qibla, or prayer direction, was changed after the emigration to Yathrib appears at sura 2.
And when we made the House [at Mecca] a resort for people and a sanctuary [saying]: Take as your place of worship the place where Abraham stood. … The foolish of the people will say: What has turned them from the prayer direction (qibla) which they formerly observed? Say: To God belong the east and the west. He guides whom He wills to a straight path. … And we appointed the prayer direction which you formerly observed only that we might know him who follows the Messenger from him who turns on his heels.
(Qur’a̵n 2 [Medina]: 124–126, 142–143, trans. by M. Pickthall, slightly modified [1938])
Although the text of the Qur’an does not name the city from which the Believers have turned their prayer, biographies of the prophet, like the one written by Ibn Sa’d, make clear that “the prayer direction which [the Believers] formerly observed” was Jerusalem.
There is also good circumstantial reason to think Jerusalem was the focus of their initial prayer. Many of the Believers’ contemporaries, both Christians and Jews, thought that Jerusalem would be the setting for the explosive end‐time events described in their own traditions. For a community steeped in apocalyptic imagery, as Muhammad�
��s early community was, Jerusalem would have been a natural focus for their prayers. The Believers’ awareness of this wider Mediterranean conversation – about the importance of Jerusalem in God’s plans – would also explain why, in their military expansion, they soon made plans to seize it (Working With Sources 14.1: The Hunting Lodge at Qusayr ‘Amra, Jordan; Figures 14.3 and 14.4).
Figure 14.3 From the outside, the hunting lodge at Qusayr ‘Amra appears to be a modest structure whose domes and vaults, nevertheless, give it a dramatic profile against the desert landscape. Built of local limestone, the lodge sits in an area east of the Jordan River valley (modern Jordan, about 50 miles outside Amman) at the base of a wadi, or canyon, that fills with rain. In the foreground, at left, is a cistern for storing water. The lodge’s entrance, with its dramatic triple‐vaulted room, lit by high windows, is at right. This photograph of the property faces south. Early to mid‐eighth century CE.
Photo credit: © Walter Ward, 2007.
Figure 14.4 In contrast to its unadorned exterior, Qusayr ‘Amra’s interior walls, including its entry vaults, are awash in frescoes. Some painted scenes show women nude, alluding to the luxuries of the bath. Others, such as these two panels, promoted values that were important to the Umayyad elite. Located on the east vault of the reception hall, they are part of thirty‐two scenes which show ordinary men at work: transporting materials, pounding anvils, carving stone. Although their message is perhaps not immediately apparent today, the lodge’s owner may have commissioned these scenes of daily life because he saw building, like patronage, as a metaphor for good governance – a value shared by the Umayyads’ neighbors. Early to mid‐eighth century CE.
Photo credit: © B. O’Kane/Alamy Stock Photo.
Working With Sources 14.1 The Hunting Lodge at Qusayr ‘Amra, Jordan
Maintaining good diplomatic relations with Roman government was a high priority for leaders of the early Islamic Empire. Naturally, such meetings led to the potential for other kinds of dialogue between the Christian state and the Islamic state. The architecture and wall paintings from the site of Qusayr ‘Amra in modern Jordan, east of the capital Amman, offers a specific setting where these kinds of subtler exchanges took place.
Qusayr ‘Amra functioned as a hunting lodge, thought to have been built c.723–744 CE by Walid II, although a slightly earlier date in the eighth century has also been proposed (Garth Fowden, Qusayr ‘Amra: Art and the Umayyad Elite in Late Antique Syria [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004]). Constructed of local limestone, it dazzled guests with a reception hall, a dining room, and a bathing establishment, where the Muslim governor of the region, who was known as an amir, or “military commander,” hosted embassies and friends. The desert site helped the amir cultivate a working friendship with ambassadors sent south from the Roman Empire.
Qusayr ‘Amra’s fine bathing amenities and sophisticated use of water showcased the wealth and technological resources of its owner and host.
Wall paintings inside the lodge also left an impression on guests. In the main entry hall, to the right of where the amir would have received visitors, was a scene of six intimidating figures. From their position high on the side wall, they would have looked like a parade of eminent dignitaries who had come to pay their respects to the amir, seated below. The paintings are in poor condition today, but four were labeled. They were known rulers of the Late Antique world. The four who are labeled are “Caesar” (ruler of the Roman Empire), “Khusrow” (or Shah, the King of the Sasanian Empire), “Roderick,” King of the Visigoths in Spain, and “Negus,” the honorary title of the ruler of Ethiopia. The identity of the remaining two is not certain. However, based on the fact that their four companions are heads of state, historians have plausibly deduced that one might be the ruler of a Central Asian kingdom along the Silk Road – perhaps Sogdiana, in Uzbekistan. The other might have depicted the emperor of China.
As prominent faces in the amir’s reception hall, these leaders would have caught any visitor’s eye, even if the scene bringing them all together was a pictorial invention. The Sasanian Empire had ceased to exist in 651 CE when its last shah was assassinated. King Roderick of Spain died in 711 CE when the Visigothic kingdom was conquered by a Muslim army. The paintings in the reception hall do not commemorate an actual gathering, then; it affirms the political authority of the amir by arguing that he is the rightful successor of empires that have come and gone. It also does so by placing him in the context of still‐powerful rulers, like the Roman emperor in Constantinople.
These paintings, like the hunting lodge as a whole, addressed Muslim and non‐Muslim visitors alike. Each figure is labeled in two languages: Arabic and Greek. Since the sixth century CE, Greek had been made the official language of the Roman Empire, spoken by all its diplomats and ambassadors.
Summary
By the beginning of the eighth century CE, individuals within the “Believers” community will have embraced the name “Muslim” to refer to their distinctive beliefs; and they will have taken political control of Egypt, Syria, and Sasanian Persia, as well as Jerusalem. There, the dynasty of rulers known as the Umayyads would make a powerful statement about their possession of the city. They would build a shrine, the Dome of the Rock, directly on the Temple Mount, a site which had lain barren since 70 CE under all Christian Roman emperors. The world of the Arabian peninsula, out of which the army of Muhammad’s believers had emerged, was not cut off or isolated from the broader social and cultural currents of the Mediterranean, however.
Apocalyptic thinking, which was prevalent in both the kingdoms of western Europe – in the territories that had once been under Roman control – and the Roman Empire in the east was one such shared characteristic. The political maneuvering of the Roman and Sasanian states in and around the southern Arabian peninsula during the late sixth century CE also may have shaped the society and culture of cities like Mecca and Yathrib. And while, over the next two hundred years and beyond, Muhammad’s followers would expand their territorial holdings through military victory, their conquests also came with significant degrees of diplomacy and cultural negotiation.
Even their vision of a divinely inspired government was little different than the ideology which had underpinned the Sasanian Empire before its collapse and which was currently upholding the Roman Empire in Constantinople.
Study Questions
Name some reasons why Jerusalem was an important city for Christians at the start of the seventh century CE.
What is the “Constitution of Medina,” and how does it shed light on the community founded by Muhammad and followers?
What beliefs, ideas, and values did Muslims and Christians share in the seventh and eighth centuries CE? Be sure to cite specific evidence to support your analysis.
From a historical perspective, would you say that individuals and communities who hold monotheistic beliefs (“belief in one God”) are fundamentally unable to live in a pluralistic society?
Suggested Readings
Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2004).
Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012).
Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of The Holy Land: From the Destruction of Solomon’s Temple to the Muslim Conquest (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Marcus Milwright, An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010).
Glossary
A.D. (“Anno Domini”)
Latin for “In the Year of our Lord,” a dating system that was first proposed in the sixth century CE.
A.H. (“Anno Hegirae”)
Latin for “In the Year of the Emigration (hijra),” this system of reckoning time is modeled after the Latin A.D. to express the Islamic custom of dating time from the year of Muhammad’s journey from Mecca to Yathrib (Medina) in 622 CE.
amir
A “military commander” within the early Isla
mic empire.
basileos (plural: basileoi)
The Greek word which captured the idea of the Latin “imperator,” or emperor; it could also, however, be understood as “king.” East Romans referred to their ruler as basileos.
Christ
From the Greek word “Anointed,” a word which Jesus’ followers used to articulate their belief that Jesus was the “Messiah.” It is not Jesus’ last name, and its use in historical writing is highly questionable since not everyone, then or now, believes Jesus was the “Messiah.”
Christianismos
A Greek word, coined in the early second century CE. Often translated as “Christianity,” so that it appears as something distinct from Judaism, this word was likely invented to capture a sense of “identifying openly as a ‘Christian.’” As a term, then, it says very little about whether Christians saw themselves as having separated from their Jewish heritage or whether Christianity as a religion had parted ways from Judaism.
comes
A special advisor to the emperor, or “count.”
communitas
As proposed by the anthropologist Victor Turner (1920–1983), this Latin word captures the social bonds that tie people together after a rite of passage, or initiation. To emphasize that this social connection endures even after individuals depart, Turner used the Latin word “communitas” to distinguish it from the common word for a gathering.
