Read The Great Arab Conquests Online
Authors: Hugh Kennedy
The Great Arab Conquests (64 page)
His biographer tells the story:
Mar Gabriel preferred the advent of the Arabs to the oppression of the Byzantines, so he gave assistance and helped them. Subsequently he went to Jazira to their amir who received him with great joy and honoured him greatly for his action on their behalf; he gave him a
prostagma
signed in his own hand with ordinances on all the points he had asked for; in it he granted all the Syrian Orthodox freedom to use their church customs - the semantra [the wooden board that is struck in the eastern churches to summon the people to prayer], festival celebrations and funeral processions and the building of churches and monasteries; he freed from tribute priests, deacons and monks. While he fixed the tribute for other people at 4 [dirhams - a modest sum]. He also instructed the pagan Arabs to take great care to preserve the lives of the Syrian Orthodox.
7
The life of Mar Gabriel provides almost the only indication that Syrian Orthodox Christians actually aided the Muslim conquest as opposed to being helpless and uncommitted onlookers, but we have no means of knowing how common this attitude was.
The Coptic sources have forceful opinions about of the coming of the Muslims. Among these sources is the life of the patriarch Benjamin (622-61), whose period of office coincides with the Muslim conquest. It has come down to us in an Arabic translation made by Sawīrus b. al-Muqaffa, Bishop of Ashminayn in Middle Egypt in the late tenth century. As he makes clear in his preface, however, he compiled his biographies from Greek and Coptic sources and the life of Benjamin and the opinions it contains are probably much older and may indeed date back to the seventh century.
Benjamin became patriarch during the period of the Persian occupation of Egypt, but the author has little to say about their rule except that Heraclius killed Chosroes, the unbelieving king. When Heraclius became emperor he appointed Cyrus as governor. Faced by the appointment of this staunchly Chalcedonian figure, Benjamin was warned by an angel of the Lord to flee. He put the affairs of the Church in order, wrote to all the other bishops ordering them to go into hiding and took himself to an obscure monastery in Upper Egypt to weather the storm, no doubt sustained by the prophecy of the angel that Cyrus’s rule would last only ten years.
Cyrus emerges as the real villain of the story; several bishops who had not heeded the patriarch’s advice to go into hiding were ‘caught with the fishing-line of his error’ and Benjamin’s own brother was martyred because he refused to accept the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon. Heraclius’s appointees acted like ravening wolves, devouring the faithful in Egypt. In contrast to this invective, our author provides a low-key account of the preaching of Muhammad who ‘brought back the worshippers of idols to the knowledge of the One God [
Allah wahdu
] and they said that Muhammad was his messenger [
rasl
]. His
umma
were circumcised and prayed to the south to the place which they called the Kaaba’.
8
Allah wahdu
] and they said that Muhammad was his messenger [
rasl
]. His
umma
were circumcised and prayed to the south to the place which they called the Kaaba’.
8
The Lord then abandoned the army of the Romans because of their corruption and their adherence to the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon. The Arab invasion is described in brief, matter-of-fact language. The author describes the treaty between the Muslims and the Egyptians, which was the kind of treaty that Muhammad, the
ra’īs
of the Arabs, had instructed them to make, by which any city that agrees to pay tax will be spared but those that do not will be plundered and its men taken as prisoners; ‘for this reason’, the author continues, ‘the Muslims kept their hand off the province and its inhabitants [i.e. the Copts] but destroyed the nation of the Romans’.
9
ra’īs
of the Arabs, had instructed them to make, by which any city that agrees to pay tax will be spared but those that do not will be plundered and its men taken as prisoners; ‘for this reason’, the author continues, ‘the Muslims kept their hand off the province and its inhabitants [i.e. the Copts] but destroyed the nation of the Romans’.
9
When the Muslims took Alexandria, they destroyed the walls and ‘burnt many churches with fire’, including the church of St Mark. The author is curiously dispassionate about this destruction, perhaps because most of the churches in the city were in the hands of the Chalcedonians. Much more important from his point of view was the triumphant return of Benjamin. This was negotiated by a Coptic
dux
(
dqs
) called Sanutius, who told Amr about him. Amr then issued a letter giving Benjamin safe conduct and he returned to the city. He was met with great rejoicing, and Sanutius presented him to the governor, who was duly impressed, saying that in all the land he had conquered he had never seen a man of God like this man. Cyrus, meanwhile, had committed suicide, drinking poison from his ring. Benjamin was ordered to resume the government of his church and people. Amr then requested his prayers for a speedy success and quick return from the expedition he was planning to the Pentapolis in Cyrenaica. Finally, the patriarch preached a sermon, which impressed everybody, and gave Amr some secret advice, all of which turned out to be true, before leaving, ‘honoured and revered’. The whole land of Egypt rejoiced over him. Amr duly set out, accompanied by Sanutius and his ship. Sanutius was also able to give the patriarch money to rebuild the church of St Mark. Even after Amr had left the province and was replaced by Ibn Abī Sarh, ‘a lover of money’ who set up the administration in Fustāt, the biographer refrains from open criticism of the Muslim administration.
dux
(
dqs
) called Sanutius, who told Amr about him. Amr then issued a letter giving Benjamin safe conduct and he returned to the city. He was met with great rejoicing, and Sanutius presented him to the governor, who was duly impressed, saying that in all the land he had conquered he had never seen a man of God like this man. Cyrus, meanwhile, had committed suicide, drinking poison from his ring. Benjamin was ordered to resume the government of his church and people. Amr then requested his prayers for a speedy success and quick return from the expedition he was planning to the Pentapolis in Cyrenaica. Finally, the patriarch preached a sermon, which impressed everybody, and gave Amr some secret advice, all of which turned out to be true, before leaving, ‘honoured and revered’. The whole land of Egypt rejoiced over him. Amr duly set out, accompanied by Sanutius and his ship. Sanutius was also able to give the patriarch money to rebuild the church of St Mark. Even after Amr had left the province and was replaced by Ibn Abī Sarh, ‘a lover of money’ who set up the administration in Fustāt, the biographer refrains from open criticism of the Muslim administration.
For the biographer of Benjamin, the coming of the Arabs was a new dawn for his hero. He never actually says in unequivocal terms that it was a good thing, but it was clearly a great relief after the rule of Cyrus. The stress on the good relations between Benjamin and Amr and the role of the
dux
Sanutius point to some close links between Coptic and Muslim elites.
dux
Sanutius point to some close links between Coptic and Muslim elites.
Our other main Coptic source, the chronicler John of Nikiu, takes an altogether less rosy view of the Arab conquerors. As with the biographer of Benjamin, the main villain of his account is Cyrus and the Chalcedonian Romans, and he explicitly says that the Muslims were helped by the fact that the persecutions of Heraclius’s reign had meant that the local people were hostile to the Romans.
10
The sins of the Chalcedonians were the reason why God allowed the Arabs to conquer Egypt, for ‘He had no mercy of those who had dealt treacherously against Him but He delivered them into the hands of the Ishmaelites’.
11
10
The sins of the Chalcedonians were the reason why God allowed the Arabs to conquer Egypt, for ‘He had no mercy of those who had dealt treacherously against Him but He delivered them into the hands of the Ishmaelites’.
11
The Arabs are portrayed as brutal barbarians. In their early raids on the Fayyum they killed indiscriminately; in one town ‘they put to the sword all who surrendered and spared none, whether old men, babies or women’,
12
and in Nakiu ‘they proceeded to put to the sword all those who they found in the streets and in the churches, men, women and infants and they showed mercy to none’.
13
Amr arrests the Roman magistrates, and has their hands and feet confined in iron and wooden boards while he takes their possessions. Things are not much better for the peasants because the taxes are doubled and they are forced to carry fodder for the horses.
14
After the final conquest of Alexandria, Amr confined himself to taking the taxes that had been agreed on but he did not take the property of the churches and preserved them throughout his days. Taxation for other people, however, seems to have been oppressive, and people hid themselves away because they could not find the money to pay.
12
and in Nakiu ‘they proceeded to put to the sword all those who they found in the streets and in the churches, men, women and infants and they showed mercy to none’.
13
Amr arrests the Roman magistrates, and has their hands and feet confined in iron and wooden boards while he takes their possessions. Things are not much better for the peasants because the taxes are doubled and they are forced to carry fodder for the horses.
14
After the final conquest of Alexandria, Amr confined himself to taking the taxes that had been agreed on but he did not take the property of the churches and preserved them throughout his days. Taxation for other people, however, seems to have been oppressive, and people hid themselves away because they could not find the money to pay.
He has harsh words for the Arabs and for those local men who cooperated with them. The Egyptians were forced to carry fodder and provide milk, honey and fruit. They were compelled to dig out the canal from Babylon to the Red Sea and ‘the yoke they [the Arabs] laid on the Egyptians was heavier than the yoke which had been laid on Israel by Pharaoh, whom god judged with a righteous judgment, by drowning him in the Red Sea with all his army after many plagues wherewith he had plagued both men and cattle. When God’s judgment lights on these Ishmaelites, may he do unto them as He did unto Pharaoh!’ John then goes on to say that this is punishment for the people’s sins but he trusts that God will destroy the enemies of the cross as the Bible promises.
15
15
Despite this brutality, there was an undercurrent of cooperation. We hear early on of ‘Egyptians who had apostatized from the Christian faith and embraced the faith of the beast’
16
and of local officials who were, willingly or unwillingly, working for the Muslims.
17
16
and of local officials who were, willingly or unwillingly, working for the Muslims.
17
A different but equally mixed Christian response can be seen in the anonymous Latin Chronicle of 754.
18
The author probably lived in Cordova and may well have been old enough to have personal memories of the fall of the Visigothic kingdom. His familiarity with the history and politics of al-Andalus suggest that he may have been employed by the Muslims in the administration. He set out to write a universal chronicle, so he deals with the rise of the Arabs in the Middle East, eighty years before the time when he was writing. He makes no mention anywhere in his work of the fact that the Muslims were the adherents of a new religion. He simply says that the Saracens rebelled and conquered Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia ‘more through trickery than the power of their leader Muhammad, and devastated the neighbouring provinces, proceeding not so much by means of open attacks as by secret incursions’. Despite his contempt for the fighting abilities of the Arabs, the author gives a matter-of-fact account of the early caliphs interwoven with the history of the Byzantine empire. Some caliphs are good men: Yazīd I (680-83), whom John bar Penkāyē dismissed as being ‘fond of childish games and empty delights’ and ruling ‘with empty-headed tyranny’,
19
is praised by the author of the Chronicle of 754 as ‘the most pleasant son of Mu
c
āwiya’ who was ‘very well liked by all the peoples of the land that were subject to his rule. He never, as is the habit of men, sought any glory because he was a king, but lived like a private citizen together with everyone else’.
20
18
The author probably lived in Cordova and may well have been old enough to have personal memories of the fall of the Visigothic kingdom. His familiarity with the history and politics of al-Andalus suggest that he may have been employed by the Muslims in the administration. He set out to write a universal chronicle, so he deals with the rise of the Arabs in the Middle East, eighty years before the time when he was writing. He makes no mention anywhere in his work of the fact that the Muslims were the adherents of a new religion. He simply says that the Saracens rebelled and conquered Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia ‘more through trickery than the power of their leader Muhammad, and devastated the neighbouring provinces, proceeding not so much by means of open attacks as by secret incursions’. Despite his contempt for the fighting abilities of the Arabs, the author gives a matter-of-fact account of the early caliphs interwoven with the history of the Byzantine empire. Some caliphs are good men: Yazīd I (680-83), whom John bar Penkāyē dismissed as being ‘fond of childish games and empty delights’ and ruling ‘with empty-headed tyranny’,
19
is praised by the author of the Chronicle of 754 as ‘the most pleasant son of Mu
c
āwiya’ who was ‘very well liked by all the peoples of the land that were subject to his rule. He never, as is the habit of men, sought any glory because he was a king, but lived like a private citizen together with everyone else’.
20
This even-tempered attitude changes sharply when the chronicler comes to discuss the Muslim conquest of Spain. Mūsā b. Nusayr is denounced as a violent barbarian:
He ruined beautiful cities, burning them with fire; condemned lords and powerful men to the cross and butchered youths and infants with the sword. While he terrorized everyone in this way, some of the cities that remained sued for peace under duress and, after persuading and mocking them with a certain craftiness, the Saracens granted their requests without delay. When the citizens subsequently rejected what they had accepted out of fear and terror, they tried to flee to the mountains where they risked hunger and various sorts of death.
After this violent rhetorical denunciation, the chronicle reverts to its previous matter-of-fact tone. There are good Muslim rulers and bad ones just as there are good Christians and bad ones. The account of the battle of Poitiers (732), where Christian forces decisively defeated the Muslims, is given in some very useful detail but without any sense of Christian triumphalism.
21
The worst villains in the chronicle are those Syrian Arabs who crossed into the peninsula after their defeat by the Berber rebels in 742 and began to dispute control with the descendants of the original Arab and Berber conquerors.
22
Right to the end of the chronicle, he is very well informed about events in the Muslim east as well as Spain. By contrast, France and Italy, both Latin-writing, Christian areas, are almost completely unknown to him. The chronicler of 754 lived and worked in a world where Christian-Muslim interactions were everyday and businesslike and, in some ways, he clearly identifies with the ruling Muslim circles in Cordova while maintaining his clearly Christian identity. There were men in his position in the Arab administration in the east: we have no direct testimony about their attitudes but they must have been similar.
21
The worst villains in the chronicle are those Syrian Arabs who crossed into the peninsula after their defeat by the Berber rebels in 742 and began to dispute control with the descendants of the original Arab and Berber conquerors.
22
Right to the end of the chronicle, he is very well informed about events in the Muslim east as well as Spain. By contrast, France and Italy, both Latin-writing, Christian areas, are almost completely unknown to him. The chronicler of 754 lived and worked in a world where Christian-Muslim interactions were everyday and businesslike and, in some ways, he clearly identifies with the ruling Muslim circles in Cordova while maintaining his clearly Christian identity. There were men in his position in the Arab administration in the east: we have no direct testimony about their attitudes but they must have been similar.
Like the Christians, the Jews of the Middle East developed an apocalyptic literature, although in their case the objective was to predict the time of the coming of the Messiah rather than the end of the world. For the Jews, the last years of Byzantine rule in Syria had been a time of distress and persecution. The Persian invasion had led to some respite but the reimposition of Byzantine rule from 628 onwards had led to renewed oppression. For the Jews, the coming of the Arabs, though attended by much violence and cruelty, promised some alleviation of their condition. The fullest exposition of Jewish views is to be found in the
Nistarot
or Secrets attributed to a second-century rabbi, Simon ben Yohai, but clearly written or rewritten after the coming of the Muslims.
23
Nistarot
or Secrets attributed to a second-century rabbi, Simon ben Yohai, but clearly written or rewritten after the coming of the Muslims.
23
In one passage, Simon is said to have taken refuge from the Byzantine emperor (referred to as the King of Edom throughout) in a cave. After fasting and praying he asks God for enlightenment:
Since Simon saw the kingdom of Ishmael [the Arabs] coming he began to say, ‘Was it not enough what the wicked kingdom of Edom done to us, but we deserve the kingdom of Ishmael too?’ At once Metatron, the foremost angel, answered him and said, ‘Do not fear, son of man, for the Almighty only brings the Kingdom of Ishmael in order to deliver you from this wicked one [Edom/Byzantium]. He raises up over the Ishmaelites a prophet according to his will and he will conquer the land for them, and they will come and restore it to greatness and a great dread will come between them and the sons of Esau [the Byzantines].’
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