NOTES
PREFACE
1 See S. Brock, ‘North Mesopotamia in the late seventh century: Book XV of John Bar Penkaye’s
Rīs Melle’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 9 (1987): 51-75.
FOREWORD: REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
1 For this change and its importance, see J. Bloom,
Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven, CT, 2001).
2 See the discussion of this and other military topoi in A. Noth with L. I. Conrad,
The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A source-critical study, trans. M. Bonner (Princeton, NJ, 1994), pp. 109-72.
3 P. Crone and M. A. Cook,
Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge, 1977).
4 E. Landau-Tasseron, ‘Sayf ibn Umar in medieval and modern scholarship’,
Der Islam 67 (1990): 1-26.
5 J. Fentress and C. J. Wickham,
Social Memory (Oxford, 1992).
6 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh Misr, ed. C. C. Torrey (New Haven, CT, 1921), pp. 74-6.
7 Sebeos,
The Armenian History, trans. R. W. Thomson, with notes by J. Howard-Johnston and T. Greenwood, 2 vols. (Liverpool, 1999).
8 John of Nikiu,
The Chronicle of John (c
. 690 AD) Coptic Bishop of Nikiu, trans. R. H. Charles (London, 1916).
9 See J. Johns, ‘Archaeology and the history of early Islam: the first seventy years’,
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46 (2003): 411-36.
1. THE FOUNDATIONS OF CONQUEST
1 On Rusāfa and the cult of St Sergius, see E. K. Fowden,
The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran (Berkeley, CA, 1999).
2 Quoted in A. Jones,
Early Arabic Poetry, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1992), I, p. 1.
3 C. Lyall,
The Dwns ofc Abd ibn al-Abras, of Asad and cmir ibn atTufayl, of cmir ibn Sacsacah (London, 1913).
5 For the best introduction to the history of the south Arabian kings, see R. Hoyland,
Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (London, 2001), pp. 36-57.
6 G. W. Heck, ‘Gold mining in Arabia and the rise of the Islamic state’,
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42 (1999): 364-95.
7 Mughīrah b. Zurāra al-Usaydī; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, ed. M.J. de Goeje et al. (Leiden 1879-1901), I, pp. 2241-2.
8 Al-Nu
cmān b. Muqarrin; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2239-40.
9 G. M. Hinds, ‘Maghāzī’,
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn.
10 This discussion of
jihād is based on R. Firestone,
jihād: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Oxford, 1999).
11 See R. P. Mottahedeh and R. al-Sayyid, ‘The idea of the
jihād in Islam before the Crusades’, in
The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. A. E. Laiou and R. P. Mottahedeh (Washington, DC, 2001), pp. 23-39.
12 Al-Nu
cmān b. al-Muqarrin; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2240.
13 Quoted in F. M. Donner,
The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton, NJ, 1981), p. 67. See also M. Lecker, ‘The estates of
cAmr b. al-
cĀs in Palestine’,
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 52 (1989): pp. 24-37.
14 Quoted in Lecker, ‘Estates’, p. 25 from Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 146.
15 On this, see Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 81
16 Firestone,
jihād, pp. 124-5.
17 Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 135.
19 For the visual images, see D. Nicolle,
Armies of the Muslim Conquests (London, 1993); Nicolle, ‘War and society in the eastern Mediterranean’, in
War and Society in the Eastern Mediterranean 7th to 15th centuries, ed. Y. Lev (Leiden, 1997), pp. 9-100.
20 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1315.
21 On weapons in general, see H. Kennedy,
The Armies of the Caliphs (London, 2001), pp. 173-8; on swords, see R. Hoyland and B. Gilmour,
Medieval Islamic Swords and Swordmaking: Kindi’s treatise ‘On swords and their kinds’ (London, 2006).
22 See Kennedy,
Armies, pp. 169-72.
23 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 554-5.
24 See H. Kennedy, ‘The military revolution and the early Islamic state’, in
Noble Ideals and Bloody realities: Warfare in the Middle Ages, ed. N. Christie and M. Yazigi (Leiden, 2006), pp. 197-208.
25 On Islamic siege engines, see P. E. Chevedden, ‘The hybrid trebuchet: the halfway step to the counterweight trebuchet’, in
On the Social Origins of Medieval Institutions. Essays in Honor of Joseph F. O’Callaghan, ed. D. Kagay and T. Vann (Leiden, 1998), pp. 179-222.
26 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2427-8.
27 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2237, ascribed to al-Mughīra b. Shu
cba.
28 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2309.
29 Awf b. Hārith, quoted in Firestone,
jihād, p. 114.
30 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2271, ascribed to Rib
cī b.
cĀmir.
31 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2289.
32 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2365.
33 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2302-3.
34 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2293-4.
2. THE CONQUEST OF SYRIA AND PALESTINE
1 A. Cameron, ‘Cyprus at the time of the Arab conquests’,
Cyprus Historical Review 1 (1992): 27-49, reprinted in
eadem,
Changing Cultures in Early Byzantium (Aldershot, 1996), VI.
2 Balādhurī,
Futūh al-Buldan, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1866, repr. Leiden, 1968), p. 129.
3 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2156.
4 Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 119.
5 For this chronology, based on
The Chronicle of 724 see Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 126; Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 109.
6 ‘Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati’, ed. with French trans. V. Déroche in
Travaux et Mémoires (Collège de France, Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance) 11 (1991): 47-273, cap. V, 16 (pp. 208-9).
7 See N. M. El Cheikh,
Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 39-54.
8 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 1561-2.
9 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2108-25, Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 110-12; Ibn Ath
cam al-Kūfī,
Kitab al-Futūh , ed. S. A. Bukhari, 7 vols. (Hyderabad, 1974), vol. I, pp. 132-42; al-Ya‘qūbī,
Ta’rīkh, ed. M. Houtsma, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1883), vol. II, pp. 133-4.
10 See Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, pp. 119-27 for the best discussion.
11 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2113-14.
12 P. Crone, ‘Khālid b. al-Walīd’,
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn.
13 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2097, 2114-15; Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 112.
14 This account is based on the chronology worked out by Ibn Ishāq and al-Wāqidi, two important eighth-century authorities, and described in Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, pp. 128-34. For alternative chronologies, see ibid., pp. 134-9 (Sayf b. Umar) and pp. 139-420.
15 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2398-401.
16 Fredegar,
The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations, trans. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (London, 1960), p. 55.
17 Sebeos,
The Armenian History, trans. R. W. Thomson, with notes by J. Howard-Johnston and T. Greenwood, 2 vols. (Liverpool, 1999), I, p. 97.
18 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2145-6, 2157.
19 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2152.
20 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 121.
21 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2154.
22 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2393.
23 See, for example, Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2099.
24 W. E. Kaegi,
Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (Cambridge, 1992), p. 127.
25 Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 133. Kaegi,
Byzantium, p. 121, has the climax of the battle on 20 August without citing any sources.
26 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2091.
27 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2091-2.
28 See L. Caetani,
Annali dell’Islam (Milan, 1905-26), III, pp. 491-613, and the discussion in Kaegi,
Byzantium, pp. 122-3, esp. n. 23.
29 The account that follows is based on Kaegi,
Byzantium, pp. 119-22 and the map on p. 113.
30 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2099.
31 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2092.
32 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2100.
33 Fredegar,
Chronicle, p. 55.
34 Quoted in Kaegi,
Byzantium, p. 141.
35 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2390-93; Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 130-31 for the fall of Homs.
36 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 131.
37 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 131 and āqūt,
Muc jam al-Buldn, ed. F. Wüstenfeld (Leipzig, 1886), ‘Homs’.
38 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2393-5.
39 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 139-40.
40 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2396.
41 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 137.
42 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2396
43 Michael the Syrian,
Chronicle, ed. with French trans. J.-B. Chabot, 4 vols. (Paris, 1899-1924), II, p. 424.
44 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 131:
muqallisīn,
‘a mime, a mummer, one who beats the Arabian drum (
daf) and meets or goes before kings and other great men with that and other musical instruments on triumphal occasions’.
45 Ancient Adhri
cāt; Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 13 9.
46 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 142.
47 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 132-3.
48 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 127.
49 For the map, see H. Donner,
The Mosaic Map of Madaba: An introductory guide (Kampen, 1992).
50 Translated in R. Hoyland,
Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton, NJ, 1997), pp. 72-3.
51 Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, pp. 151-2.
52 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2405-6.
53 Sa
cīd ibn Batrīq,
Das Annalenwerk des Eutychios von Alexandrien, ed. M. Breydy in
Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, vol. 471 Scriptores Arabici, t. 44 (Leuven, 1985); see also R. L. Wilken,
The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven, CT, 1992), pp. 233-9.
54 C. F. Robinson,
Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia (Cambridge, 2000), p. 34.
55 On the sources for the conquest and the problems they raise, see Robinson,
Empire and Elites, pp. 1-32.
56 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 172-3.
57 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 176.
58 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 123.
59 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 126.
60 For the documents, see C. J. Kraemer, Jr,
Excavations at Nessana, vol. 3:
Non-Literary Papyri (Princeton, NJ, 1958), pp. 175-97.
3. THE CONQUEST OF IRAQ
1 For a general history of the Sasanian Empire, see A. Christensen,
L’Iran sous les Sassanides (rev. 2nd edn, Copenhagen, 1944);
Cambridge History of Iran, vol. III:
The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, ed. E. Yarshater (Cambridge, 1983); M. Morony, ‘Sāsānids’, in
Encylopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, with full bibliography; Z. Rubin,’The Sasanian Monarchy’, in
Cambridge Ancient History, vol. XIV:
Late Antiquity: Empire and successors, A.D. 425-600, ed. A. Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins and M. Whitby (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 638-61; for Iraq under Sasanian rule, see M. Morony,
Iraq after the Muslim Conquest (Princeton, NJ, 1984).
2 For Zoroastrians in Iraq, see Morony,
Iraq, pp. 281-300.
3 For Christians and Jews, see ibid., pp. 306-42.
4 On the history of agriculture and settlement in central Iraq, see R. McC. Adams,
The Land behind Baghdad: A history of settlement on the Diyala Plain (Chicago, IL, 1965).
5 Morony,
Iraq, pp. 185-90.
6 On the Aramaens, see ibid., pp. 169-80.
7 Maurice’s Strategikon: handbook of Byzantine military strategy, trans. G. T. Dennis (Philadelphia, PA, 1984), pp. 113-15.
8 The following account is based on R. N. Frye, ‘The political history of Iran under the Sasanians’, in
Cambridge History of Iran, vol. III:
The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, ed. E. Yarshater (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 168-71.
9 Adams,
Land behind Baghdad, pp. 81-2.
10 Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, pp. 170-73.
11 Ibid., p. 178. For Khālid’s campaigns in Iraq, see Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 241-50.
12 Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 179.
13 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 242-3.
14 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 243.
15 The excavations, led by D. Talbot Rice were published as ‘The Oxford excavations at Hira, 1931’,
Antiquity 6.23 (1932): 276-91 and ‘The Oxford excavations at Hira’,
Ars Islamica 1 (1934): 51-74. Sadly there were no further campaigns on the site.
16 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 244.
17 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 243.
18 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 247-8.
19 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2159.
20 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 251-2.
21 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2178.
22 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2174-5.
23 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2179.
24 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 254.
25 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 255.
26 Firestone,
jihād: The Origin of Holy War, p. 106.
27 Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 206.
30 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 255-62.
31 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2377.
32 Sebeos,
The Armenian History, pp. 98-9, 244-5; Movses of Dasxuranci,
The History of the Caucasian Albanians, trans. C. J. F. Dowsett (Oxford, 1961), pp. 110-11.
33 Christensen,
L’Iran, pp. 499-500.
34 Especially Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2247-9.
35 Firdawsi,
Shahnamah, trans. D. Davis (Washington, DC, 1998-2004), Vol. III, pp. 492-6.
36 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2269-77.
37 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh I, p. 2270.
38 The word used is
tarjumn. With the ‘j’ pronounced as a hard ‘g’ in Egyptian dialect, this became the dragoman, the term used by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travellers in the Levant to describes their local guides and agents.
39 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2269, names al-Sarī and Shu
cayb.
40 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 259-60.
41 Firdawsi,
Shahnāmah, III, p. 499.
42 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 258.
43 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2421.
44 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2411.
45 Nā’il b. Ju
csham al-A
crajī al-Tamīmī; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2422-4, trans. Juynboll.
47 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2425.
48 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2429-30. Juynboll suggests the identification of Ifridūn but it is not certain. The general sense of the remarks is, however, entirely clear.
49 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2433-4.
50 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2438.
51 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 263.
52 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2451.
53 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2441, 2451.
54 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2450-56.
55 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2445.
56 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2446.
57 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2446-7.
58 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2453. The Persian tradition of carpet weaving is very ancient but no trace of carpets from this period survives. The oldest existing Persian carpets date from the fifteenth century and the earliest full-size masterpieces such as the Ardabil carpet from the sixteenth. Descriptions like this make it clear that such magnificent artworks were heirs to a thousand years of tradition.
59 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2453-4.
60 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 264; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2445.
61 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2442-3.
62 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2457.
63 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2459.
64 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2463.
65 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2462-3.
66 Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 213, estimates the numbers.
67 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 341.
69 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 345.
70 On this text, see C. F. Robinson, ‘The conquest of Khuzistan: a historiographical reassessment’,
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 67 (2004): 14-39.
71 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2567-8.
72 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2464-6.
73 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2567.
74 Khuzistān Chronicle and Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2554-5.
75 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2557-9; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2560, gives a variation with a slightly different trick.
76 On the Hamra, see Morony,
Iraq, pp. 197-8; M. Zakeri,
Sasanid Soldiers in Early Muslim Society. The origins of ’Ayyārān and Futuwwa (Wiesbaden, 1995), pp. 116-20.
77 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2261.
78 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 280; Morony,
Iraq, p. 197.
79 See Morony,
Iraq, p. 198; Zakeri,
Sāsānid Soldiers, pp. 114-15.
80 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 280.
81 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2484.
82 Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 229.
83 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2488.
84 For the mosque, see Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2488-94; H. Djaït,
Al-Kufa: naissance de la ville islamique (Paris, 1986), pp. 96-100.
85 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2494.
86 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2490-91.
87 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2492.
88 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2491-5.
89 Djaït,
Naissance, pp. 102-3, rejects Sayf’s narrative without giving any convincing reasons: the fact is, we simply do not know.
90 Djaït,
Naissance, p. 108-111.
91 On this, see Donner,
Early Islamic Conquests, p. 230.
92 See H. Kennedy,
The Armies of the Caliphs (London, 2001), pp. 60-74.
93 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 332. For the origins and early development of Mosul, see Robinson,
Empire and Elites, pp. 63-71.
4. THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT
1 For Egypt in the early seventh century, see W. E. Kaegi, ‘Egypt on the eve of the Muslim conquest’, in
Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. I:
Islamic Egypt, 640-1517, ed. C. Petry (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 34-61.
2 In this chapter, I have followed the ‘tentative chronology’ worked out in Kaegi, ‘Egypt on the eve’, pp. 60-61.
3 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2579-95.
4 Ibn Abd al-Hakam, Abū‘l-Qāsim ‘Abd al-Rahmān b. ‘Abd Allāh,
Futūh˛ Misr, ed. C. C. Torrey (New Haven, CT, 1921). For critiques of this work, see R. Brunschvig, ‘Ibn
cAbdal-hakam et la conquète de l’Afrique du Nord par les Arabes: etude critique’,
Annales de l’Institut des Etudes Orientales 6 (1942-7): 108-55, and W. Kubiak,
Al-Fustāt, Its Foundation and Early Urban Development (Cairo, 1987), pp. 18-22. Both see Ibn Abd al-Hakam as a jurist looking for legal precedents rather than as a historian. I think the historical content is more significant and Kubiak certainly exaggerates when he says (pp. 18-19) ‘that its primary intention was not to transmit knowledge of bygone facts and events to posterity or to apothesize the warriors of the first generation of the Islamic conquerors, but to give a plausible historical explanation for a number of obscure juridico-religious traditions concerning the conquest of Egypt and North Africa’.
5 Kubiak,
Al-Fustt, p. 19. The earliest collector of traditions about the conquest seems to have been Yazīd b. Abī Habib (d. 745).
6 John of Nikiu,
The Chronicle of John (c.690 AD) Coptic Bishop of Nikiu, trans. R. H. Charles (London, 1916).
7 See the second edition by P. M. Fraser (Oxford, 1978).
8 For Ancient Egypt, see R. E. Ritner, ‘Egypt under Roman rule: the legacy of ancient Egypt’, in
Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. i:
Islamic Egypt, 640-1517, ed. C. Petry (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 1-33.
9 Kaegi, ‘Egypt on the eve’, p. 33.
10 For Egypt in this period, see R. Bagnall,
Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, NJ, 1993).
11 On which see the discussion in Butler,
Arab Conquest, pp. 401-25.
12 Ritner, ‘Egypt’, p. 30.
13 Kaegi, ‘Egypt on the eve’, p. 34.
14 Quoted in Butler,
Arab Conquest, p. 72.
15 See Kaegi, ‘Egypt on the eve’, pp. 42-4.
16 On Benjamin, see his biography, in Sawīrus b. al-Muqaffa, ‘Life of Benjamin I the thirty-eighth patriarch A.D. 622-61’, in
History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, trans B. Evetts
(Patrologia Orientalis I.4, 1905), pp. 487-518.
17 Sawīrus, ‘Life of Benjamin’, p. 496.
18 Butler,
Arab Conquest, pp. 176-9.
20 Sawīrus, ‘Life of Benjamin’, pp. 491-2.
21 Nikephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople,
Short History, trans. C. Mango (Washington, DC, 1990), pp. 72-5.
22 This reconstruction is based on R. Hoyland,
Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, pp. 574-90, which uses non-Arab sources, notably the Byzantine Chronicle of Nicephorus, to produce a plausible reconstruction; cf. the blunt dismissal of this possibility that Cyrus paid tribute by Butler,
Arab Conquest, pp. 207-8.
23 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 213; Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, pp. 56-7.
24 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 58.
25 Butler,
Arab Conquest, pp. 209-10.
27 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, pp. 58-9.
28 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, pp. 59-60.
29 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 60.
30 The rather confusing story in John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, pp. 179-80 was used by Butler in his account (
Arab Conquest, pp. 222-5), on which I have based this narrative.
31 apud Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 61, but see also the other figures in Butler,
Arab Conquest, p. 226, where he remarks that ‘there is no sort of confusion not found among the Arab historians’. John of Nikiu speaks of 4,000 new men.
32 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 64.
33 Butler,
Arab Conquest, p.
228.
34 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 181; Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 59; Butler,
Arab Conquest, pp. 228-33.
35 See Butler,
Arab Conquest, pp. 238-48, with a plan at p. 240; Kubiak,
Al-Fustat, pp. 50-55.
36 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, pp. 186-7.
37 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 63; see Butler,
Arab Conquest, p. 259 n. 1, in which he discusses other, later variants of this story and the ‘invincible confusion’ of the Arabic sources. See also Butler, ‘Treaty of Misr’ (published with separate pagination (1-64) and index at the end of Butler,
Arab Conquest), pp. 16-19.
38 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 213.
39 Yāqūt, ‘Fustāt’, Butler,
Arab Conquest, p. 270, n. 3.
40 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, pp. 186-7.
41 The text is given Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2588-9: it is discussed in Butler, ‘Treaty of Misr’.
42 Butler ‘Treaty of Misr’, pp. 46-7.
43 D. R. Hill,
The Termination of Hostilities in the Early Arab Conquests AD 634-656 (London, 1971), pp. 34-44.
44 Balādhurī
Futūh, pp. 214-15.
46 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 73.
47 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 188; Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh; Butler,
Arab Conquest, pp. 286-7.
48 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 220.
49 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 74.
50 Butler,
Arab Conquest, pp. 291-2, and the description of the city based largely on Arabic sources in ibid., pp. 368-400.
51 The free use of ‘Palestine’ to describe all of greater Syria is typical of late nineteenth-century scholarship, e.g. G. Le Strange,
Palestine under the Moslems: A description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500 (London, 1890).
52 As Butler notes, ‘these obelisks it was reserved for British and American vandalism to remove from Egypt: one is now on the Thames embankment, one in New York ... their height, about 68 feet, would enable at least their tops to be seen from some little distance without the walls’.
53 M. Rodziewicz, ‘Transformation of Ancient Alexandria into a Medieval City’, in
Colloque international d’archéologie islamique, ed. R-P. Gayraud (Cairo, 1998), pp. 368-86.
54 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, pp. 192-3.
55 See Hoyland’s reconstruction of the ‘common core’ of the Syrian chronicle tradition in
Seeing Islam, pp. 577-8.
56 Kubiak,
Al-Fustt, p. 71.
57 R.-P. Gayraud, ‘Fostat: évolution d’une capitale arabe du VII au XII siècle d’après les fouilles d’Istabl
cAntar’, in
Colloque international d’archéologie islamique, ed. R.-P. Gayraud (Cairo, 1998), pp. 436-60.
58 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 102.
59 I have estimated on the basis of the proposition that many of the men would have been single and married local women, but of course all these figures are very speculative.
60 Butler,
Arab Conquest, p. 361.
61 Ibid., pp. 439-446, discusses the restoration of Benjamin.
62 Sawīrus, ‘Life of Benjamin,’ p. 500.
64 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, pp. 180-82.
65 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 200.
66 Three million is the conservative estimate given by Kaegi, ‘Egypt on the eve’, p. 34: 100,000 is an extrapolation of the figure of 40,000 men given by Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 102, as the maximum number in the
dīwn in early Umayyad times (see above, pp. 141, 162).
67 Butler,
Arab Conquest, pp. 305-7.
69 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 182.
5. THE CONQUEST OF IRAN
1 For a general account of the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the Muslim conquest of Iran, see A. Christensen,
L’Iran sous les Sassanides (rev. 2nd edn, Copenhagen, 1944), pp. 497-509.
2 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2596-633; Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 302-7; Ibn A
ctham al-Kūfī,
Kitb al-Futūh, ed. S. A Bukhari, 7 vols. (Hyderabad, 1974), II, pp. 31-59. On the sources, see A. Noth, ‘Isfahan-Nihāwand. Eine quellenkritische Studie zur frühislamischen Historiographie’,
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 118 (1968): 274-96.
3 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2616.
4 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2618.
5 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2617.
6 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2632.
7 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 303.
8 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2623-4.
9 Tabarī,
Ta’rikh, I, p. 2626.
10 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, pp. 2627, 2649-50.
11 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 305.
12 For the conquest of Hamadan, see Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 309.
13 S. Matheson,
Persia: An Archaeological Guide (2nd rev. edn, London, 1976), p. 109.
14 For the conquest of Isfahan, see Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 312-14.
15 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2642.
16 Abu Nu
caym al-Isfahānī,
Geschicte Isbahans, pp. 15-16.
17 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2639-41.
18 P. Pourshariati, ‘Local histories of Khurasan and the pattern of Arab settlement’,
Studia Iranica 27 (1998): 62-3.
19 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2650-711. See ‘Bahrām VI Cobin’ in
Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. E. Yarshater (London, 1985-), III, pp. 519-22.
20 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2653-5.
21 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2659.
22 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2635.
23 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2667.
24 This account is based on the meticulous work of G. M. Hinds, ‘The first Arab conquests in Fars’,
Iran 22 (1984): 39-53, reprinted in
idem,
Studies in Early Islamic History, ed. J. L. Bacharach, L. I. Conrad and P. Crone (Princeton, NJ, 1996).
25 Al-Istakhrī,
Kitb Maslik wa’l-Mamlik , ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1927).
26 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 388.
27 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 389.
28 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 389.
29 Balādhuri,
Ansab al-Ashraf, I, ed. M. Hamidullah (Cairo, 1959), p. 494.
30 For the initial conquest of Sistan, see Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 293-4.
31 For discussion, see Christensen,
Iran, pp. 506-9.
32 Bal
cami, quoted by Christensen,
Iran, p. 507.
33 For Arabic accounts, see Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 315-16.
34 My account is based on Firdawsi,
Shahnāmah, trans. D. Davis, vol. III:
Sunset of Empire (Washington, DC, 1998-2004), pp. 501-13.
35 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 1322.
36 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 1318.
37 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 1320; Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 335-6. 38. Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 335.
39 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 1320-22, 1328.
40 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, p. 1328.
41 Ta’rīkh Jurjan, pp. 56-7; see also P. Pourshariati, ‘Local histories of Khurasan and the pattern of Arab settlement’,
Studia Iranica 27 (1998): 41-81.
42 On the Islamization of Gurgān, see R. Bulliet,
Islam: The View from the Edge (New York, 1994).
43 For this campaign, see C. E. Bosworth, ‘Ubaidallah b. Abi Bakra and the “Army of Destruction” in Zabulistan (79/698)’,
Der Islam 1 (1973): 268-83.
44 Balādhurī,
Ansb al-Ashrf, ed. Ahlwardt, p. 314.
45 Balādhurī,
Ansab, p. 315-16. The translation is based on that of Bosworth, slightly simplified.
46 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 1038-9.
47 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 1043-7.
48 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 1054-5.
6. INTO THE MAGHREB
1 The secondary literature on the conquest of North Africa is not extensive. For a narrative account based on a careful reading of the meagre Arabic literary source, see A. D. Taha,
The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa and Spain (London, 1989). V. Christides,
Byzantine Libya and the March of the Arabs towards the West of North Africa, British Archaeological Reports, International Series 851 (Oxford, 2000), is also based on the Arabic texts but provides some additional material from hagiographical and archaeological sources.
2 Muqaddasī,
Ahsan al-Taqsim: The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, trans. B. Collins (Reading, 2001), p. 224.
3 See A. Cameron, ‘Byzantine Africa - the literary evidence’, in
Excavations at Carthage 1975-1978, ed. J.H. Humphrey, vol. VII (Ann Arbor, MI, 1977-78), pp. 29-62, reprinted in
eadem,
Changing Cultures in Early Byzantium (Aldershot, 1996), VII.
4 M. Brett and E. Fentress,
The Berbers (Oxford, 1996), pp. 79-80, quoting Procopius,
Bellum Vandalicum IV, xiii, pp. 22-8.
5 C. J. Wickham,
Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, c. 400-c. 800 (Oxford, 2005), p. 641.
6 Ibid., pp. 709-12, 725.
7 A. Leone and D. Mattingly, ‘Landscapes of change in North Africa’, in
Landscapes of Change: Rural evolutions in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, ed. N. Christie (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 135-62 at pp. 142-31;
8 I. Sjöström,
Tripolitania in Transition: Late Roman to Islamic settlement: with a catalogue of sites (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 81-5.
9 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 170.
10 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 170, details the movement of Berber tribes to the west.
11 Sjöström,
Tripolitania, p. 26.
12 Ibid., p. 40. See also D. Mattingly, ‘The Laguatan: a Libyan tribal confederation in the late Roman Empire’,
Libyan Studies 14 (1983): 96-108; D. Pringle,
The Defence of Byzantine Africa from Justinian to the Arab Conquest, British Archaeological Reports, International Series 99 (Oxford, 1981).
13 The chronology here follows Christides,
Byzantine Libya, pp. 38-9.
15 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 173.
16 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 184; Taha,
Muslim Conquest, p. 57; Christides,
Byzantine Libya, pp. 42-3.
17 Taha,
Muslim Conquest, p. 58.
18 Yāqūt,
Mucjam al-Buldn.
19 Maslama b. Mukhallad al-Ansārī.
20 Ibn al-Athīr,
l-Kamil fi’l Ta’rīkh, ed. C. J. Tornberg, 13 vols. (Leiden, 1867, repr. Beirut, 1982), III, p. 465, where he explicitly says he is basing his account on North African sources (
ahl al-ta’rīkh min al-maghriba ) because they were better informed than Tabarī. Yāqūt,
Mucjam al-Buldn, IV, pp. 212-13.
21 Taha,
Muslim Conquest, pp. 61-2.
22 Following Taha,
Muslim Conquest, pp. 63-5, here.
23 The sources for Uqba’s great expedition are all much later than the events they purport to describe and the fullest account is that of Ibn Idhārī,
c. 1300. This has led some, like Brunschvig, to doubt the historicity of the whole episode. Levi-Provençal has argued convincingly, however, that the narrative derives from a Maghrebi-Andalusi tradition and should be treated seriously. In support of this, he provides a translation of an account attributed to one Abū
cAlī Sālih b. Abī Sālih b.
cAbd al-Halīm, who lived in Naffīs in the High Atlas in about 1300. The edition of the Arabic text, promised by Levi-Provençal in the article, seems to have been aborted by his death in 1954. See E. Levi-Provençal, ‘Un récit de la conquête de l’Afrique du Nord’,
Arabica 1 (1954): 17-43.
24 Ibn Idhārī,
Bayn, II, p. 26.
25 Wickham,
Framing, p. 336.
26 Ibn Idhārī,
Bayn, II, pp. 26-7.
27 Ibn Idhārī,
Bayn, II, pp. 25-6.
28 Ibn Idhārī,
Bayn, II, p. 26.
29 Ibn Idhārī,
Bayn, II, p. 27.
30 Ibn Idhārī,
Bayn, II, pp. 30-31.
31 Taha,
Muslim Conquest, p. 68.
32 Ibn Idhārī,
Bayn, II, p. 35.
33 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 200.
34 Bakrī,
Description de l’Afrique septentrionale, ed. Baron de Slane (Algiers, 1857), p. 37.
35 Gibbon,
Decline and Fall, III, p. 300.
36 Following the chronology proposed by Talbi in
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn.
37 Some accounts ascribe the foundation of Tunis to later governors; see Taha,
Muslim Conquest, pp. 72-3.
38 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 40.
39 Ibn Idhārī,
Bayn, II, p. 41.
7. CROSSING THE OXUS
1 The best account of the Muslim conquests of Central Asia remains H. A. R. Gibb,
The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (London, 1923), on which I have drawn extensively. See also V. Barthold,
Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasions, trans. H. Gibb (London, 1928, rev edn, Gibb Memorial Series, V, London, 1968), pp. 180-93.
2 The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, trans. B. Dodge, 2 vols. (New York, 1970), pp. 220-25. See also the comments in T. Khalidi,
Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 64-5; C. F. Robinson,
Islamic Historiography (Cambridge, 2003), p. 34.
3 For this analysis, see Gibb,
Conquests, pp. 12-13.
4 For the historical geography of this area, see the classic account in Barthold,
Turkestan, pp. 64-179.
5 For Khwārazm, see the excellent article by C.E. Bosworth, ‘Khwārazm’, in
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn.
6 Ibn Fadlan’s journey to Russia: a tenth-century traveler from Baghdad to the Volga River, trans. R. Frye (Princeton, NJ, 2005), p. 29.
7 Narshakhī,
History of Bukhara, trans. R. Frye (Cambridge, MA, 1954), pp. 9-10.
8 E. de la Vaissiere,
Sogdian Traders: A History (Leiden, 2005), p. 176.
9 There is a vast literature on the origins and early history of the Turks. For a clear introduction, see D. Sinor, ‘The establishment and dissolution of the Türk empire’, in
Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. D. Sinor (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 285-316, with bibliography pp. 478-83.
10 Trans. Sinor in
Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, p. 297.
11 Maurice’s Strategikon: Handbook of Byzantine military strategy, trans. G. T. Dennis (Philadelphia, PA, 1984), pp. 116-18.
12 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 394. Gibb,
Arab Conquests, is doubtful that these meetings ever occurred.
13 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 412.
14 Silah b. Ashyam al-
cAdawī; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 393.
15 Gibb,
Arab Conquests, pp. 22-3.
16 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 394-5.
17 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 490-97.
18 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 447.
19 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 594.
20 Al-Harīsh b. Hilāl al-Quray
ci.
21 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 596.
22 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 98.
23 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 696.
24 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 831-5.
25 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1022.
26 cAttb b. Liqwa al-Ghudānī had his debts paid by Bukayr b. Wishāh al-Sa
cdī; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1022-3.
27 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1029.
28 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1024.
29 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1024, p. 1031.
30 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1041; Gibb,
Arab Conquests, pp. 26-7.
31 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1144, gives Muhammad b. al-Mufaddal (al-Dabbi) (d. 784-5) as a source, but it is not clear whether he is the source for the bulk of the saga. Mufaddal was a philologist from Kūfa who joined the rebellion of Ibrahim the Alid in 762 but was pardoned by Mansūr and taken in to the service of Mahdi. He collected the anthology of pre-Islamic poetry known as the
Mufaddaliyat but is not recorded as having written any historical works.
32 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1147.
33 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1162-3.
34 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1146-7. The story is reminiscent of the story of the priest-kings of the Lake of Nemi with which James Fraser begins
The Golden Bough (New York, 1922).
35 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1147.
36 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1148-9.
37 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1151.
38 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1152.
39 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1080-81.
40 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1153.
41 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1153.
42 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1154.
43 The name is given in the text as Hashūrā or variations on that but it has yet to be identified.
44 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1159-60.
45 Mufaddal b. al-Muhallab b. Abī Sufra; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1162.
8. THE ROAD TO SAMARQAND
2 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1179.
3 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1290-91.
4 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1185-6.
5 Barthold,
Turkestan, p. 117.
6 Narshakhī,
History of Bukhara, p. 44.
7 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1185-90; Narshakhī,
History of Bukhara, pp. 43-5.
8 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1188.
9 Narshakhī,
History of Bukhara, p. 45 and note B.
10 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1198-9.
11 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1202.
12 Narshakhī,
History of Bukhara, p. 63.
15 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1206.
16 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1207, but cf. p. 1218, where it is only a few brigands.
17 E. Knobloch,
The Archaeology and Architecture of Afghanistan (Stroud, 2002), p. 162 and Plates 7 and 17.
18 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1221.
19 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1226.
20 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1230.
21 Gibb,
Arab Conquests, p.42.
22 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1229-30.
23 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1235.
24 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1240-41.
25 F. Grenet and C. Rapin, ‘De la Samarkand antique à la Samarkand islamique: continuities et ruptures’, in
Colloque international d’archéologie islamique, ed. R.-P. Gayraud (Cairo, 1998), pp. 436-60.
26 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1245. See trans. n. 635 for different figures given in Bal
camī and Ibn A
ctham.
27 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1252.
28 Gibb,
Arab Conquests, p. 45.
29 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1256-7.
30 Gibb,
Arab Conquests, pp. 52-3.
31 Ya‘qūbī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 346.
32 Gibb,
Arab Conquests, p. 50.
33 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1277-8.
34 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1286. The word used for pass is
jawz, the modern Arabic word for passport.
35 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1287.
36 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1288.
37 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1291.
38 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1291.
39 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1290.
40 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1294-5.
41 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1300.
42 Al-Asamm b. al-Hajjāj; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1304. The translation is based on that of D. S. Powers in trans. xxiv 28, slightly amended.
43 On the Turks in the warfare of this period, see E. Esin, ‘Tabarī’s report on the warfare with the Tūrgis and the testimony of eighth-century Central Asian art’,
Central Asiatic Journal 17 (1973): 130-34.
44 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1431; see also the poem in Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1432.
45 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1421-8.
46 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1430.
47 On the documents, see F. Grenet and E. de la Vaissiere, ‘The last days of Penjikent’,
Silk Road Art and Archaeology 8 (2002): 155-96; I. Yakubovich, ‘Mughl I revisited’,
Studia Iranica 31 (2002): 213-53.
48 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1446-8, in which Dīwashtīch is called Dawāshīni.
49 De la Vaissiere,
Sogdian Traders, p. 272.
50 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1518.
51 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1521.
52 Sibā
c b. al-Nu
cmān al-Azdi; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1524-5.
53 Al-Junayd b.
cAbd al-Rahmān al-Murrī; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1527.
54 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1638.
55 Yazīd b. al-Mufaddal al-Huddānī; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1537.
56 Muhammad b.
cAbd Allah b. Hawdhān; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1537.
57 Al-Nadr b. Rāshid al-
cAbdī; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1537-8.
58 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1538.
59 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1539.
60 Al-Mujashshir b. Muzāhim al-Sulami; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1543.
61 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1546, 1557-8.
62 For the mainly negative evidence for this state of affairs, see Gibb,
Arab Conquests, p. 79.
64 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1688-9.
65 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, pp. 1717-8.
66 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, II, p. 1697, slightly abbreviated.
67 Gibb,
Arab Conquests, p. 92.
9. FURTHEST EAST AND FURTHEST WEST
1 The best modern account of the events of the Arab conquest of Sind remains F. Gabrieli, ‘Muhammad ibn Qāsim ath-Thaqafī and the Arab conquest of Sind’,
East and West 15 (1964-5): 281-95; a broader view is provided by A. Wink,
Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 1:
Early medieval India and the expansion of Islam, 7th-11th centuries (Leiden, 1990).
2 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 431-41.
3 Alī b. Hāmid al-Kūfī,
Chāchnāmah: An Ancient History of Sind, trans. M. K. Fredunbeg (Lahore, 1995).
4 On this work, see Wink,
Al-Hind, pp. 194-6.
5 Al-Kūfī,
Chchnmah, p. 115.
7 Muqaddasī,
Ahsan al-Taqsim, p. 474.
8 Ibn Hawqal,
Kitb Surat al-Ard, ed. J. H. Kramers (Leiden, 1939), p. 328.
11 M. J. De Goeje,
Mémoire des migrations des Tsiganes à travers l’Asie (Leiden, 1903), pp. 1-2.
12 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 436.
13 Gabrieli, ‘Muhammad ibn Qāsim’, pp. 281-2.
14 Balūdhurī,
Futūh, pp. 426-7. The same story is given, with fictitious additions in
Chchnmah, pp. 81-4.
15 Sumaniyayn, on which see Balādhurī,
Futūh, glossary s.v.
smn.
16 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 437-8. Al- Kūfī
, Chchnmah, pp. 91-3, 103-4, also stresses the role of the Samani.
17 Al-Kūfī,
Chchnmah, pp. 93-5.
18 For the battle see the account in Wink,
Al-Hind, pp. 204-5, based on details in Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 438-9, and Al-Kūfī,
Chāchnāmah, pp. 135-9.
19 Al-Kūfī,
Chāchnāmah, pp. 125-6.
20 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 438.
21 Al-Kūfī,
Chāchnāmah, pp. 153-4.
22 Al-Kūfī,
Chāchnāmah, p. 164.
23 Al-Kūfī,
Chāchnāmah, p. 176.
24 The
Chāchnāmah confuses Hindus and Buddhists on many occasions. This is partly because the Persian word
butkhana is clearly derived from ‘House of Buddha’ but comes to be applied to all temples with ‘idols’ in them. The protestors may well have been Hindus, a position suggested by their apparent association with the Brahmins.
25 Al-Kūfī,
Chāchnāmah, p. 170.
26 Al-Kūfī,
Chāchnāmah, pp. 194-5.
27 Al-Kūfī,
Chāchnāmah, pp. 178-80.
28 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 439-40.
29 Gabrieli, ‘Muhammad ibn Qāsim’, p. 293.
30 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 440; Al-Kūfī
, Chchnmah, p. 191, has a parallel text in which the figures are 60,000 and 120,000 respectively.
31 De Goeje,
Mémoire. For a general survey of the history of the Gypsies, see A. Fraser,
The Gypsies (2nd edn, Oxford, 1992). See also A. S. Basmee Ansari, ‘Djat’, and C. E. Bosworth, ‘Zutt’, in
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn.
32 The name Gibraltar is derived from Jabal Tāriq or ‘Tāriq’s Mountain’.
33 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 205, translated in O. R. Constable,
Medieval Iberia: Readings in Christian, Muslim and Jewish Sources (Philadelphia, PA, 1997), pp. 32-4.
34 E. Levi-Provençal,
Histoire de l’Espagne Musulmane, vol. i:
La Conquête et l’émirat hispano-umaiyade (710-912) (Paris, 1950), pp. 19-21, prefers the River Barbate.
35 Anon.,
The Chronicle of 754, in
Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, trans. K. B. Wolf (Liverpool, 1990), pp. 28-45, 111-58 at p. 131.
36 The main Arabic account is Ibn Idhārī,
Bayn, II, pp. 4-9, based largely on the work of Rāzī.
37 Ibn Idhari,
Bayn, II, pp. 9-10.
38 Chronicle of 754, cap. 52, p. 131.
39 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p.
206, in Constable,
Medieval Iberia, p. 34.
40 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, p. 208, in Constable,
Medieval Iberia, pp. 34-5.
41 Constable,
Medieval Iberia, pp. 37-8.
42 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, pp. 211-2.
43 Anon.,
Conquerors and Chroniclers, pp. 164-8.
44 Levi-Provençal,
Histoire, I, p. 55, based on Ibn Hayyān.
45 Ibid., p. 56, based on Makkarī.
46 For recent discussions of the battle and the campaigns that led up to it, see I. Wood,
The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751 (London, 1994), pp. 281-4; P. Fouracre,
The Age of Charles Martel (London, 2000), pp. 84-8; E. Manzano,
Conquistadores, Emires y Califes: los Omeyas y la formación de al-Andalus (Barcelona, 2006), pp. 83-4. The military aspects of the battle are discussed in B. Bachrach,
Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to empire (Philadelphia, PA, 2001), esp. pp. 170-77.
47 Gibbon,
Decline and Fall, III, p. 336.
48 Bachrach,
Early Carolingian Warfare, pp. 170 and 352, n. 45.
49 For this translation, and a critique of the older but very influential translation by J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, see Fouracre,
The Age of Charles Martel, pp. 148-9.
10. THE WAR AT SEA
1 G. F. Bass and F. H. Van Doorninck,
Yassi Ada, vol. 1:
A Seventh-century Byzantine Shipwreck (College Station, TX, 1982).
2 For an overview of naval warfare in the Mediterranean from the mid sixth to the mid eighth centuries, see J. H. Pryor and E. M. Jeffreys,
The Age of the Dromon: The Byzantine Navy ca. 500-1204 (Leiden, 2006), pp. 19-34. For a detailed narrative of the early Islamic period, see E. Eickhoff,
Seekrieg und Seepolitik zwischen Islam und Abendland: das Mittelmeer unter byzantinischer und arabischer Hegemonies (650-1040) (Berlin, 1966).
3 See P. Crone, ‘How did the quranic pagans make a living?’,
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 63 (2005): 387-99 at p. 395.
4 On Cyprus at this time, see A. Cameron, ‘Cyprus at the time of the Arab conquests’,
Cyprus Historical Review 1 (1992): 27-49, reprinted
in eadem,
Changing Cultures in Early Byzantium (Aldershot, 1996), VI. For the Arab attacks, see A. Beihammer, ‘Zypern und die Byzantinisch-Arabische Seepolitik vom 8. bis zum Beginn des 10. Jahrhunderts’, in
Aspects of Arab Seafaring, ed. Y.Y. al-Hijji and V. Christides (Athens, 2002), pp. 41-61.
5 Cameron, ‘Cyprus’, pp. 31-2.
6 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 152-3.
7 Balādhurī,
Futūh. p. 154; Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, III, p. 709.
8 For the problems of the sources and the difficulties in working out what was attacked when, see L. I. Conrad, ‘The Conquest of Arwād: A source-critical study in the historiography of the early medieval Near East’, in
The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. I. Problems in the literary source material (Papers of the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam), ed. A. Cameron and L. I. Conrad (Princeton, NJ, 1992), pp. 317-401.
9 See A. N. Stratos, ‘The Naval engagement at Phoenix’, in
Charanis Studies: Essays in honor of Peter Charanis, ed. A. E. Laiou-Thomadakis (New Brunswick, 1980), pp. 229-47.
10 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, pp. 189-9; Ibn al-Athīr,
Kmil, p. 119-20.
11 Ibn Abd al-Hakam wrongly calls him Heraclius.
12 V. Christides, ‘Arab-Byzantine struggle in the sea: naval tactics (AD 7th-11th centuries): theory and practice’, in
Aspects of Arab Seafaring, ed. Y.Y. al-Hijji and V. Christides (Athens, 2002), pp. 87-101 at p. 90.
13 For the use of Greek fire, see Theophanes, ed. de Boor, I, pp. 353-4; Eickhoff,
Seekrieg, pp. 21-3; J. Haldon,
Byzantium in the Seventh Century (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 63-5. Also J. Haldon and M. Byrne, ‘A possible solution to the problem of Greek fire’,
Byzantinische Zeitschrift 70 (1977): 91-9.
14 Abridged translation of the text in D. Olster, ‘Theodosius Grammaticus and the Arab Siege of 674-78’,
Byzantinoslavica 56 (1995), pp. 23-8; C. Makrypoulias, ‘Muslim ships through Byzantine eyes’, in al-Hijji and Christides,
Aspects, p. 179-90.
15 Theophanes,
Chronographia, pp. 396-8.
16 Theophanes,
Chronographia, p. 399.
17 Balādhurī,
Futūh, p. 235; Eickhoff,
Seekrieg, pp. 16-17.
18 Eickhoff,
Seekrieg, pp. 28-9.
19 A. M. Fahmy,
Muslim Naval Organisation in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Seventh to the Tenth Century A.D. (2nd edn, Cairo, 1966), p. 66.
20 Eickhoff,
Seekrieg, p. 37.
21 Balādhurī,
Futūh, pp. 117-8. See the Glossary for this usage of
Mustaghal. 22 J. Wilkinson,
Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (rev. edn, Warminster, 2002), pp. 245, 247.
23 Ya‘qūbī,
Buldn, p. 327.
24 Muqaddasī,
Ahsan al-Taqsim, pp. 163-4.
25 Muqaddasī,
Ahsan l-Taqa
sim, pp. 162-3
26 Tabarī,
Ta’rīkh, III, p. 2200
27 Tabarī,
Ta’rikh, III, p. 2250
28 Wilkinson,
Jerusalem Pilgrims, pp. 196-8
29 Ibn Abd al-Hakam,
Futūh, pp. 191-2
30 Fahmy,
Muslim Naval Organisation, pp. 36-7
31 Qudāma b. Ja‘far,
Al-Kharj wa Sina‘at al-Kitba, ed. Muhammad Husayn al-Zubaydī (Baghdad, 1981), pp. 47-50.
32 For the design of warships in this period, see Pryor and Jeffreys,
The Age of the Dromon, pp. 123-61, and F. M. Hocker, ‘Late Roman, Byzantine and Islamic fleets’, in
The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels since Pre-classical Times, ed. R. Gardiner (London, 1995), pp. 86-100. See also Makrypoulias, ‘Muslim ships through Byzantine eyes’.
33 For these technical innovations, see Pryor and Jeffreys,
The Age of the Dromon, pp. 123-61.
34 Hocker, ‘Late Roman, Byzantine and Islamic fleets’, pp. 99-100.
36 Fahmy,
Muslim Naval Organisation, pp. 102-3.
11. VOICES OF THE CONQUERED
1 The indispensable source for non-Muslim views of early Islam is Hoyland,
Seeing Islam as Others Saw It.
2 For Sophronius and his writing, see Wilken,
The Land Called Holy, pp. 226-39; Hoyland,
Seeing Islam, pp. 67-73.
3 For a general introduction, see P. J. Alexander,
The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition (Berkeley, CA, 1985).
4 Hoyland,
Seeing Islam, p. 258.
5 For a translation of the text described here, see
The Seventh Century in Western-Syrian Chronicles, trans. A. Palmer (Liverpool, 1993), pp. 222-42, and the discussions in G. J. Reinink, ‘Ps.-Methodius: A concept of history in response to the rise of Islam’, in
The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, I. Problems in the literary source material, ed. A. Cameron and L. I. Conrad (Papers of the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam) (Princeton, NJ, 1992), pp. 149-87; Hoyland,
Seeing Islam, pp. 263-7.
6 On Gabriel and the history of Qartmin in general, see A. Palmer,
Monk and Mason on the Tigris Frontier (Cambridge, 1990), esp. pp. 153-9.
7 Quoted in S. Brock, ‘North Mesopotamia in the late seventh century: Book XV of John Bar Penkaye’s
Rīs Melle’,
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 9 (1987): 51-75, p. 57 note b.
8 Sawīrus, ‘Life of Benjamin’, p. 492.
9 Sawīrus, ‘Life of Benjamin’, p. 494.
10 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, pp. 184, 200.
11 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 186.
12 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 179.
13 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 188.
14 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 182.
15 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 195.
16 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 182.
17 John of Nikiu,
Chronicle, p. 181.
18 The Chronicle of 754 in
Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, trans. K. B. Wolf (Liverpool, 1990), pp. 28-45, 111-58.
19 Brock, ‘North Mesopotamia’, p. 63.
20 Chronicle of 754, cap. 31, p. 123.
21 Chronicle of 754, cap. 80, pp. 143-4.
22 Chronicle of 754, caps. 85-6, pp. 148-50.
23 Hoyland,
Seeing Islam, pp. 308-12, 526-7.
25 Text and translation in H. W. Bailey,
Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books (Oxford, 1943), pp. 195-6; see also the comments in Hoyland,
Seeing Islam, pp. 531-2.
26 For Firdawsi’s life, with full bibliography, see D. Khaleghi-Motlagh, ‘Ferdowsi’, in
Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. E. Yarshater (London, 1985-) vol. ix, pp. 514-23.
27 See Firdawsi,
Shahnāmah, trans. D. Davis, vol. iii:
Sunset of Empire (Washington, DC, 1998-2004), pp. 494-5.
28 For the text and its context, see Hoyland,
Seeing Islam, pp. 246-8.
12. CONCLUSION
1 On this frontier, see J. F. Haldon and H. Kennedy, ‘The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth centuries: military organisation and society in the borderlands’,
Zbornik radove Vizantoloskog instituta 19 (1980): 79-116, reprinted in H. Kennedy,
The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East (Aldershot, 2006), VIII.
2 C. Foss, ‘The Persians in Asia Minor and the end of antiquity’,
English Historical Review 90 (1975): 721-47, reprinted in
idem,
History and Archaeology of Byzantine Asia Minor (Aldershot, 1990), I.
3 For the classic discussion of conversion to Islam, see R. Bulliet,
Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period. An Essay in Quantitative History (Cambridge, MA, 1979). See also
idem,
Islam: The View from the Edge (New York, 1994), pp. 37-66, for the processes of conversion.