In the course of this last great war of antiquity, Christianity had become more intimately linked to the fate of the Byzantine Empire. It was the Virgin Mary who was thought to have saved Constantinople in its hour of greatest need, when Persians were baying outside the very walls of the city. Heraclius's campaign against the Persians was a holy war; he was a new David and he led an army of crusaders who fought for God's cause. This worldview began to take form in the aftermath of the conversion of Constantine the Great to
Christianity in AD 312, which at once made it acceptable, even fashionable, to be a Christian. Importantly, this move allied the fledgling Christian church hierarchy with political power; patriarchs, bishops, and monks could now call on imperial backing to enforce their will. Churches and monasteries gradually replaced pagan temples and theaters, city councilors slowly ceded their power to Christian clergymen, non-Christians became ever more suspect and liable to persecution, grand councils determined orthodoxy and harried those who would not conform. In short, the Roman Empire became Christianized. The imperial office itself was remodeled, reflecting the unprecedented situation that its holder now shared the same faith as a rapidly increasing number of his subjects and so had an interest in determining and defending their common beliefs.
This link between religious and political power became ever stronger in the coming centuries, and the cold war scenario between Byzantium and Persia gave it additional impetus: being Christian gradually became equated with being pro-Byzantine, and non-Christians were viewed with ever greater suspicion as potential sympathizers with Persia, an accusation frequently leveled at the Jews. In this situation, political conflicts took on a religious coloring. Thus, when the dynasty of Himyar, which ruled Yemen at this time, converted to Judaism in the late fourth century, Byzantium began to suspect it of pro-Persian tendencies. In the early sixth century, the ambitious Christian rulers of Ethiopia sought to extend their sway over Yemen and justified this move by portraying it as a holy war against the Jewish Himyarite dynasty. Their success was celebrated across the Byzantine world as a victory for Christianity. And the efforts of one Himyarite king to suppress pro-Ethiopian elements in his realm in the 520s were written up as an attempt by a Jewish tyrant to persecute innocent Christians, who courageously suffered for their faith. Known as the Martyrs of Najran, this story circulated far and wide in many different languages and served as a powerful and emotive piece of propaganda.
Christianity is perhaps the most glaring example, but it is a feature of the Late Antique religions that they were inextricably linked with power, a fact that was hugely significant for the emergence of the Islamic empire. Zoroastrianism never managed to gain quite the same status in the Persian world, but its clergymen certainly sought imperial backing. One third-century Zoroastrian high priest boasted in an inscription that “the king of kings conferred on me the staff and belt and created for me a higher rank and dignity, and at court and in kingdom after kingdom, place after place, throughout the whole empire he gave me more authority and power in matters of the divine services, and created for me the title 'chief-priest of Ahura Mazda,' after the name of Ahura Mazda, the Deity.”6 Judaism managed to win over the ruling dynasty of Yemen in the fourth to fifth century, as mentioned, and the Khazar elite of the southern Russian steppe in the eighth to ninth century. Buddhism was also very successful at this time, enjoying the patronage of the Chinese emperors and of numerous minor polities in Central Asia, and later, in the seventh century, it was adopted by the ruling dynasty of the Tibetan Empire. The Persian prophet Mani (d. 274) and his successors made great efforts to win powerful backers for their religion, which we call Manichaeism; it was popular across Central Asia and China, and in 762 it became the creed of the ruling clan of the Uighur Turks.
It was nevertheless Christianity that clearly had the greatest reach at this time. It spread eastward in the fifth to seventh century, through Iran and into Central Asia, even reaching China. By the mid-seventh century there were twenty Christian dioceses east of the river Oxus, including Samarkand and Kashgar. One can observe a similar process in Arabia. As early as the mid-fourth century emissaries were being sent from Constantinople “to persuade the ruler of the people (of Himyar) to become Christian and to give up the deceits of heathenism,”7 and this momentum was sustained via Byzantium's Christian ally in the region, Ethiopia. The church in the Persian realm was very dynamic and established offshoots in all the islands and coastlands of east Arabia in this period, and Christian missionaries were active in all the frontier zones of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and north Arabia. The tribal folk of these latter regions are portrayed as accepting the new faith as a result of the power of the Christian God, made manifest by the miraculous deeds of various holy men. By their transition from paganism to “true belief,” the tribesmen were considered to have entered the civilized fold: “Those who were formerly called the wolves of Arabia became members of the spiritual flock of Christ.”8
These tribes became acculturated to the wider Roman world primarily through the influence of Christianity, and they were often encouraged to settle, which further aided the integration process. For example, one celebrated fifth-century ascetic of the Judaean desert converted a great number of tribesmen and they begged to remain near him; he marked out the site of a church for them, with their tents around it, and he assigned them a priest and deacon. “In consequence they became extremely numerous and spread out to form various encampments.”9 By the early seventh century it is possible to speak of a fledgling Arab Christianity, based in the settlements of Rusafa (in northern Syria), Hira (southern Iraq), Najran (northern Yemen), and a number of places in the Roman province of Arabia stretching from Jabiya in the north, in modern southwest Syria, to Petra and Kilwa (Figure 1.2) in the south, in modern south Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia, respectively. Some of these Arab Christians rose to become members of the Byzantine and Persian elite, and we see them hosting ecclesiastical meetings and sponsoring church building. One of them, a certain Sharahil, son of Zalim, left us a fine testimony
FIGURE 1.2 Arabic inscription from Kilwa, a Christian settlement in northwest Saudi Arabia, ca. late seventh century. © Christian Robin.
FIGURE 1.3 Lintel of a martyrium with foundation inscription in Arabic and Greek, dated 567 ad, from Harran in southern Syria. © Author.
To this phenomenon in the form of an inscription carved onto the lintel of a chapel for a martyr named John, which had been commissioned by Sharahil in the year 567 (Figure 1.3). He ordered that the text of the inscription be in two languages: Greek to show that he was an educated member of Byzantine Christian society, and Arabic to make clear his roots, his local identity, and his pride in his Arabophone culture.
World History
