Syria’s importance to the Arabs and Muslims (at this period virtually all Muslims were Arab, but not all Arabs were Muslim) had a number of different sources. One has been discussed above: the religious importance accorded to Syria by Islam. Since Islam was seen as the final revelation, after a number ofprevious abrogated revelations (mostly at the hands of biblical prophets), it was important for Muslims to control territorially the region where most of those revelations occurred - that is, Syria. This control demonstrated to the outside world the truth ofIslam as the final revelation, as well as God’s favor upon it.
Most critical to that demonstration of God’s favor was control of the city of Jerusalem. Starting shortly after the conquest of the city in ad 636, the Muslims began to revitalize the area of the former Temple Mount, which had probably lain fallow for some 500 years, since the destruction of the Second Temple (ad 70). At first, the Muslim project involved building a rude mosque into the southern retaining wall of the temple complex, but later focused on the bedrock exposed in the middle of the semi-rectangular platform. This rock was commonly held to have been the rock upon which Abraham was to have sacrificed his son Isaac (later, in the Muslim reinterpretation, Ishmael; Gen. 22), and possibly to have been the locality of the Holy of Holies during the time of the Second Temple (Elad 1995).
By the early Umayyad period the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (ad 685-705) sought to commemorate this tradition by building a Byzantine-style octagonal structure on top of the rock, called the Dome of the Rock (completed ad 691). Within a generation or two, this structure had acquired new Islamic significance, as it was attached to the story of the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey and Ascension into heaven (al-Isra’ wa-l-mi’raj; see Qur’an 17. 1-2). Given the fact that Jerusalem already had an aura of holiness about it, from the early period when it was the first direction of Muslim prayer, it was inevitable that it would become a center for pilgrimage as well. Other local holy sites such as the patriarchal tombs in Hebron also acquired Muslim significance, and, by the end of the Umayyad dynasty, various sites began to appear dedicated to holy figures said to have miraculous powers.
But for the Umayyads overall, whose capital was in the city of Damascus, the strategic importance of Syria itself cannot be underestimated. Their empire stretched from Spain and North Africa through Egypt to Iraq, Persia, and Central Asia. An empire of this breadth would be difficult to manage even today; during the seventh and eighth centuries, communication across and between such a wide range of territories required control over Syria, which stood literally at their heart. The Arabs also benefited from the fact that during the Umayyad period they were in control of the settled regions that were lusher and more bountiful than the marginal regions to which they were accustomed. They did not want to give them up at all. Apocalyptic traditions from the late Umayyad period reflect this reality:
I [Kuhayl b. Harmala al-Namari] heard Abu Hurayra [the companion of Muhammad] say: How will it be for you when you are pushed out of it [Syria] village by village to the edge of the land called Hisma’ of Judham [southern Jordan], where you will not receive either silver or gold, and neither Nabati, Greek, Jurjumi nor Mardaite will serve you. How will you be when you are pushed out of it village by village to the edge of the land called Hisma’ of Judham? (Ibn ‘Asakir 1995-8: 38. 426; al-Marwazi 1993: 286)
This fear was very real - understandably so, when one considers that the Mardaites-Jarajima did actually control much of the northern part of Syria until the end of the seventh century. Moreover, the most important enemies of the Umayyads were the Byzantines, and so control of Syria, close to the Byzantine border (usually just north of Antioch) was a strategic necessity. Thus, a combination of sacred and strategic factors made Syria extremely important to the early Muslims.
World History
