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Introduction:
Christians and Others in the Umayyad State
Antoine Borrut and Fred M. Donner
The papers in this volume were prepared for a conference entitled Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians in the Umayyad State, held in June 2011 at the University of Chicago. The goal of the conference was to address a simple question: just what role did non-Muslims play in the operations of the Umayyad state? It has always been clear that the Umayyad family (r. 41–132/661–750) governed populations in the rapidly expanding empire that were overwhelmingly composed of non-Muslims — mainly Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians — and the status of those non-Muslim communities under Umayyad rule and more broadly in early Islam has been discussed continuously for more than a century.
It is impossible to do justice here to decades of scholarship devoted to non-Muslims in early Islam since it has become a field of its own and generated its own industry.1 Topics such as non-Muslims’ perceptions of emergent Islam, the legal status of non-Muslims under Islamic rule, theological debates between Muslims and non-Muslims, or the historiographical divide between Muslim and non-Muslim sources — to name but a few — have prompted important debates.2 Recent scholarship suggests, however, that the lines of division between the various “religious communities” of the Late Antique and early Islamic Middle East were more blurred than long assumed. Reducing these communities to their theological dimensions proves problematic, while the definition of legal categories was certainly not a straightforward process.3 It has thus recently been shown how non-Muslims could resort to Islamic law when their interests were better served by it, rather than calling on their own communal jurisdictions.4 Moreover, religiously mixed families and intermarriages contributed to shape a much more complex image of societies, not fully bound by the lines dividing religious communities.5 At the cultural level too, a sharp opposition between Muslims and non-Muslims should be avoided.
Multilingualism was the norm, rather than the exception, among the learned.6 This is certainly best exemplified by the scholars engaged in the so-called translation movement from Syriac, Greek, and Pahlavī into Arabic that culminated in the early Abbasid period,7 but multilingualism was already the rule in Umayyad times as evidenced by many scholars or documents, such as Egyptian papyri and even some caliphal inscriptions.8 More broadly, modern scholarship has also created a false dichotomy between “internal” (i.e., Muslim) and “external” (i.e., non-Muslim) sources, thus artificially separating sources along linguistic lines. Such an assumption is highly problematic given that non-Muslim scholars abounded at Muslim courts, and that many of them composed various scientific or historical works in some official capacities.
The historiographical implications of this remark are quite imposing and invite us to rethink the categories we are traditionally using to approach early Islamic history and historiography.9 The more specific question of non-Muslims within the early Islamic state has received, however, much less attention. Historians have duly acknowledged the prominence of nonMuslim local élites in the aftermath of the conquest in various capacities, ranging from tax collectors to clergymen and various powerbrokers.10 The new rulers co-opted the scribes and clerks of the former Sasanian and Byzantine empires to run their tax administration, since they lacked skilled personnel of their own who knew the terrain and the traditional procedures of revenue assessment and collection. These non-Muslim administrators, and their descendants (since such work tended to run in families), continued to serve in the Umayyad state for over a century, as is visible especially in the rich documentation offered by the Egyptian papyri. Scholars have also duly noticed the important role of Christian secretaries later on at the Abbasid court,11 as well as more broadly the role of Christians in the heartland of Abbasid power.12 But paradoxically, the first dynasty of Islam has received much less attention from this perspective, even if some salient figures — first and foremost Saint John of Damascus (d. ca. 131/749)13 — were soon singled out as exceptional. In other words, within the larger question of how non-Muslim communities fared under Umayyad rule is the more limited issue of what role non-Muslims played in the actual operations of the Umayyad government. Two factors suggest that we cannot see this as the new Muslim regime employing nonMuslims only for menial administrative jobs in minor roles. First, there is scattered evidence that non-Muslims sometimes held positions of real importance. Not a few, it seems, did military service in the Umayyad armies.14 Others were appointed to high-level positions as advisers and administrators; the case of the famous Yuḥannā ibn Sarjūn ibn Manṣūr (d. ca. 131/749), known more generally as Saint John of Damascus, was not unique.15
Were these merely occasional collaborators with the new regime, or are they evidence that non-Muslims held significant influence in the Umayyad regime, perhaps even in the formulation of policy? Second, we must remember that the Umayyads did not refer to themselves at first as a “Muslim regime.”16 Rather, they seem to have conceived of themselves as a regime of “Believers” (muʾminūn) — led by the Commander of the Believers (amīr al-muʾminīn) — at least for the seventh century.17 Some of the earliest dated documents from the new era that the Believers inaugurated refer to the government as qaḍāʾ al-muʾminīn, the “jurisdiction of the Believers.”18 The question is whether this early self-conception as Believers meant that the Umayyads considered some Christians and other monotheists also to be Believers and incorporated them into the government more or less as equal partners (it being understood, of course, that this was typical dynastic rule, so that the highest echelons of power would remain in the hands of the Umayyad family itself, or of some lineage within it). The question of just when the regime began to consider itself one of Muslims — that is, as belonging to a new religious confession distinct from Christians, Jews, and other monotheists — also requires resolution, since the longer the Umayyads conceived of themselves mainly as Believers, the longer non-Muslim monotheists may have been included in important ways in the Umayyad state.
As indicated by its title — Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians in the Umayyad State — the focus of the original conference in 2011 was not restricted to Christians alone, but of the papers presented, only two dealt directly with non-Christians, one with Jews and the other with Zoroastrians. Evidence — literary and documentary — for the history of Christians in the Umayyad period is scant enough, but for the Zoroastrian and Jewish communities, the basis of evidence is even more limited. In the case of the Jews, the evidence is so scarce that it is difficult to say much that is meaningful at all about them during this period. This raises, however, the vexing conundrum that we might call the “Problem of the Vanishing Jews” in relation to Islam’s beginnings. As is well known, the text of the Qurʾān mentions Jews (and Christians) on occasion as parts of Muḥammad’s environment and also refers to both groups under the collective designation ahl al-kitāb “peoples of the Book.” The Qurʾān also contains many references to key figures known from the Hebrew Bible, such Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Joseph, and David, or events in the history of the Children of Israel, such as the Exodus from Egypt, or the receiving of the Ten Commandments, which show considerable familiarity with the scriptural traditions of the Jews. The Sīra or sacred biography of the prophet Muḥammad, moreover, speaks of his evolving relations with the Jewish clans of Yathrib/Medina after he had undertaken his hijra or emigration there with his followers in 622 c.e. 19
The text of the so-called Constitution of Medina, furthermore, states explicitly that certain Jewish clans constituted part of the original community (umma) established by Muḥammad in Medina. From all these indications, there thus seems to be good reason to conclude that Jews were a significant presence in Muḥammad’s environment. Not much is heard about Jews in the reports of the conquests that followed Muḥammad’s death,20 except a few reports that mention that communities of Jews were resettled by Muʿāwiya in towns on the Syrian littoral,21 presumably to make the population of such towns less likely to welcome any Byzantine invasion force attempting to establish a bridgehead on the coast. However, the Armenian chronicle attributed to Sebeos (fl. 660s), in describing the conquest of Palestine, claims that when the Muslims/Believers conquered Jerusalem, the amīr al-muʾminīn ʿ Umar I b. al-Khaṭṭāb appointed a Jew as its first governor.22 This claim is not confirmed by any Islamic or Christian source, but it may help explain why Jews, apparently, gave ʿ Umar his epithet “al-Fārūq,” “the redeemer.” 23 At least, the fact that ʿUmar I granted Jews access to Temple Mount after decades of Byzantine persecutions may help us to understand why he was so highly praised in Jewish circles. Beyond this famous tradition, it is also worth pointing out that several prominent Jewish scholars seem to have played a significant role in early Islam. Names of early Jewish converts to Islam such as Kaʿb al-Aḥbār (d. 32/652/653) and Wahb b. Munabbih (d. 110/728 or 114/732) immediately come to mind. (Of course, in view of the apparent fluidity or uncertainty of confessional boundaries in the earliest years of the Believers’ movement, we might ask whether Kaʿb and Wahb and others were really “converts,” or merely Jews who joined the new movement without giving up their former confessional ties.) Such shadowy figures, often of Yemeni origin, played at least a central part in the transmission of Jewish lore (Isrāʾīliyyāt) and interacted at times with the Umayyad clan.24
At an uncertain date, traditions claiming the Jewish origins of some Umayyads were also put into circulation to denigrate family members of the first dynasty of Islam.25 By comparison, the presence of Christians in Muḥammad’s environment is hardly attested at all. While the Qurʾān does, as noted, refer a few times to Naṣārā/Christians in ways that suggest that they — or at least their beliefs — were present, the Sīra makes no mention of any Christian communities in Medina or its environs, and Christians are not mentioned at all in the “Constitution of Medina.” Christians are cited in the Muslim annals of the conquests, but mainly as tribesmen who resisted the spread of Islam or settled populations that submitted — rarely as participants in the expansion movement. And yet, by the Umayyad period, as we shall see, Christians in particular seem to be quite prominent in the Umayyad state, whereas Jews — who had evidently been prominent in Muḥammad’s time — are no longer mentioned at all. So the question becomes: What happened to the Jews in the interim, and why and how have Christians risen to such prominence? Jewish communities seem to have continued to exist as before; has their relationship to the new community of Believers somehow changed? Or are we dealing with some kind of optical illusion created by lacunae in our sources that conceals the presence of Jews, making them “vanish,” even as it emphasizes the presence of Christians?
The first centuries of Islam were absolutely central toward the definition of Jewish identities, which makes this silence all the more puzzling. A study similar to what H. Lapin has conducted for Roman Jews is a much-needed desideratum, though the dearth of sources makes the situation extremely complicated.26 The question of Zoroastrians in early Islamic times proves also quite challenging, despite a fresh surge of studies on Sasanian and early Islamic Iran.27 Newly discovered evidence has made the religious map of Late Antique and early Islamic Iran much more complicated, thus shedding new light on the revolts that Muslim expansion triggered in the Iranian Plateau.28 A lot remains to be done, however, to clarify the role of the traditional élites in the emerging Muslim State, even if the dense network of dihqāns (village landlords) certainly continued to function.29 Here again, the issue of the sources is a common complaint. It has indeed been shown that later narratives, from the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries, endeavored to rewrite the pre-Islamic and early Islamic Iranian past in order to give converts to Islam a new sense of identity and belonging, thus prompting important revisions to memory.30
This was arguably achieved to the detriment of recollections and traces of the roles and functions fulfilled by non-Muslims in early Islamic Iran, though numismatic or sygillographic evidences are opening new perspectives.31 East of Iran, Central Asia raises similar problems despite the availability of some valuable archival material.32 Here again, the exact role assigned to the local aristocracy (be it Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Manichaean, or other) in the Umayyad regime remains uncertain. It has been recently suggested that the influence of Turco-Soghdian élites in the early Abbasid world had been seriously misunderstood,33 but the situation under the Umayyads is less clear even if the integration of Central Asian soldiers in the army in the late Umayyad period is well attested.34 The situation in North Africa and Spain, after 92/711, is not any easier to tackle. It is tempting to assume that Umayyad control over the “peripheries” of an expanding empire was less systematic than it was, for instance, in Syria, Islam’s first dynasty’s heartland of power. This is, however, an immense topic impossible to address here and that we hope to cover in another volume. The paper Fred Astren presented at the conference, which was the only one dealing with Jewish communities under the Umayyads, was already promised for publication elsewhere, and so is unfortunately not included in this volume.35 Thus, with the exception of Touraj Daryaee’s article, all the essays published here focus primarily on Christians who served in the Umayyad state, or the relationships of the Umayyads to Christians (and others) who did serve as Umayyad functionaries. In doing so, each essay addresses particular aspects of the broader question of Christian participation in the Umayyad regime.
Even within this more limited framework, the chronological coverage of the Umayyad period is uneven. If the usual imbalance between Sufyanids and Marwanids has been avoided as much as possible, towering figures such has Muʿāwiya, ʿAbd al-Malik, or ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz still dominate the following pages. Donald Whitcomb’s essay deals with the first Umayyad, Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān (r. 41– 60/661–680), and is quite exceptional in that it relies mainly on archaeological evidence. Whitcomb makes the case that Muʿāwiya was the real founder of the new empire and emphasizes as evidence his major building projects in Damascus, Jerusalem, and Caesarea. He notes that in doing so, Muʿāwiya “coordinat[ed] a population of Christians and Jews as well as Muslims,” without drawing explicit conclusions on the nature of this coordination. Sidney Griffith’s contribution sketches the career of John son of Sergius, later known in the Christian church as Saint John of Damascus, who served as a high official — essentially, head of government — for several Umayyad caliphs before resigning and retiring to a monastery, where he penned his famous Greek work “On Heresies,” chapter 101 of which, devoted to “the Heresy of the Ishmaelites,” has been extensively used as a source of insight into earliest Islam.
Griffith cautions against taking this information about nascent Islam at face value, however, calling attention to the rhetorical strategies John employed, presumably to advance a Christian polemical agenda. If Saint John of Damascus and his kin have long been famous in scholarly circles, Muriel Debié turns our attention to a rival and much-neglected Edessan family, the Gūmōyē. Rivalry between both families reveals the diverse Christianities practiced in Umayyad times and their shaping of inter-communal relations and power networks. Although the Gūmōyē sprang from Edessa, they flourished in Egypt while Athanasius was serving the Umayyad governor ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Marwān (d. 86/705). This enviable position brought him immense power and wealth, allowing him to act as an arbitrator solving inter-communal disputes or a patron commissioning churches. Athanasius’ politics and patronage thus shed fresh light on intra-Christian competition for resources and euergetism. This competition is also reflected in the sources, and so Christian texts from the first centuries of Islam ought to be read in consequence.
Thus, Debié questions the transmission of Christian historiography with special emphasis on the shadowy figure of Theophilus of Edessa (d. 785). Looking at the former Sasanian territories, Touraj Daryaee relies on numismatics to unveil the role and strategies of Persian élites in Umayyad times. The distribution of copper and silver coinages from the Iranian Plateau, and the symbolism utilized on them, reveal a logic of cooperation, rather than coercion, between the Umayyad administration and the local powerbrokers. Wadād al-Qāḍī’s richly documented contribution discusses the employment of nonMuslims in the military forces of the first Islamic state, from the beginning of the conquests to the end of the Umayyads in 132/750. She shows unequivocally that non-Muslims did serve in the Umayyad military (and also in the armies of the conquest before the rise of the Umayyads to power in 41/661). She traces in detail the many ways in which non-Muslims served the early caliphs in military capacities — making valuable use of the evidence provided by Egyptian papyri from the Umayyad period — and concludes with important historiographical observations regarding the uncertainty of many traditions dealing with early Islam.
As al-Qāḍī notes, historiographical issues — in particular, the fact that most of our literary accounts describing the Umayyads have been filtered through successive phases of redaction continuing until in the Abbasid period36 — loom large in any discussion of the Umayyads and are especially pertinent to the remaining chapters. Suzanne Stetkevych’s chapter on the Christian court poet of the Umayyads, al-Akhṭal, shows that his poetry continues many of the tribal traditions of legitimation familiar from pre-Islamic Arabian society: the ruler as a noble chief, generous, a valiant defender of his clients and allies, fierce in battle. By comparison, more clearly religious (Islamic) terms of legitimation of the ruler seem almost like an afterthought in his poetry. Nonetheless, they are present — along with the tribal traditions. This proportion of tribal to religious themes presumably reflects a time when an Islamic identity was first crystallizing and was doing so in a context that was still thoroughly imbued with a tribal ethos.37
The question is still open, however, as to whether the later descriptions of the Sitz im Leben of these poems do not enshrine later (Abbasid-era) attempts to discredit the Umayyads by stressing al-Akhṭal’s Christian identity and wine-bibbing habits, as well as to denigrate Christianity in general, which by Abbasid times had come to be seen as a form of kufr, “unbelief ” — an attitude that marks a departure from the more accepting passages found in the Qurʾān, which includes at least some Christians among the Believers. So there remains some uncertainty over the status of Christians under the Umayyads in al-Akhṭal’s time: Did the Umayyads continue the more accepting attitude one seems to find in some Qurʾān verses, or were they beginning to move to the more negative attitude toward Christians characteristic of Abbasid times, and if so, how far had they moved in this direction? The last two papers take up this debate, where historiographical issues are particularly central. Both essays deal with the question of whether the Umayyads instituted policies barring Christians and other non-Muslims from employment by the government. Milka LevyRubin’s thoroughly documented and lucidly argued chapter holds that discriminatory regulations barring employment of non-Muslims began at an early date and were later systematized in an epistle of the caliph ʿUmar II b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–720). By comparison, Luke Yarbrough’s chapter argues with equal cogency that the epistle of ʿUmar II banning employment of non-Muslims may be a confection of Abbasid court circles. That the two papers can come to such strikingly different conclusions is itself evidence of the importance of historiographical source criticism in the construction of historical arguments about this period of history, and evidence of the complexity of such analysis, about which great uncertainty still reigns.
In this case, we can ask: Are reports in the Arabic-Islamic sources about policies against employment of non-Muslims in the early Islamic period authentic vestiges of early attitudes, or are they interpolations reflecting the values of the Abbasid period when these sources were compiled? Are passages from Christian sources about discriminatory policies accurate, or are they, too, interpolations by later Christian authors? Are we as historians caught in the midst of an intense polemic waged by both Muslim and Christian authors of the later eighth through tenth centuries c.e., both of whom wanted to show that the discriminatory policies of Abbasid times were (for Muslims) justified by early practice that had not actually existed, or were (for Christians) evidence that Islam from its inception was discriminatory? How do these differing views fit with, and what if anything can they tell us about, the idea that Islam began as a Believers’ movement in which righteous ahl al-kitāb were included? These and many other questions remain to be resolved as scholars continue their efforts to unravel the story of how the early Islamic community came to be, and the role Christians and other non-Muslims played in the functioning of the Umayyad state and in the making of an “Islamic” empire.
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