There were also customs and rulings that later became associated with Islam, and which predated Muammad but were now adopted, apparently by the Prophet himself. For example, amputation as a punishment for theft and the passing of a death sentence for those who renounced their faith were common practices that were taken on by Muslims. Elements like alms-giving, fasting, pilgrimage and prayer became central components of Islam, compounding the sense of continuity and familiarity.19 The similarities with Christianity and Judaism later became a sensitive topic, which was partly dealt with by the dogma that Muammad was illiterate. This insulated him from claims that he was familiar with the teachings of the Torah and the Bible – despite near-contemporaries commenting that he was ‘learned’, and knew both the Old and New Testament.20 Some have gone further still, seeking to claim that the Qurān has as its base a Christian lectionary written in an Aramaic derivative that was subsequently adapted and remoulded. This – like many claims that challenge or dismiss the Islamic tradition – has gained notoriety, though it has limited support among modern historians.21
That Christians and Jews were core constituencies for support during the first phase of Islamic expansion explains why one of the few verses in the Qurān that relates to contemporary events during Muammad’s lifetime spoke in positive terms about the Romans. The Romans have been defeated, says the Qurān, referring to any one of a number of chronic setbacks during the wars with Persia before the late 620s. ‘But in a few years they shall themselves gain victory: such being the will of God before and after.’22 This could be guaranteed: God does not fail in his promises.23 The message was inclusive and familiar and seemed to draw the sting out of fractious arguments that had set Christians on edge. From their perspective, Islam looked inclusive and conciliatory, and offered hope of calming tensions.
In fact, the sources are full of examples of Christians admiring what they saw among the Muslims and their armies. One text from the eighth century notes how one Christian ascetic was sent to observe the enemy and came back impressed by the experience. ‘I come to you from a people staying up through the night praying,’ he supposedly told his peers, ‘and remaining abstinent during the day, commanding the right and forbidding the wrong, monks by night, lions by day.’ This seemed entirely commendable – and served to blur the lines between Christianity and Islam. The fact that other accounts from this period talk of Christian monks adopting Muammad’s teachings provides another sign of differences of doctrine not being entirely clear-cut.24 The asceticism espoused by the early Muslims was also recognisable and laudable, providing a culturally familiar reference point to the Graeco-Roman world.25
Efforts to conciliate with the Christians were supplemented by a policy of protecting and respecting the People of the Book – that is to say, both Jews and Christians. The Qurān makes plain that early Muslims saw themselves not as rivals of these two faiths but as heirs to the same legacy: Muammad’s revelations had previously been ‘revealed to Abraham and Ishmael, to Isaac and Jacob and the tribes’; God had entrusted the same messages to Moses and Jesus too. ‘We discriminate against none of them,’ says the Qurān. In other words, the prophets of Judaism and Christianity were the same as those of Islam.26
It is no coincidence, then, that the Qurān makes more than sixty references to the word umma, used not as an ethnic label but to mean a community of believers. On several occasions, the text notes mournfully that mankind was once a single umma, before differences drove people apart.27 The implicit message was that it was God’s will that differences should be put to one side. Similarities between the great monotheistic faiths are played up in the Qurān and in the adīth – the collections of comments, sayings and deeds of the Prophet – while differences are consistently played down. The emphasis on treating Jews and Christians alike with respect and tolerance is unmistakable.
The sources for this period are notoriously difficult to interpret because they are complicated and contradictory, but also because many were written long after the events. However, recent advances in palaeography, the discovery of wisps of texts that were previously unknown and increasingly sophisticated ways of understanding written material are transforming long-held views of this epic period in history. Thus, while the Islamic tradition has long held that Muammad died in 632, recent scholarship suggests that the Prophet may have been alive later. Multiple sources from the seventh and eighth centuries attest to a charismatic preacher figure – recently suggested as being Muammad himself – directing the Arab forces and spurring them onwards at the gates of Jerusalem.28
The extraordinary progress of Muammad’s followers in Palestine was matched by a helpless and inept response by the authorities. Some members of the Christian clergy fought a desperate rearguard action, painting the Arabs in the worst possible light in a doomed attempt to convince the local population not to be fooled into giving their support to a message that sounded both simple and familiar. The ‘Saracens’ are vengeful and hate God, warned the patriarch of Jerusalem, shortly after the conquest of the city. They plunder cities, ravage the countryside fields, set fire to churches and destroy monasteries. The evil they commit against Christ and against the church is appalling, as are the ‘foul blasphemies they pronounce about God’.29
In fact, it appears that the Arab conquests were neither as brutal nor as shocking as the commentators make out. Across Syria and Palestine, for example, there is little evidence of violent conquest in the archaeological record.30 Damascus, for instance, the most important city in northern Syria, surrendered quickly after terms were agreed between the local bishop and the attacking Arab commander. Even allowing for some poetic licence, the compromise was both reasonable and realistic: in exchange for allowing churches to remain open and untouched and for the Christian population to remain unmolested, the inhabitants agreed to recognise the overlordship of new masters. In practice what this meant was paying tax not to Constantinople and to the imperial authorities, but to representatives of ‘the prophet, the caliphs and the believers’.31
It was a process that was replicated time and again as the Arabs began to fan out in every direction, racing down the trade and communication routes. Armies swarmed into south-western Iran, before attention turned to hunting down Yazdagird III, the last Sasanian king who had fled east. Expeditionary forces that set out against Egypt caused chaos by operating in tandem, resulting in limited and ineffective military resistance – made worse by local populations fighting against each other or being willing to negotiate terms in the face of fear and uncertainty. Alexandria, a jewel of the eastern Mediterranean, was demilitarised and forced to promise a vast tribute in exchange for assurances that churches would be left intact and the Christian population left to their own devices. News of this agreement was met with weeping and wailing in Alexandria, and even by calls that the man who had brokered it, the Patriarch Cyrus, should be stoned for his betrayal. ‘I have made this treaty,’ he declared in his defence, ‘in order to save you and your children.’ And with this, records one author writing a century or so later, ‘the Muslims took control of all of Egypt, south and north, and in doing so, trebled their income from taxes’.32 God was punishing Christians for their sins, wrote another author at the time.33
In an almost perfect model of expansion, the threat of military force led to negotiated settlements as one province after another submitted to the new authorities. To start with, overlordship in conquered territories was light and even unobtrusive. By and large, the existing majority populations were allowed to get on with their business unmolested by new masters who established garrisons and living quarters away from existing urban centres.34 In some cases, new cities were founded for the Muslims, such as Fusā in Egypt, Kūfa on the Euphrates, Ramla in Palestine and Ayla in modern Jordan, where the sites of mosques and governors’ palaces could be chosen and built from scratch.35
The fact that new churches were built at the same time, in North Africa, Egypt and Palestine, suggests that a modus vivendi quickly established
itself where religious tolerance was normative.36 This seems to have been echoed in lands taken from the Sasanians, where at least to start with Zoroastrians were either ignored or left alone.37 In the case of Jews and Christians, it is not impossible that this was even formalised. A complex and contentious text known as the Pact of Umar purports to set out the rights that the so-called People of the Book would enjoy from their new overlords, and conversely to set out the basis for interaction with Islam: no crosses were to be marked on mosques; the Qurān was not to be taught to non-Muslim children, but no one was to be prevented from conversion to Islam; Muslims were to be respected at all times, and were to be given directions if they asked for help. Cohabitation of the faiths was an important hallmark of early Islamic expansion – and an important part of its success.38
In response, some hedged their bets, as pottery kilns from Jerash in northern Jordan show. Lamps were produced in the seventh century with a Christian inscription in Latin on one side and an Islamic invocation in Arabic on the other.39 This was in part a pragmatic response to recent experiences, given that the Persian occupation of this region had lasted for only twenty-five years. There was no guarantee that the Arab masters were necessarily going to last either, as a seventh-century Greek text makes absolutely clear: ‘the body will renew itself’, the author assured his readers; there was hope that the Muslim conquests might be a flash in the pan.40
The new regime’s lightness of touch also showed itself in matters of administration. Roman coinage was used for several decades after the conquests alongside newly minted coins struck with familiar imagery and in long-established denominations; the existing legal systems were broadly left intact as well. Existing norms on a raft of social practices were adopted by the conquerors, including a number concerned with inheritance, dowries, oaths and marriage, as well as with fasting. In many cases governors and bureaucrats were left in position in former Sasanian and Roman territories.41 Part of the reason for this was simple mathematics. The conquerors, whether Arabs or non-Arabs, true believers (mu’minūn) or those who had joined them and submitted to their authority (muslimūn), were in a chronic minority, which meant that working with the local community was not so much a choice as a necessity.
Doing so also happened because in the grand scheme of things there were larger battles to be fought following the successes in Persia, Palestine, Syria and Egypt. One was the continued struggle with the shattered remains of the Roman Empire. Constantinople itself was put under sustained pressure as the Arab leadership sought to finish the Romans off once and for all. More important even than that, however, was the battle for the soul of Islam.
In a parallel with early Christianity’s internal wrangles, establishing precisely what Muammad had been told, how it should be recorded and spread – and to whom – became a source of major concern after his death. The struggles were ferocious: of the first four men appointed to follow the Prophet as his representative, successor or ‘caliph’, three were assassinated. There were furious arguments about how to interpret Muammad’s teachings, and desperate efforts to twist or appropriate his legacy. It was to try to standardise precisely what Muammad’s message had been that the order was given, most probably in the last quarter of the seventh century, for it to be written down in a single text – the Qurān.42
The antagonism between rival factions served to harden attitudes to non-Muslims. With each group claiming to be more faithful guardians of the words of the Prophet, and therefore the will of God, it was perhaps not surprising that attention would soon turn to the kāfir, those who were not believers.
Muslim leaders had been tolerant and even gracious to Christians, rebuilding the church of Edessa after it was damaged by an earthquake in 679.43 But in the late seventh century things began to change. Attention turned to proselytising, evangelising and converting the local populations to Islam – alongside an increasingly hostile attitude towards them.
One manifestation of this came during what modern commentators sometimes dub the ‘coin wars’, as propaganda blows were traded on pieces of currency. After the Caliph began to issue coins with the legend ‘There is no God but God alone; Muammad is the messenger of God’ in the early 690s, Constantinople retaliated. Coins were struck which no longer had the image of the Emperor on the front (the obverse), but put it on the reverse instead. In its place on the obverse was a dramatic new image: Jesus Christ. The intention was to reinforce Christian identity and to demonstrate that the empire enjoyed divine protection.44
In an extraordinary development, the Islamic world now matched the Christians like with like. Remarkably, the initial response to the issuing of coins with Jesus and the Emperor on them was to respond with an image on coins minted for a few short years of a man in the parallel role to that played by Jesus – as the protector of the lands of the faithful. Although this image is usually presumed to be that of the Caliph Abd al-Malik, it is entirely possible that this is none other than Muammad himself. He appears in a flowing tunic, with a lustrous beard and holding a sword in a scabbard. If this is the Prophet, then it is the earliest-known image of him, and remarkably one that those who knew him during his lifetime were aware of and saw for themselves. Al-Balādhurī, writing over a century later, reports that some of Muammad’s surviving companions in Medina who had known him well saw these coins. Another much later writer who had access to early Islamic material says much the same, noting that the Prophet’s own friends were uncomfortable about the use of an image in this way. The coins did not stay in circulation long, for by the end of the 690s the currency circulating in the Islamic world was completely redesigned: all images were removed and were replaced by verses from the Qurān on both sides of the coin.45
Converting Christians was not the most important goal in the late seventh century, however, for the key battleground was between rival Muslim factions. Fierce debate broke out between those claiming to be the rightful heir to Muammad, during which the trump card became knowing the most about the Prophet’s early life. So acute did competition become that there were serious and concerted efforts to relocate the centre of the religion away from Mecca and establish it in Jerusalem after one powerful faction emerged in the Middle East and turned against traditionalists in southern Arabia. The mosque of the Dome of the Rock, the first major Islamic sacred building, was constructed at the start of the 690s, partly with the intention of diverting attention away from Mecca.46 As one modern commentator puts it, buildings and material culture were being used ‘as a weapon for ideological conflict’ during a volatile period of civil war, a time when the Caliph was taking up arms against the direct descendants of the Prophet Muammad himself.47
The strife within the Muslim world explains inscriptions that were set in mosaic on both the outer and inner faces of the Dome of the Rock mosque which were aimed at mollifying Christians. Worship God, the compassionate and merciful, and honour and bless His prophet Muammad, they read. But they also proclaim that Jesus was the Messiah. ‘So believe in God and his envoys . . . bless your envoy and your servant Jesus son of Mary and peace be on him on the day of birth and on the day of death and on the day he is raised from the dead.’48 Even in the 690s, in other words, there was a blurring of religious boundaries. So close, in fact, did Islam seem that some Christian scholars thought its teachings were not so much those of a new faith as a divergent interpretation of Christianity. According to John of Damascus, one of the leading commentators of the time, Islam was a Christian heresy rather than a different religion. Muammad, he wrote, had come up with his ideas based on his reading of the Old and New Testaments – and on a conversation with an errant Christian monk.49
In spite, or perhaps because of, the relentless jostling for position and authority at the centre of the Muslim world, the peripheries continued to see astonishing expansion. Commanders who were happier in the field than fighting political and theological battles led armies ever deeper into Central Asia, the Caucasus and North Africa. In the case of the latter, the advance seemed
relentless. After crossing the Straits of Gibraltar, the armies flooded through Spain and into France, where they met resistance in 732 somewhere between Poitiers and Tours, barely 200 miles from Paris. In a battle that subsequently acquired a near-mythical status as the moment the Islamic surge was halted, Charles Martel led a force that inflicted a crucial defeat. The fate of Christian Europe hung by a thread, later historians argued, and had it not been for the heroism and skill of the defenders, the continent would surely have become Muslim.50 The truth is that, while the defeat was certainly a setback, it did not mean that new attacks would not be unleashed in the future – if, that is, there were prizes worth winning. And as far as western Europe was concerned in this period, these prizes were few and far between: wealth and rewards lay elsewhere.
The Muslim conquests completed Europe’s shunt into the shadows that had begun with the invasions of the Goths, Huns and others two centuries earlier. What remained of the Roman Empire – now little more than Constantinople and its hinterland – shrivelled and teetered on the brink of complete collapse. Trade in the Christian Mediterranean, already dwindling on the eve of the wars with Persia, foundered. Once bustling cities like Athens and Corinth contracted sharply, their populations reduced and their centres all but abandoned. Shipwrecks from the seventh century onwards, a good indicator of the volume of commercial exchange going on, disappear almost entirely. Trade that was not local simply came to an end.51
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