The first outsiders' history of the Arab takeover was a chronicle by the western Syrian Christian sect of Maronites. The Maronite Chronicle does not start with Muhammad, and runs only from 658 to 665 or so. Nevo and Koren dismiss it as not "relevant" to a study of Muhammadism (pp. 109-110). It also has little to commend it to Muslims, who disagree with it in a number of points.
This project will excerpt the Chronicle and discuss its relevance to Islamic studies.
The following comes from Palmer, except where supplemented by Hoyland pp. 135-6. Where Hoyland is paraphrasing, I have placed into [brackets].
AG 969 [658 CE] ...Mu'awiya, Hudhayfa, his sister's son, and Mu'awiya gave orders that he be put to death. 'Ali, too, threatened to go up once again against Mu'awiya, but they struck him while he was at prayer in al-Hira and killed him. Mu'awiya then went down to al-Hira where all the Arab forces proffered their right hands to him, whereupon he returned to Damascus.
AG 970 [Jun 659] [There was an earthquake in Palestine.] In the same month the bishops of the Jacobites - Theodore and Sabukht - came to Damascus and held an inquiry into the Faith with the Maronites in the presence of Mu'awiya. When the Jacobites were defeated, Mu'awiya ordered them to pay 20,000 denarii and commanded them to be silent. Thus there arose the custom that the Jacobite bishops should pay that sum of gold every year to Mu'awiya, so that he would not withdraw his protection [lit. "loose his hand upon them"] and let them be persecuted by the members of the Church. The person called "Patriarch" by the Jacobites fixed the financial burden that all the converts of monks and nuns should contribute each year to the payment in gold and he did the same with all the adherents of his faith. He bequeathed his estate to Mu'awiya so that out of fear of that man all the Jacobites would be obedient to him. [There was another earthquake.]
AG 971 [660] many Arabs gathered at Jerusalem and made Mu'awiya king and he went up and sat down on Golgotha; he prayed there and went to Gethsemane and went down to the tomb of the blessed Mary to pray in it. In those days when the Arabs were gathered there with Mu'awiya, there was an earthquake. [Much of Jericho fell, as well as many nearby churches and monasteries.]
In July of the same year the emirs and many Arabs gathered and gave their allegiance to Mu'awiya. Then an order went out that he should be proclaimed king in all the villages and cities of his dominion and that they should make acclamations and invocations to him. Mu'awiya also minted gold and silver, but it was not accepted because there was no cross on it. Furthermore Mu'awiya did not wear a crown like other kings in the world. He placed his throne in Damascus and refused to go to Muhammad's throne.
AG 972 [661] ... When Mu'awiya had acquired the power to which he had aimed and was at peace from the wars of his people, he broke the pact with the Romans and refused to accept peace from them any longer. Rather he said, "If the Romans want peace, let them surrender their weapons and pay gzîtâ".
A folio or two later is an account of Yazid's siege of a Byzantine castle.
In it is recorded a battle-cry "in the way of their language, 'God is great'
".
Patricia Crone noted this as decisive evidence for the takbir,
which was known from the Islamic Hadith but under such tendentious circumstances that
Albrecht Noth could not admit its existence
(Slaves on Horses p. 21).
Palmer noted the Chronicle's great antiquity. First, the Maronites are still allies of Byzantium; and second, it records the days of the week for certain events not listed above, which turn out to be accurate for the dates of the Julian calendar. The chronicle is additionally accurate concerning events that can be verified in the archaeological record, except where it altered the chronology to fit a dramatic narrative.
The Chronicle
notes an earthquake that damaged the monastery of Euthymius at this time.
This PDF
reports on archaeological work at that site, and verifies earthquake damage
circa 660 CE.
However the Chronicle shifts the event of Mu'awiya's proclamation back a year, so
as to provide a "clear sign for God's disapproval for Mu'awiya's prayer in the
Christian holy places
".
Archaeology also confirms that Mu'awiya minted his own coinage; it was copper and done from Hims, Ba'labakk, Damascus, Tiberias, and (rarely) Tartûs. Some of it lacked Christian imagery - although it was not yet notably Muhammadan let alone aniconic (Nevo & Koren pp. 141-3).
Palmer was of the opinion that the Chronicle was "tendentious
"
concerning Mu'awiya's gzîtâ, Syriac cognate to the infamous jizya.
Palmer thinks that the Jacobite protection-money
bought them a "special relationship [with]... [and] the backing of the State
". But neither this source nor others can be stretched that far.
In fact this tax only bought the Jacobites the protection of the law against persecutors. And those would-be persecutors were not only Arabs - they were the Chalcedonian Orthodox Church, still run from Constantinople and still in a position of authority within Mu'awiya's kingdom.
In addition, the Chronicle does not adduce sura 9 nor any other doctrinal motive for Mu'awiya's policy. Mu'awiya asked for protection-money because he thought firstly that it would help his internal security budget, and secondly (and accurately) that he could get away with it.
The Chronicle is one of the first outside sources to mention a Muhammad. Muhammad is here the owner of a "throne" in a place other than Damascus. The Chronicle considers it noteworthy that Mu'awiya did not even visit this throne. This implies that Muhammad was a king of the Arabs as was Mu'awiya.
Later non-Arab sources, starting with Jacob of Edessa (Nevo p. 130), would claim Muhammad was the first king of Arabs and died decades before Mu'awiya. This chronicle can be read as claiming that Mu'awiya was in Muhammad's line but moved the Arab capitol. This assumes that Muhammad's throne was in Madina, where 'Uthman was murdered. It also contradicts, or precedes, the Islamic tradition of the "year of the Hajj", when Mu'awiya made an Abrahamic pilgrimage to the Hijaz.
The Maronite Chronicle is a fascinating - and mostly trustworthy - window on the first stable decade of Arab rule over the Levant. It tells us much on Mu'awiya's domestic policy concerning religion. This affects studies of not only Umayyad practice but also - given Islam's unification of church and state - Umayyad religion.
Any thoughts? e-mail me :^)
zimriel@sbcglobal.net9-10 August 2003: Started and posted. 8 Oct 2003: Cut out references to sura 4. 25 March 2005: Altered according to Hoyland and other information.