The First Wave of Islamic Conquests The Archeology of Conquest

So, we've spoken about the basics of the the first wave of Islamic conquest or expansion, how the Arab nomads under the new Muslim/believer community managed to find political vacuum that allowed them to expand very quickly into Syria/Palestine and Iraq in that area and then eventually quickly soon after into Egypt. But there's larger set of questions here which is beyond the sort of this narrative of conquest. What did it actually look like on the ground for people in Syria, in Iraq and in Persia? And more importantly, was this conquest violent? And if so, how was it violent? What type of violence was there? And third thirdly, what is the role of religion in this conquest? Is this actually conquest just to redirect the energies of these tribes to allow them to raid and attack people other rather than have them fight among Muslims or is motivated by some sort of pitistic transformative change on their part? And fourthly, what evidence do we have for any of this? What evidence do we actually have for the effects of the conquest? Now let's attach go into that by looking at probably the written sources we have other than the records of these conquest by in the the biographies of the prophet Muhammad which again were written about 150 to 200 years after the fact. But we do have some Christian sources that is sources mostly in Syriak and Greek bit in Coptic, Armenian and Georgian depicting the early Islamic conquests about the arrival of new group. Right? So we have this guy Thomas the Prespiter writing believe in Syriak. He writes 945 that is 634. So we're talking about two years after the death of the prophet Muhammad. On Friday, 4th of February at the 9th hour, there's battle between the Romans, that's the Byzantines, and the nomads of Muhammad, Taya, the Muhammad, in Palestine, 12 miles east of Gaza. The Romans fled, leaving behind the patriarchin whom the Taya killed. Some 4,000 poor villages of Palestine were killed there, Jew, Christian, Jews, and Samaritans. The Taya ravaged the whole region. Right? So we have often these Christian sources talking about mass attacks and death. And this was think often fell into ideas about the nature of the conquest as an extremely violent and transformative effect. Similarly, Coptic homaly. So something that was said that during his sermon and 640 speaks of the sariss who are the who are oppressors who give themselves up to prostitution, massacre and leading to captivity, the sons of men saying we both fast and pray. So it's interesting here we have both kind of the violence of conquest, the violence of attacks, right? we mentioned massacres, captivity. So they're taking captives, they're massacring people, but also deep pitistic aspect, fasting and praying. In the first one, by the way, the way that they identify these people is again nomads of Muhammad, right? So at this point, they don't really have name at this point. So that's some of the Christian written sources, but what archaeological sources do we have? Because sometimes archaeology when we look at what's actually on the ground gives us better and more accurate depiction of what is going on. And this when we look at the archaeology we actually find very different picture than what the written remnants of the written source is because we really just have few mentions here and there in Syriak and Greek and Coptic. We just have pieces of those. But if we look at their archaeology we find different picture. The most interesting thing is that essentially there is at least in the cities not talking about the countryside because again most of the people lived in the countryside but in the cities we don't have an archaeological layer of destruction. So if you imagine what would happen in conquest scenario you imagine again people attacking cities burning them down looting them etc. And you would often in case that places are violently taken over in the archaeological record you can find sort of burn layer right layer indicating fire set of destru some sort of destruction but we don't have that at least for the cities in Palestine and in fact we find that after the initial conquest most of the places were not destroyed they were just required to pay payment of taxes or tribute and that is another point here is that there these followers of Muhammad are not trying to convert the local population. In fact, most of the population at this time is Christian or Jewish. And what we have is the mass moment of conversion doesn't come after the in the conquest. It comes actually hundreds of years later around the year 1000. So we're now in the year 600. We're talking about the year 600. the moment of conversion mostly occurring between 1,00 to 1200. Now of course there are people who convert very early on but the large for the majority of the population that doesn't occur for actually hundreds of years later and this makes sense because what they wanted from these people initially is just peaceful non-rebellious subjects who paid taxes who paid tribute and then they were left to live lead their own lives. only few cities that basically had very difficult refused to surrender, had difficult and destructive siege. which we can find some evidence for. But we do have probably at the same time local rating. So places that did not have city walls that could not withstand attacks were probably much more susceptible to raiding again by the same nomadic populations that were now part of the new so-called Muslim armies. interestingly we continue to see churches and and other material in Palestine being built for long time after the conquest. Right? So at least until 150 years afterwards we have large many examples of churches continuously being built expanded etc. Interest the most interesting thing though is that in certain churches we actually find them being used as churches while including Muslim places of worship. Right? Okay. So if we go to the Cisma church today between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the ruins of which you can see here, what you find is that there is niche, sort of prayer niche made in the direction of Jerusalem for Muslims that they could use. which suggests again the more evidence towards the sort of believer hypothesis of the early Muslim community that these people were actually saw themselves as part of larger monotheistic movement of which Jews and Christians could be part of. While in at in this initial point in the first 50 to 100 years, we still have plenty of evidence archaeological and textual that shows that Muslims encountered and used churches as spaces of worship. We can see similar thing here right in the sub in Hebrew. Here we have church with meab that is prayer niche built into it. So something to accommodate again Muslims or the kind of believers who were willing to use spaces, Christian spaces, Jewish spaces as spaces of worship when necessary. And this makes sense, of course, because they're not right after the initial conquest, the first few decades, it doesn't make sense to necessarily build your own places. At the same time, they're not taking over churches and transforming them into mosques right away. What they're doing is essentially using churches as spaces of worship because they see them as allied spaces. Of course, we have also different examples. Cesaria supposedly according to narratives was destroyed by the Islamic campaigns. but we also know that it was already had been heavily destroyed by the Cisanians in their war with the Byzantines just few years beforehand. Right? So 10 years beforehand, the city had already been basically ravaged by the Iranian armies of the Cisanians. So it's hard to tell in this case which conquest ended up destroying it more fully. One of the more interesting things, keep this in mind, in Cesaria, there was church, very large church with an octagonal plan. Now keep this in mind because this is going to come up again when we speak about the Dome of the Rock because here we have actually an image of very frequent type common type of church which we'll see is the model one of the models for the Dome of the Rock as an architectural form. So they were encountering as they moved into Palestine and Syria, they were encountering churches often sometimes that looked like this. When we speak also about continuities, we also have to think about how are they administering these places because not only were they conquering now they had to collect taxes. They had to deal with the process of administration. And for the most part, they basically just left the current the standing the administration that existed in place. So that meant keeping the same bureaucrats. They continued to use the same language of administration. So in Syria and Palestine, Egypt, they continue to use Greek. In the in Iraq and Persia, they used Persian. and even they continued to use essentially the same coins. Now this is important because technically don't know if this had started at the moment but the the kind of two signs of sovereignty in an Islamic context is that your name is on the coin and that your name ruler's name is on the coin and that ruler's name is recited at the Friday prayer but here initially we don't have that at all and in fact these on the top are basically Cisanian coins on the bottom of them are Greek coins. but what we have here interestingly that these are kind of the first coins of the early Islamic kingdoms and they're basically Cician coins. But if you see here, there is bit of Arabic. think it says something Allah. have to look it up again, but something in the name of God type thing. but all you have is bit of Arabic added to Cenian coin. And the Cisanian coin features Cisanian sha or king on it and fire temple and Zorastrian priests. So we're going to get back to these coins and look at how they changed over time. So keep these in mind. similarly here we have Byzantine coins with Byzantine emperor who is again also religious figure and we have version of bit of Arabic just added at the bottom. But for the most part these coins stay the same. So again, continuity is the rule here. What we have in terms of evidence of the conquest is pretty minimal. And as destructive force, we do have of course there certainly were people being attacked and enslaved. but think this also wasn't major transformative break in terms of rulership or in terms of culture as we'll see. as pointed out the convert most people did not convert the administrative languages stayed the same and at least for the first 50 to 100 years basically things are run as they were Four.