The Death of a Prophet. Stephen J. Shoemaker
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Spanish Eastern Source (ca. 741 CE)
During the earliest years of Islamic rule in Spain, two Latin chronicles, the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle of 741 and the Hispanic Chronicle of 754, were written almost simultaneously. Surprisingly, these are the only surviving Latin historical works composed during the many centuries of Islamic dominion in southern Spain. Although there are considerable differences between the two chronicles, some of which we will note, both have drawn on a common source for most of their information regarding the history of Islam.67 Inasmuch as the information that concerns us derives from this shared source, we will consider these two related chronicles together in order to ascertain the witness of their earlier source regarding Muhammad’s role in the conquest of Palestine. The precise nature of this source, however, remains something of a mystery.
The Spanish Eastern Source, as we will name this shared document, is perhaps most surprising for its rather favorable treatment of Muhammad and the early Islamic caliphs. This comes through most clearly in the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle of 741, which, although it shows signs of having abbreviated the Spanish Eastern Source, does not add any sort of polemic to its source’s consistently positive descriptions of the Islamic leaders. This is in contrast to the Hispanic Chronicle of 754, which “often adds a pejorative remark or omits the notice altogether if it is too positive, as with that on Muhammad.”68 The Spanish Eastern Source’s positive representation of Islam led one early interpreter to suppose that its author must have been a Spanish Christian who had converted to Islam, but for numerous reasons, this hypothesis seems unlikely.69 Roger Collins suggests instead that the author was a Christian writing in Spain or North Africa, and that the rather favorable treatment of the Islamic leaders was a necessary condition of writing under Islamic rule. Since the Spanish Eastern Source generally avoids religious topics and limits its discussions of Islam strictly to political matters, it is conceivable that a Christian could have written it. The positive representation of Islam may simply reflect the need to appease the Islamic authorities.70
While it is difficult to exclude completely the possibility that the Spanish Eastern Source was composed in the Islamic West, its production in the eastern Mediterranean, and Syria in particular, seems far more likely for a variety of reasons. Theodor Nöldeke was the first to propose this, arguing in an “Epimetrum” to Theodor Mommsen’s edition that this Spanish Eastern Source was most likely written in Greek by a Syrian Christian close to the center of Umayyad power.71 More recently, this position has been argued by Hoyland, who explains that the Spanish Eastern Source “must have been composed in Syria, since the Umayyad caliphs are each described in a relatively positive vein, all reference to ʿAlī is omitted, Muʿāwiya II is presented as a legitimate and uncontested ruler, and the rebel Yazīd ibn al-Muhallab is labelled ‘a font of wickedness.’”72 Moreover, the Spanish Eastern Source shares a number of parallels with the Byzantine chronicle tradition, and if we suppose its composition in Spain, it is difficult to explain the circulation of so many Byzantine sources in Spain (or North Africa for that matter) at this time. By contrast, it is much easier to imagine that a single Eastern historical source had reached eighth-century Spain, most likely written in Greek, as this was the most common language of cultural exchange between East and West at the time.73 Hoyland additionally identifies a number of common features shared by this Spanish Eastern Source and the Syriac Common Source, a now lost chronicle written around 750 by Theophilus of Edessa, whose contents are known from the extant chronicles of Theophanes, Agapius, Michael the Syrian, and the Syriac Chronicle of 1234, all of which depend on the Syriac Common Source (see the discussion below). Hoyland suggests the possibility that perhaps these Spanish chroniclers made use of the same Greek translation of the Syriac Common Source that Theophanes must have used when composing his Greek chronicle at the beginning of the ninth century.74 While he makes this proposal somewhat tentatively, such apparent connections further indicate an eastern Mediterranean origin for the Spanish Eastern Source. Although much admittedly remains uncertain, Nöldeke’s original suggestion of a Greek source written by a Syrian Christian still remains the most likely solution.
Of the two Spanish chronicles, the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle is generally regarded as the earlier, believed to have been written in 741. More accurately, however, this is not the date of the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle itself but is instead the date of the final entry from its eastern source. This would indicate that the Spanish Eastern Source, rather than the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle, was most likely produced in 741, while the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle was likely composed sometime later on the basis of this earlier source. For a western European chronicle of its time, the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle is rather peculiar in its overwhelming focus on events in the eastern Mediterranean, while devoting very little attention to either Spanish affairs or western Europe. According to Hoyland, only 9 percent of its contents concern Spanish affairs: there are six brief entries on the later Visigothic kings near the beginning (all taken from Isidore of Seville’s History of the Goths), a brief mention of the conquest of Spain later on, and, near the chronicle’s end, a description of the battle of Toulouse in 721.75 Roughly one-third (29 percent) of the chronicle is devoted to Byzantine affairs, consisting of slightly more substantial notices regarding the Byzantine emperors from Phocas (610) to Leo III (717), although the reign of Heraclius alone commands approximately two-thirds of the total Byzantine material.76 The majority of the chronicle, almost two-thirds of its total content (62 percent), focuses on Islamic history, with extended, favorable accounts of each ruler from Muhammad to Yazīd II (720–24).
Regarding Muhammad and the rise of Islam, the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle is remarkably favorable and free from polemic. As is the case in both chronicles, the account focuses largely on political matters, leaving religious affairs entirely to the side. Muhammad, however, is very clearly identified as the political leader of the Muslims at the time of the Islamic conquests of the Roman Near East. “When a most numerous multitude of Saracens had gathered together, they invaded the provinces of Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia, while one named Muhammad held the position of leadership over them [Syriae, Arabiae et Mesopotamiae prouincias inuaserunt supra ipsos principatum tenente Mahmet nomine]. Born of a most noble tribe of that people, he was a very prudent man and a foreseer of very many future events.”77 After a brief description of the conquest of Syro-Palestine,78 the chronicle notes Muhammad’s death and succession by Abū Bakr, who continued the conquests. “When Muhammad, the previously mentioned leader of the Saracens, had finished 10 years of rule, he reached the end of his life. [He is] the one whom they hold in such high regard and reverence until this day that they declare him to be the apostle and prophet in all their rituals and writings. In his place Abū Bakr of the Saracens (from which his predecessor also arose) was chosen by them. He organized a massive campaign against the Persians, which devastated cities and towns, and he captured very many of their fortifications.”79 The entire passage is extraordinarily positive for a Christian chronicle written under Islamic occupation. It is rather peculiar, however, in its apparent division of the Islamic conquest of the Near East into two successive stages: the first stage was begun by Muhammad in the “provinces of Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia,” which context makes clear are Roman provinces, while the second stage commenced after Muhammad’s death, when Abū Bakr led a massive campaign of conquest against the Persian Empire.80
This two-fold structure can perhaps be explained as the author’s attempt to harmonize two different accounts of the Islamic conquest of the Near East, one an older tradition ascribing leadership to Muhammad, witnessed in the Christian historical tradition, and the other an ostensibly emerging Islamic tradition that identified the beginning of the Near Eastern conquests with Abū Bakr’s reign. Roughly contemporary with the composition of the Spanish Eastern Source is the earliest Islamic biography of Muhammad, Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīra of the Prophet, compiled sometime not long before the author’s death in 767. According to Ibn Isḥāq’s seminal account, Muhammad died in 632 in Medina and was not involved in the conquest of Syro-Palestine, as discussed further in the following chapter. During the mid-eighth century then, an Islamic biography of Muhammad had begun to form in the eastern Islamic lands, where the Spanish Eastern Source was most likely