Muslims came to see the rule of Muhammad and the first four caliphs in Medina (622—60) as the golden age of Islam, a time when the prophet and his companions perfected Islam for its followers and acted justly in full accord with the tenets of God’s religion. Muslim history writing both reflected and inculcated this idea, holding up these figures as models of pious behavior and as sources of correct legal practice. Inevitably, once the principle had become accepted in the early ninth century that laws and moral conduct had to be based on the sayings and doings of the prophet Muhammad and his companions, then the period of Islam’s founding fathers (the salaf) became the arena for legal and pious debates from a later time.1 This situation creates a problem for modern historians. How can we write about the history of this period without simply regurgitating the religious perspectives and legal controversies of a later age? One way is to give the lead role to contemporary coins, documents, and nonMuslim sources for reconstructing events up to the death of the fourth caliph 'Ali in 660, which is what I have done in this book. Of course, these materials are not without their problems, but they do at least date to the period in question (630—60) or shortly thereafter, whereas extant Muslim accounts do not antedate the ninth century and rely on a long line of authorities, any one of which may have reworded and reshaped the original report (or even invented the report and attributed it to a putative eyewitness).2
There is no doubt that some genuine early material has survived. For example, Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam gives the terms of the treaty agreed with the Nubians, taken, he says, from someone who looked at the original, and indeed it accords well with an extant letter dated ad 758 that alludes to the conditions of the earlier treaty (see Chapter 3). Our problem is how we can verify an account for the times—and they are the majority—when we do not have independent testimony. In this situation scholars have tended to take either a guilty until proven innocent approach or an innocent until proven guilty approach, which means that they end up rejecting most of the Islamic tradition or accepting most of it. This has had the effect of polarizing Islamic historians into skeptics/revisionists and traditionists.3 The former were in the ascendant in the 1970s—80s, but the massively increased public profile of Islam since then has made many academics, who are usually left-leaning liberals, shy of criticizing Islam and this has favored the traditionalist approach while pushing skeptics/revisionists to become more extreme.4 I have tried to promote in this book another approach, which might help diminish the problem, namely, to situate Islamic history in a broader historical framework. Islamic historians tend to be rather introverted, focusing on their own sources and their own region.5 Looking to the societies and civilizations around the Middle East would help to relativize and expand their vision. And their complaint that we have no seventh - and eighth-century testimonies could be answered by engaging more with the large number of Christian and Jewish writings produced in that period.6 If Islamic history is to mean the study of the lands and peoples under Muslim rule, and not just the study of Muslims, then Islamicists who deal with the early part of this history will have to be more open in their attitude toward sources.
Once one moves into the Umayyad period (661—750), one enters upon profane time. Muslim authors switch from writing salvation history to chronicling the mundane business of government and the interminable squabbles between various sectarian and tribal factions. We can therefore have more confidence in the literary evidence and treat it in the usual ways, scrutinizing it for bias, reshaping, selective reporting, and so on. Since our earliest extant sources hail from the Abbasid period, we have particularly to be on the watch for damnatio memoriae, that is, character assassination of their predecessors by the incoming Abbasid dynasty. By chance a Syrian source from 741 survives in Latin translation in a Spanish chronicle, and its entry for Yazid I (680—83) runs as follows: “a most pleasant man and deemed highly agreeable by all the peoples subject to his rule. He never, as is the wont of men, sought glory for himself because of his royal rank, but lived as a citizen along with all the common people,” though it does add that “he achieved few or no victories.” This contrasts starkly with the extant Muslim histories, which portray him as “a sinner in respect of his belly and his private parts,” “an arrogant drunken sot,” “motivated by defiance of God, lack of faith in His religion and hostility toward His Messenger.”7 The other main problem is selectivity. There are the obvious things that one might expect any victor to emphasize (triumphs) and play down (defeats). In the case of the Muslim sources there is also their blinkered attitude to non-Muslims, generally seeing them only as conquered peoples, servants, and slaves. In the words of one seasoned commentator, “Jews and Christians, Persians and East Romans were allotted 'walk-on parts’, but little more. The immensely rich but inward-looking Arabic historical tradition virtually ignored the intimacy and the complexity of the relations between the Arabs and the other cultures of the Near East.”8 Adducing non-Muslim sources helps to bring some balance to the picture, which I hope will have been the achievement of this book.
The Authors
Studies on the Middle East historians of the seventh to ninth centuries are relatively rare and this makes it difficult for the novice to get a sense of what has been written and by whom and how much faith we can place in their version of events. I therefore present here some basic information about the core texts that I have used in this book. All the non-Muslim sources that I have used and many more are examined and discussed at length in my Seeing Islam and Howard-Johnston’s Witnesses to a World Crisis. The best place to start for Muslim history writing is Chase Robinson’s Islamic Historiography, and for more detailed information see F. Rosenthal, Muslim Historiography (Leiden, 1968).
Seventh-Century Authors
Chronicle of Khuzistan: a short anonymous Christian Syriac chronicle from southwest Iran conveying “some episodes from the Ecclesiastica, that is, church histories, and from the Cosmotica, that is, secular histories, from the death of Hormizd son of Khusrau to the end of the Persian kingdom” (so 590—652).
Fredegar: a Latin chronicle in ninety chapters, which extends from the twenty-fourth year of Guntram, king of Burgundy (584), to the death of Flaochad, mayor of the palace in Burgundy (642), though with occasional references to later events. It has been known as the Chronicle of Fredegar ever since the sixteenth century, when a French scholar ascribed it to one “Fredegarium archidiaconum” for reasons never ascertained.
History of the Caucasian Albanians: an anonymous universal history concentrated on the author’s homeland, though written in Armenian. It was put together in the early tenth century with the aim of documenting the career of the royal house of Albania and the development of the Church of Albania. Book two focuses heavily on the seventh century and modern experts are unanimous that it is based on contemporary and near-contemporary documents that were not subsequently revised.
John of Fenek: a native of Fenek in northwest Mesopotamia and a resident of the monastery of John Kamul. He wrote a “chronicle of the world” in Syriac in honor of the abbot of this convent. Though extending from Creation to “the severe chastisement of today,” the work seeks only to treat “the salient points” of history and to do so “in a brief fashion.” In the fifteenth and last chapter he devotes considerable attention to early Arab rule, concluding with a vivid account of the outbreak of the second Arab civil war and the famine and plague of AH 67/686—87, which he says is going on as he is writing.
John of Nikiu: a bishop of Nikiu, a town a few miles to the northwest of Fustat, and author of a chronicle relating in brief events from the Creation to the end of the Arab conquest of Egypt (ca. 643), with greater attention given to the latter event. The original work was most likely written in Coptic and translated into Arabic at an unknown date. Both these versions are lost, and there only survives an Ethiopic translation, which was rendered from the Arabic in 1602.
Maronite Chronicle: an anonymous Syriac chronicle, based on that of Eusebius, which covers events from Alexander the Great to at least the 660s. The chronicle is often defective and the part treating the late fourth century to the mid-seventh is entirely missing. The text halts abruptly at this point, in 665, and it is likely that it originally continued further. How much further is difficult to say, but it does contain some very accurately dated notices for the seventh century and the manuscript is of the eighth or ninth century.
Sebeos: Armenian author of a history that begins with a revolt in Armenia in the 480s, but then passes over much of the sixth century until a second revolt in 572, after which it recounts in detail those events concerning Armenia and its role in superpower politics up until the mid-650s, later adding stop-press news on the conclusion of the Arab civil war in 661. The attribution to the “lord Sebeos, bishop of the House of the Bagratunis” who attended the Council of Dvin in 645 is probably wrong, but since the text is now so well known as Sebeos’s History I have continued to use this name in this book as shorthand for the history and its author.
Theophylact Simocatta: celebrated as the last of the classicizing historians. He was born most likely in Egypt around the year 580 and spent much of his life in the imperial bureaucracy. His history, written in Atticizing Greek and from a secular perspective, dealt with the reign of Maurice (582—602). Although he halts his work in the year 602, he alludes to the wars of the emperor Heraclius against the Persians, but not those against the Arabs, and so it is assumed that he wrote after 610, but died before 634.
Eighth-Century Authors
Chronicle of ca. 720: the common Greek source of Theophanes and Nikephoros (see later) for the period 669 to 720. It has been attributed to a certain Trajan, who held the rank of patrician and was a contemporary of Justinian II (685—95, 705—11) and who was said to have written “a most remarkable short chronicle.” It certainly devotes a lot of attention to the reign of Justinian II, of whom it is highly critical, blaming him for provoking an unnecessary and costly war with the Arabs in 693. Otherwise, it gives a lot of information on the origins and raids of the Bulgars and on Arab campaigns against Byzantium, especially the siege of Constantinople in 716—18.
Chronicle of 741: an anonymous Latin chronicle covering events from 602 to 724, though since it reports that Leo III (717—41) ruled for twenty-four years it is assumed that the author wrote in 741 or shortly thereafter. Though probably produced in Spain, only a tenth of the work deals with Spanish affairs; mostly it treats Arab and Byzantine matters (62% and 28% respectively). It is well informed about the Umayyad caliphs and omits mention of 'Ali, so it is assumed to rely on a Syrian source written either in Syriac or Greek.
Chronicle of Zuqnin: an anonymous Syriac chronicle that begins with Creation and concludes with “the present year” 1086 of Alexander and 158 of the Muslims (ad 775). Scholars have named it the Chronicle of Zuqnin because the author makes clear that he is a resident of the monastery of that name in north Mesopotamia. From 717 onward the text constitutes a rich and detailed repository of information, occupying 240 pages in the printed edition, about the history of eighth-century Mesopotamia, much of which is not found in any other chronicle and is to a large extent based on first-hand experience.
Lewond: a priest who wrote a history covering events from Muhammad’s death in 632 until the depredation of the Armenian church by an Arab governor in 789. The work focuses on politics and warfare and the country of Armenia, though with an eye to major events in Byzantium and the Caliphate. Lewond is patently hostile to Arab rule, but he is still able to present us with a reasonably clear account of early Arab rule in the Caucasus. It is uncertain when he wrote; the late eighth century is the favorite, just because that is where the history ends, but a date in the mid-ninth century has also been proposed.
Nikephoros: a native of Constantinople and its patriarch during the years 806—15. He chiefly authored theological works, but he is also credited with a “Short History” (Historia syntomos), which narrates in brief the course of the
Byzantine Empire from the accession of Phocas in 602 to the marriage of Leo IV to Eirene in 769. He presumably intended to continue it, but as it stands, it halts at a time when he could only have been about eleven years old. It is usually assumed to be an oeuvre de jeunesse, making the late eighth century the most plausible time of composition.
Theophilus of Edessa: an astrologer at the court of the early Abbasid caliphs until his death in 785. He wrote a chronicle that does not survive but which was used extensively for the period 630—750 by three later chroniclers: Theophanes the Confessor (d. 818), Dionysius of Telmahre (d. 845), and Agapius of Manbij (wr. 940s). The latter two explicitly name Theophilus as a source, and a comparison of the narratives of all three authors makes clear that they have a substantial amount of material in common.
Ninth-Century Authors
Baladhuri (Ahmad ibn Yahya, d. ca. 892): frequented the court of the caliph Mutawakkil (847—61) and wrote two major historical works. One is titled Futuh al-buldan (“The Conquests of the Countries”), which proceeds by region, beginning with Muhammad’s campaigns in Arabia, recounting how each was captured and administered up until his own day. His second work, the Ansab al-ashraf (“The Genealogies of the Nobles”), is an enormous history (twenty volumes in the principal edition) that is arranged both by genealogy and by generations. It gives biographies of varying length of key figures, beginning with Muhammad and moving on to his kinsmen, and then on to various eminent personalities. It also retains some characteristics of a straightforward history, narrating major events and charting revolts.
Dinawari (Ahmad ibn Dawud, d. ca. 895): wrote a concise history that covers the period from Adam until the death of the caliph Mu'tasim in ad 842, “abbreviated from the biographies of men and curtailed for the sake of economy.” Its focus is on kings and their wars, not prophets and their messages (even Muhammad gets no more than a page), with a clear Persian focus. Thus the account of the Sasanian emperors from the accession of Ardashir to the death of Yazdgird takes up more than a quarter of the work.
Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam ('Abd al-Rahman, d. 871): a native of Fustat from a scholarly family that traced its ancestry back to a freedman of the caliph 'Uthman. Although his history bears the title “The Conquest of Egypt” (Futuh Misr), it also deals with the Arab subjugation of the rest of North Africa and Spain, pre-Islamic Egyptian sacred history, Arab settlement and administration, and the history of the judges of Egypt and sayings of the Prophet transmitted by Egyptian scholars.
Khalifa ibn Khayyat (d. 854): also from a scholarly family as both his father and his grandfather were known for their expertise in the sayings of Muhammad. He grew up in Basra where his family had a business selling fabric dyes. He is the author of the earliest extant Arabic chronicle, which runs, after a brief note on the birth of Muhammad, from ah 1 to 232 (ad 622—846), arranging events annalistically. The work deals mainly with fighting between Arab groups, external conquests, and administrative matters. Events are for the most part narrated quite briefly and the work was presumably intended as a useful guide to Islamic history and a complement to his biographical dictionary of scholars, which also survives.
Tabari (Muhammad ibn Jarir, d. 923): lived into the tenth century and only completed his monumental History of the Prophets and Kings in 915. However, he is too important a source to leave out of this list. He was born in Amul in the Caspian region in 838 but spent most of his life in Baghdad. He worked for some time as a private tutor, but since he had a good income from his father he was not obliged to work and was able to devote much of his time to writing and study. In his universal history he strives to give the sources for all his narratives, which imparts an aura of accuracy and veracity to his history; modern historians have therefore given it greater credence than other less scrupulously validated histories (such as that of Dinawari and Ya'qubi), even though he relied on much the same sources as everyone else.
Theophanes the Confessor (d. 817): born of noble and rich parents, initially entered imperial service, but subsequently renounced his property and spent the rest of his life as a monk in northwest Anatolia. Late in his life, his friend George Syncellus, who was near to death, entrusted him with the materials necessary to complete a world chronicle that had been George’s life work.
In the preface to the finished work Theophanes tells us how he “expended an uncommon amount of labor” on this task and, “after seeking out to the best of my ability and examining many books, wrote down accurately, as best I could, this chronicle from Diocletian down to the reign of Michael (8II—13) and his son Theophylact.”
Ya'qubi (Ahmad ibn Abi Ya'qub, d. ca. 897): author of a world history and a gazetteer of the Islamic world. We know nothing about him except that, to judge from his writings, he belonged to the bureaucratic circles of Baghdad. He also tells us in his gazetteer, written in 889, that in his youth he traveled much “and this kept me a long time in foreign climes.” The first part of his world history, divided into two parts, deals with the world from Adam until the time of Muhammad, reviewing the kingdoms of a large variety of peoples. By contrast the second part, beginning with Muhammad, focuses solely on the Arab Empire and is organized according to the reigns of caliphs up until the Abbasid Mu'tamid, halting in 873.
World History
