-Part Two-

Syria and Palestine after the Arab-Islamic Conquest

The Arabs advanced upon Syria and Palestine in the year 634 AD, that is, twenty years after the Persian invasion. The land was in a state of upheaval, having not yet recovered its strength from the severity of that painful blow it had suffered at the hands of the Persians. At that time, in terms of religion, the inhabitants of the land were all Christians, save for a small number of Jews and Samaritans. As for language, they were divided into three groups: the coastal dwellers, almost all of them along the whole line, spoke Greek; the inhabitants of the south and east adjoining the desert spoke Arabic; and the people of the north together with the inhabitants of the central regions spoke Aramaic. When the Muslim Arabs advanced upon the land in their multitudes, the Christianized Arab tribes in Syria and Palestine at first stood alongside the Byzantine army and fought the Muslims. The famous historian Gibbon mentioned that among the one hundred and fifty thousand fighters the Byzantines had gathered to repel the Arabs from penetrating the land, there were sixty thousand Arab Christian soldiers under the command of Jabala ibn al-Ayham, the last of the Ghassanid kings. The Arab historians said that when Khalid ibn al-Walid, commander of the Muslim armies, reached Tayma, the Byzantines struck him with hosts drawn mostly from the Christianized Arabs (Bahra, Tanukh, Lakhm, Salim, Judham, and Ghassan). Yet the bond of language and race prevailed once more over the bond of religion, and so the Christian Arabs extended their hands to the Muslim Arabs; the two parties shook hands, and the Christians joined their Muslim brethren, sharing with them in the war against the Byzantines in Syria and Palestine, just as they had shared with them in the war against the Persians in Iraq, and the Muslims acknowledged their merit in this. When they set out to impose the poll tax (jizya) upon the dhimmis after the conquest, the tribes of Taghlib, Iyad, and Anmar refused to pay it. Word of this reached Umar ibn al-Khattab, who consulted his companions, and one of them said to him, "They are Arabs like us; they disdain the jizya, and they are a people capable of doing harm, so do not aid your enemy against yourself." This agreed with what was in his own mind, so he imposed upon them the alms (sadaqa) as it is imposed upon Muslims. Umar was most keen to preserve the Arab community, and he would not permit the Christian Arabs to penetrate into Byzantine territory; if they did, he would bring them back and would address the Byzantine emperor concerning them, for he regarded this as his right. It has been related that when al-Walid ibn Uqba set out to conquer Iraq and the Jazira, its Christian Arabs joined him, except for the tribe of Iyad, who moved on[?] to the land of the Byzantines. Al-Walid wrote to Umar about this, and Umar wrote to the Byzantine emperor, saying, "It has reached me that one of the clans of the Arabs has left our abode and come to your abode. By God, either you drive them out, or we shall drive the Christians out to you." So the Byzantine emperor expelled them. It appears that the Christianized Arabs during Byzantine rule were not content with that rule, for al-Baladhuri reported—and some Frankish historians confirmed his words—that the first city the Muslims conquered in Palestine was Gaza. The reasons for its conquest were that at that time a people of the Christianized Arab tribes dwelt south of Gaza, and they had been subjected to oppression and injustice by the Byzantine governors. So they sought refuge with the Muslim armies and called them to Palestine; the Muslims answered their call and advanced upon Gaza on the 4th of February in the year 634 AD, triumphed over the Byzantine army, and conquered the city. A few days later they completed the conquest of the rest of the cities of Palestine (see the book Futuh al-Buldan by al-Baladhuri, page 109).

When the Arabs' foothold in Syria and Palestine grew firm, the number of those speaking Greek and Aramaic began to dwindle little by little. For the Caliph Uthman ibn Affan expelled the Byzantines from the coastal cities of Palestine and transferred Arabs to them, who settled there. When the caliphate passed to Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, he forbade the use of foreign languages in the government registers and made Arabic the sole official language, not only in Syria and Palestine but also in Iraq, Egypt, Persia, and all the other regions the Arabs had seized up to that date—not to mention his severity and that of other caliphs and rulers toward the Christians at various times in prohibiting the use of any language other than Arabic.

It is well known that after the Arabs seized these lands, they attacked Cyprus, Crete, and Rhodes, and began to attack the Byzantine capital there from time to time. Whenever they failed, they would tighten their reproach upon the Christians of Syria and Palestine and would not permit them to use any language other than Arabic, even in their churches, for fear that they might be spies upon them and convey their news to the Byzantines. The Abbasid al-Mansur was the most exacting of the earlier caliphs in this regard. He was not content with issuing stern orders, but ordered the translation of all the Greek church books into Arabic, and forbade with the utmost severity the patriarchs, bishops, and all the clergy from using any language other than Arabic. Thus, after the reign of that caliph, and given this state of affairs, Arabic became the language of both the church and the people together. For this reason, after that date we began to see Arabic religious works, a great many of which are still preserved in the library of the Greek Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem, in the library of the Cathedral Church of Saint James there, and in the library of the Monastery of the Cross ("al-Musallaba"), where the number of handwritten Arabic volumes is 150, among them the four Gospels written in the eleventh century AD—and in the library of the Monastery of Tur Sina (Mount Sinai), where the number of Arabic volumes is 602 (Majallat al-Ni'ma, first year, second part), and in the library of the Monastery of Saydnaya in Syria, and in other libraries, apart from what has been transferred from them to the Vatican Library and to other famous libraries of Europe.

But the jizya, which was at first imposed upon the non-Arab Christians, was not long in extending to the Arabs as well, and none were exempted from it—not even the clergy in the days of some caliphs—on the one hand. And on the other, the terrible earthquakes that used to sweep over Syria and Palestine in that era from time to time were among the strongest factors in the decline of Christianity in these lands, the reduction of the number of Christians in them, and the destruction of many monasteries and churches that have not been rebuilt to this day. In the last days of the Umayyad state, during the caliphate of Marwan II (744–750 AD), a terrible earthquake struck Syria and Palestine, destroying several churches, monasteries, and houses, and thousands of people died beneath the rubble. Some caliphs would not permit the rebuilding of a church or monastery that had been destroyed unless that place had been mentioned in the Pact of Umar. In the year 861 AD, the Byzantines came and besieged Damietta with their fleet, whereupon some extremists among the Muslims rushed to antagonize the Christians, assaulting some of them, destroying some churches and monasteries in the Jordan Valley and elsewhere, and burning the city of "Ascalon." A terrible earthquake occurred that same year in the wake of those events, through which several churches, monasteries, and houses were destroyed, and a great multitude was killed—it was blow upon blow. And what made matters worse still, and claimed the lives of many of the people of Syria and Palestine, was the severe famine that followed the earthquake in that year.

Although the hardship was general, the Christians' share of it was greater than that of others, for despite that condition they were compelled to pay the jizya, which amounted to four gold dinars per head annually. A family of ten persons, for example, was compelled to pay forty gold dinars a year. Such a sum in those days was not easily come by; rather, it was reckoned a fortune. How much harder, then, when it came accompanied by earthquakes and famine? For this reason we see that many of the Christians in those days were compelled to take refuge with the Byzantines, just as some were compelled to embrace Islam in order to escape paying the jizya. Whoever studies the history of the church sees that this jizya was always the greatest cause of many of the Christians of these lands embracing the religion of Islam, or of their departure to the land of the Byzantines. In the time of the Caliph Muawiya, when the Arabs attacked the Byzantine capital and the rebels (marada) of Mount Lebanon seized the opportunity and advanced upon Palestine, this caliph flew into a rage and grew harsh in collecting the jizya from the Christians. Some rulers and tax collectors used cruelty in exacting it from them, and so they rushed to embrace Islam with such intensity that the state treasury was nearly emptied of money, and the caliph was compelled to issue his orders to all the governors of the provinces not to accept Christians into Islam. It is said that the number of Christians in Palestine after these events fell to only 43,000 souls (see the History of Chrysostomus, page 255).

But neither this nor that counts for anything worth mentioning compared to what befell the Christians in the reign of the Fatimid al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah over ten consecutive years, from 1007 to 1017 AD. A rumor had spread in the West to the effect that the end of the world would come at the completion of a thousand years from the birth of Christ. For this reason a great number of Western Christians streamed to Palestine, and a large number of them settled in Jerusalem, awaiting the end of the world and saying that the seat of Judgment would be in Jerusalem. When the year 1007 AD came and nothing happened, the Jews seized this opportunity and incited the breast of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah against the Christians, and he began to persecute them. He demolished the Church of the Resurrection and all the other churches and monasteries in Jerusalem and throughout Palestine, plundered all their vessels and wealth, and seized the properties endowed to them. After he had struck down many of the clergy and others, especially the foreigners, he abolished the feasts, canceled the prayers, and ordered the Christians to wear black clothing to distinguish them from others, and to hang around their necks crosses of wood, each one a cubit in length. The pressure of persecution grew severe, especially upon the non-Arab Christians, and he ordered that the tongue of every Christian who spoke in a language other than Arabic be burned with iron skewers heated over fire. In the course of this, whole cities and villages entered into Islam, and many of the Christians fled secretly to the land of the Byzantines. Then he turned against the Jews and began to persecute them, ordering them to hang bells around their necks and to wear fashioned faces like the faces of calves, on the pretext that their ancestors had worshipped the calf in the wilderness. It was as though this man had been afflicted with a touch of madness, so that even the Muslims themselves were not spared his evil and harm; rather, he tortured and killed many of them for trivial reasons. But he suddenly reverted in the year 1017 AD and ordered a halt to the persecution of the Christians, permitted them to rebuild the churches, and restored to them the endowed properties he had seized. So the Christians took off their mourning garments and adopted the day of that sudden reversal as a feast, which they used to celebrate every year.

The land was not at ease[?] for long after these events; rather, it was as though calamities and disasters had conspired upon the heads of its people from the dawn of history until now. For after sixty years had passed since these events, that is, in the year 1076 AD, the Seljuks swept over Palestine, and their army wrought corruption in the land, plundering, destroying, and killing everyone whom ill fortune drove into their hands. They did not even spare those of the people of Jerusalem who took refuge in the al-Aqsa Mosque; they only refrained from those who took refuge at the Rock alone. The Muslims and Christians stood side by side, joining forces to repel this raid from themselves, but they did not succeed. In the year 1078 AD, the Fatimids returned and recovered the land from the hands of those invaders, who had struck down Christians and Muslims alike. But the strife continued between these two states until the Crusaders took them by surprise while both were utterly exhausted, and seized the land.

To be continued in the next issue