Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Heraclian epoch (610-717)

External Problems

Muhammed and Islam

Page 22

After the Arabian conquest the patriarchates of the occupied provinces fell into the hands of the Monophysites. In spite of this, the Muslim rulers granted certain privileges to the orthodox population of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and after some lapse of time the orthodox patriarchates of Antioch and Alexandria were also restored. These patriarchates still exist. The Arabian historian and geographer of the tenth century, Masudi, said that under the Arabian domination all four sacred mountains Mount Sinai, Horeb, the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem, and the Mount of Jordan (Mount Thabor) remained in the hands of the orthodox. Only gradually did the Monophysites and other heretics, including the Muslims, borrow from the orthodox the cult of Jerusalem and the holy places. Along with Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem was later recognized as a sacred Muslim city. For the Muhammedans the sacred significance of the city was established by the fact that Muawiya assumed the rank of caliph in Jerusalem.

Quite different was the state of affairs in North Africa. There the great majority of the Berber tribes, in spite of the official adoption of Christianity, still remained in their former state of barbarism and offered a very strong resistance to the Arabian armies, which repaid this opposition by terrible raids and devastation in the Berber districts. Thousands of captives were taken east and sold there into slavery. In the dead cities of Tunis, said Diehl, which are today in most cases in the same condition in which they were left by the Arabian invasion, one still finds at every turn some traces of these formidable raids. When the Arabians finally succeeded in conquering the north African provinces, many of the natives migrated to Italy and Gaul. The African church, once so famous in the annals of Christian history, suffered a very heavy blow. Here is what Diehl says with regard to the events of this period: For two centuries the Byzantine Empire had conserved in these districts the difficult heritage of Rome; for two centuries the empire made the great and steady progress of these provinces possible by the strong defense of their fortresses; for two centuries it upheld in this part of North Africa the traditions of classical civilization and converted the Berbers to a higher culture by means of religious propaganda. In fifty years the Arabian invasion undid all these achievements. In spite of the rapid spread of Islam among the Berbers, however, Christianity still continued to exist among them, and even in the fourteenth century we hear of some small Christian islands in North Africa

Cf. Photis Kontoglou, Christianity and Islam - Two related, yet different religions  *  Koran - the invention of an artificial religion  *  The Islamic View of Late Byzantium  *  Mohammedanism and Christianity  *  The Koran and the Bible  *  The example of Mohammed

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