The Death of a Prophet. Stephen J. Shoemaker
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the Byzantine period is an impressive indication that this account was likely written by someone very close to the events described, perhaps with firsthand knowledge of what he relates.128 This determination comports with the broader character of the Continuatio, whose reports generally exhibit “close proximity, both in time and place, to the events described in the text,” often seeming to relate accounts provided by firsthand witnesses.129 Although it is not known when or by whom this chronicle was first stitched together, its individual reports, as Edward Vilmar was the first to observe, appear to be contemporary with the events that they describe.130 Comparison with the Islamic historical tradition reveals the Continuatio to be a reliable source in general, but with regard to events and activities in early Islamic Palestine, this Samaritan chronicle offers a unique source of particularly “detailed and trustworthy information.”131
In view of the Continuatio’s overall quality as a historical source, and the general credibility of its description of the conquest of Palestine more specifically, one should perhaps reconsider Levy-Rubin’s somewhat hasty dismissal of its report concerning Muhammad’s involvement in the initial invasion. Levy-Rubin rejects this notice simply out of hand, on the basis that it contradicts the Islamic historical tradition, which consistently reports Muhammad’s death prior to the assault on Palestine. Inasmuch as the Samaritans used a dialect of Aramaic as their primary language during the early Middle Ages, she proposes that this “mistake” owes itself to Samaritan knowledge of the Syriac historical tradition. Yet she does not elsewhere show evidence of influence from the Syriac tradition, nor does the Continuatio manifest any significant dependence on Christian historiography. Quite to the contrary, Levy-Rubin frequently appeals to the Continuatio’s independence and the uniqueness of its witness as evidence of its exceptional importance. To be sure, the Continuatio knows the same tradition regarding Muhammad’s participation in the invasion of Palestine that is reflected in the Christian sources and the Shimʿōn b. Yoḥai complex. Nevertheless, there is no evidence to suggest that the Continuatio’s knowledge of this tradition is contingent on any of these other texts. Instead, the Continuatio seems to be an independent witness to this early tradition, which appears to have circulated among the different religious communities of early Islamic Palestine and the Near East more generally. Such an assessment fits well with the detailed and local character of the Continuatio’s report, and the apparent credibility of this account of the Palestinian conquest on other points invites some confidence in its notice of Muhammad’s involvement. If this remark were merely the isolated witness of an anonymous Samaritan chronicle, it would rightly be disregarded. But when placed in the context of these other sources, it seems that the Continuatio confirms their collective witness, and together with the apocalypse of Rabbi Shimʿōn b. Yoḥai, it offers important evidence that this tradition was not simply a collective delusion of Christian historiography.
The Continuatio’s account of the Arab conquest is surprisingly free from polemic, and it does not interpret either the Muslim invasion or Muhammad’s participation in it according to some apologetic interest or a totalizing narrative. On the whole, the Continuatio is quite favorable to the Arabs, and as Levy-Rubin observes, it exhibits a “positive evaluation concerning both conditions in Palestine during the Umayyad period and the positive attitude of these rulers towards the local population.”132 The Arab expulsion of the Byzantines is described with approval, and the terms of Islamic governance are met with neutral acceptance. Of Muhammad, the Continuatio says, rather astonishingly, that “the prophet of Islam did not cause anyone distress throughout his life. He would present his belief before the people, accepting anyone who came to him, [yet] not compelling one who did not.” His immediate successors, the chronicle continues, ruled “according to what he had enjoined upon them; they did no more or less, and did not harm anyone.”133 It is a portrait of Islam’s emergence within Palestine that comports rather well, as Levy-Rubin notes, with what can otherwise be known about this period.134 Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that such a favorable account would have been composed much beyond the first several decades of Islamic rule, after which social and economic pressure on the dhimmis (that is, non-Muslim peoples) was increased. Consequently, when all the relevant factors are taken into consideration, this view of the early Islamic conquests from Samaria has much to recommend it, and its notice of Muhammad’s involvement during the invasion warrants its inclusion alongside these other early witnesses to this tradition.
An Early Islamic Witness: ʿUmar’s Letter to Leo (Eighth Century)
Important confirmation of this tradition of Muhammad’s leadership during the invasion of the Near East emerges from a recently rediscovered early Islamic text, the alleged letter from the caliph ʿUmar II (717–20) to the Byzantine emperor Leo III (717–41). This letter was already known, albeit somewhat indirectly, from a précis of ʿUmar’s correspondence composed by the Armenian chronicler Łewond in his eighth-century History.135 Other historical sources, including the chronicles of Theophanes and Agapius make reference to this epistle, which ʿUmar purportedly sent in hopes of converting the emperor, but the original text was long presumed lost.136 Leo’s “reply,” however, has been known since the beginning of the sixteenth century, when a brief Latin translation made from “Chaldean” (presumably Arabic) was first published.137 The full extent of Leo’s letter subsequently came to light only in Łewond’s History, where it follows his summary of ʿUmar’s letter. This Armenian translation of Leo’s letter is rather lengthy, and alone it amounts to more than one-fourth of Łewond’s chronicle.138 Its size not only revealed the Latin translation to be a mere summary of Leo’s letter but also invited suspicions that the original version of ʿUmar’s letter was likely of similar extent.
Fortunately, the complete text of ʿUmar’s letter has recently come to light, having been pieced together from two partial manuscripts in different languages by Jean-Marie Gaudeul.139 The second half of ʿUmar’s letter was the first to be discovered, but since this fragment lacks the opening epistolary framework, the nature of this early Islamic text was not immediately recognized. In the mid-1960s, Dominique Sourdel found among a collection of materials from Damascus at the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in Istanbul ten stray parchment folios containing an Arabic text that appeared to be quite old. Sourdel published the text as an “Anonymous Muslim Pamphlet” against the Christians, and on the basis of the manuscript itself and the contents of the text, he convincingly argued for its composition sometime before the end of the ninth century.140 Not long thereafter, Denise Cardaillac published a manuscript of Muslim anti-Christian polemics from the National Library of Madrid that includes the beginnings of a letter ascribed to ʿUmar, written to “Lyon, king of the Christian infidels.”141 Like the other polemics of this collection, the letter survives in Aljamiado, that is, a Romance dialect written using the Arabic script. Cardaillac compared this letter with Arthur Jeffrey’s translation of ʿUmar’s letter in Łewond’s History, and, believing that Łewond’s version was in fact the original, she concluded that the Aljaimado text had been more recently composed by Moriscos, using ʿUmar’s letter as a basis and expanding it considerably.142 Clearly, however, Łewond gives merely a “summary” (
Gaudeul first came to suspect that Sourdel’s “Anonymous Pamphlet” should be identified with ʿUmar’s letter after comparing Leo’s letter in Łewond very broadly with early Islamic polemical writings against the Christians from the ninth and tenth centuries. Gaudeul noted that many of the same themes and even similar expressions were found in both Leo’s letter and the Anonymous Pamphlet, leading him to conclude that these two texts were in dialogue with one another and, by consequence, that the Anonymous Pamphlet was indeed the second half of ʿUmar’s lost letter.144 This hunch was confirmed unmistakably when Gaudeul began to compare ʿUmar’s Aljaimado letter with Leo’s letter in Łewond. At first Gaudeul began to notice connections between the Aljaimado text and Leo’s letter that were similar in nature to the former’s parallels with the Anonymous Pamphlet. Then, in the final pages of the Aljaimado letter, Gaudeul found