In all of these cultural achievements, the non-Muslim population played a key role, often providing much of the artisanship. During the Umayyad period, the vast bulk of the population was non-Muslim, and Islamization was probably delayed even among certain Arab tribes, such as Kalb and Ghassan, that had been historically Christian. This was much more the case in the settled regions, and especially in the larger cities, where Christianity was strongly identified with the Hellenistic heritage and seen as the higher culture.
During the early Umayyad period, Christians often held very high political office. The most noteworthy example is the family of St. John of Damascus, who was himself apparently a high official in the service of the Umayyads until the early eighth century. But his father al-Mansur (Sergius) is much better known; he served Mu‘awiya and Yazid I as their primary minister, apparently without converting to Islam at all. (Some reports indicate that al-Mansur’s grandfather was responsible for the surrender of Damascus to the Arabs in the ad 630 s, but this is uncertain.) It is interesting to note that St. John and other prominent Christians were orthodox; they did not serve the Umayyads because they had been persecuted by the Byzantines.
Not all Christians were as friendly to the Muslims as St. John and his circle. Toward the end of the seventh century, ‘‘The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius’’ began to circulate, apparently written by a miaphysite (in northern Mesopotamia). This apocalypse reveals a considerable degree of hatred for the Muslims and a need to present their coming as a fulfillment of the signs of the apocalypse:
This [the Arab-Muslim invasion] is the chastisement of which the Apostle [2 Thess.
2: 3] spoke: ‘‘The chastisement must come first, only then will that Man of Sin, the Son of Destruction, be revealed.’’ This chastisement is not being sent only upon human beings, but upon everything that is on the face of the entire earth - on men, women, children, animals, cattle, birds. People will be tormented by that punishment - men, their wives, sons, daughters and possessions; the old who are weak, the sick and the strong, the poor along with the rich. For God called their forefather Ishmael ‘‘the wild ass of the wilderness’’ [Gen. 16: 12] ... For these barbarian tyrants are not men, but ‘‘children of desolation’’; they set their faces towards desolation, and they are destroyers: they shall be sent for [or, to] devastation; they are destruction, and they shall issue forth for the destruction of everything. They are defiled, and they love defilement. At the time of their issuing forth from the wilderness they will snatch babies from their mothers’ arms, dashing them against stones, as though they were unclean beasts. (Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius, tr. Brock in Palmer 1993: 233-4)
Pseudo-Methodius reflects the negative feelings that some Christians had toward being ruled by Muslims, and he refutes to a large degree the claims that large numbers of Christians saw the conquests as a liberation (see also Hoyland 2001, who assembles a vast quantity of evidence along those lines).
There is very little information about Jews or Samaritans during the Umayyad period. We know from previous times that there were large communities of both groups in Palestine, and that Jews were compelled to settle along the coastal regions during the middle Umayyad period, but neither group attracted much attention. There was a close relationship, however, between the Jewish community ofJerusalem at least and the Dome of the Rock (the traditional site of the Second Temple, destroyed in ad 70), such that ‘‘the Jews would light [the candles] in Jerusalem (i. e. the Dome of the Rock) until ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz became ruler [ad 717-20], and he put them out, and made those from the akhmas [slaves] perform this task’’ (al-Wasiti 1979: 43-4).
In general, as long as they were not actively disloyal to the rulers, the Christian majority and the Jewish and Samaritan minorities did not have many difficulties with the Muslims in Syria during the Umayyad period. When there was some threat of disloyalty, then the Arabs often reacted in a harsh manner, massacring various Christian communities (like that of Hims) suspected of treachery. But for the most part, the harsh laws of the sharia upon Jews and Christians were far in the future, and there is not much substantial evidence that large numbers of them wanted the Byzantines to return.
World History
