Arietta Papaconstantinou. Confrontation, Interaction, and the Formation of the early Islamic Oikoumene. Revue des études byzantines, tome 63, 2005. pp. 167-181

8/3/2019 Arietta Papaconstantinou. Confrontation, Interaction, and the Formation of the early Islamic Oikoumene. Revue de

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Arietta Papaconstantinou

Confrontation, Interaction, and the Formation of the early Islamic

OikoumeneIn: Revue des tudes byzantines, tome 63, 2005. pp. 167-181.

Abstract

This article discusses three recent collections on the early Islamic period. The first two are part of Ashgate' s Formation of the

Classical Islamic World series, containing the reprints of some of the most significant scholarly contributions to the subjects of

Muslim relations with Byzantium and with the other confessions within their own empire; the third is the result of a conference

aiming to bring out the importance of documentary evidence for the study of this period. The thirty-nine articles and three

introductions cover a number of important issues in the history of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East of the early

Islamic period, both showing on which themes research has tended to focus and highlighting new or recently re-evaluated

questions.

Rsum

REB 63, 2005, p. 167-181.

Arietta Papaconstantinou, Confrontation, interaction, and the formation of the early Islamic oikoumene. Review article - Cet article

traite de trois rcents recueils sur la priode proto-islamique. Les deux premiers font partie de la srie The Formation of the

Classical Islamic World chez Ashgate, et contiennent des rimpressions de contributions parmi les plus significatives dans ledomaine des relations qu'entretenaient les musulmans avec Byzance et avec les non-musulmans de leur propre empire ; le

troisime est le rsultat d'un colloque dont l'objectif tait de faire ressortir l'importance des sources documentaires pour l'tude de

cette priode. Les trente-neuf articles et trois introductions couvrent bon nombre de questions importantes concernant la

Mditerrane orientale et le Proche-Orient aux dbuts de l'Islam ; ils montrent sur quels thmes la recherche a eu tendance se

focaliser, et mettent en lumire des problmatiques nouvelles ou rcemment rvalues.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Papaconstantinou Arietta. Confrontation, Interaction, and the Formation of the early Islamic Oikoumene. In: Revue des tudesbyzantines, tome 63, 2005. pp. 167-181.

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rebyz_0766-5598_2005_num_63_1_2310
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CONFRONTATION, INTERACTION, AND THEFORMATION OF THE EARLY ISLAMIC OIKOUMENE

Review article1Arietta PAPACONSTANTINOU

Michael Bonnhr (ed.). Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early Islamic Times, The Formation ofthe Classical Islamic World 8, Aldershot, Ashgate 2005.Robert Hem and (ed.). Muslims and Others in Early Islamic Society, The Formation of theClassical Islamic World 18 . Aldershot, Ashgate 2004.Petra M. Sijpksteijn & Lennart Sundelin (eds.), Papyrology and the History of Early Islamic-Egypt, Islamic History and Civilization 55, Leiden, Brill 2004.

Without Contraries is no progressionWilliam Blake2

'How late can late antiquity go?' is a question that has probably crossed theminds of many a scholar in the field. For some, Islam marks the beginning of anew era. at least in the Middle East; for others, Islam was the locus where lateantiquity lived on, while the Roman empire that had conceived it turned 'medieval'.3 owever undecided the periodisation debate, it is undeniable that the studyof the early Islamic period has burgeoned, not only among Islamicists, but alsoamong specialists of the Christian cultures which lived within and around the new1 . This text has greatly benefitted from informal discussions with Muriel Debi and SophieMtivier: many thanks are also du e to Julia Bray and Chase Robinson for their suggestions and to GarthFowden for avant-premire disclosure of his work.2. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, plate 3.3. In the mainstream view, early Islam is unambiguously se t in the medieval period, and the seventhcentury marks the end of antiquity, late or not. See for example the periodisation of A. Camkron. TheMediterranean world in late antiquity, 395-600, London 1993; this is also implied in titles such as"Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam", despite the fact that th e Darwin Press series seeks amongother things to highlight the continuity between the two. Th e alternative view is voiced most vigorouslyby Garth Fowden in his forthcoming article "Late antiquity: period or idea?", in Comparative perspectivesn the Roman Empire, ed . J. Arnason. See also his Qusayr 'Amra: art and the Umaxyad elite inlate antique Syria. Berkeley 2004. or T. Sizgorich. Narrative and community in Islamic late antiquity.Past and Present 185. 2004. p. 9-42, whose titles could hardly be more explicit; or F. M. Ci ovhr and

R. S. Humphreys. Toward a definition of late antiquity, in Tradition and innovation in late antiquity, ed.F. M. Clover and R. S. Humphreys. Madison 1989, p. 3-19 (ca 400-700). The question is discussed andcontextualised by C. F. Robinson. Reconstructing early Islam: truth and consequenses. in Method andtheory in the study oj Islamic origins, ed. H. Berg. Islamic History and Civilization 49 . Leiden 2003.p. 101-134.Revue des tudes Byzantines 63. 2005. p. 167-181.


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168 ARIETTA PAPACONSTANTINOUempire - and that much of the impetus fo r this comes from students of late antiquity. As a result, scholars have become increasingly conscious of the role playedby the contemporary cultural environment in 'the formation of the classical Islamicworld', and the series set up by Lawrence Conrad under that title amply takes thisdevelopment into account. Thus, next to three volumes on pre-Islamic Arabia andthe Sasanian and Byzantine Near East before Islam, the series includes two symmetrical volumes on Arab-Byzantine relations in early Islamic times (ABR) and onMuslims and others in early Islamic society (MO), put together respectively byMichael Bonner and Robert Hoyland.The series aims to bring together some of the most significant scholarly contributions to each subject. To the extent that volumes of this sort are supposed to givea general view of the most representative research in a given field, the choice ofthe articles is extremely important and has much to say on the interests and orientationsf the editors, and beyond them, on the historiographical trends that underliethem. In the case of ABR and MO, two seemingly similar subjects, the difference ofapproach to the broader question of cultural encounters is striking, if understandableo a point. ABR reflects a historiographical tradition that tends to insist onpolitical and military history, and to see cultural interaction as an exchange ofelements between worlds that remain essentially separate; MO gives a more integrated vision of social interaction and cultural borrowing, which are shown tohappen at various levels in often very subtle ways. The subjects are of course different, and partly account for the difference in viewpoint. ABR concerns the inherently conflict-driven relations between two antagonistic political entities, whileMO has to do with those, more prone to compromise, between ruled and rulerswithin the same state. Both editors, however, could have oriented their volumes theother way round. There is enough bibliography to choose from for one to present anegative picture of Muslim/non-Muslim interaction - but evidently Hoyland doesnot understand relations between 'Muslims and others' the same way as, say, BatYe'or.4 The same, though perhaps to a lesser extent, is true of Arab relations withByzantium. Although wars and other forms of conflict have indeed long dominatedresearch, there is much work, both recent and less so, that bears with it a morepositive view of their interaction than Bonner's choices allow for.Indeed, Bonner maintains a strong tilt towards conflict and military matters,evidently a conscious choice: 'This volume on Arab-Byzantine relations beginsand ends with war' is the book's first sentence. More than just begin and end,though, war is the dominant theme in the collection. The thematic areas chosenare: war and diplomacy; frontiers and military organisation; polemics and imagesof the 'other'; exchange, influence and convergence; martyrdom, jihd and holywar. This admittedly reflects, at least in part, the reality of those relations - or atleast the way the protagonists themselves seem to have seen them. War is an ever-recurring theme in sources both Arab and Byzantine, and their confrontation was

4. Bat Ye'or, The dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, London 1 985; or ead., Les chrtientsd'Orient entre jihd et dhimmitude: vif XXe sicle, Paris 1991. A useful survey of Western views of thedhimmi in M. J. Saleh, Government relations with the Coptic community in Egypt during the Ftimidperiod (358-567 A.H. I 969-1171 C.E.), Diss. University of Chicago 1995, p. 9-52.


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THE FORMATION OF THE EARLY ISLAMIC OIKOUMENE ] 69interpreted by some as a new version of the age-old conflict between East and West.This ultimately Byzantine (or early Islamic) vision of confrontation between twoworlds dominates ABR, and even though 'exchange, influence and convergence'are taken into account, they are of a kind that keeps the exchanging entities intact.Hoyland's choices are more oriented towards two-way intercultural traffic.Although the articles are not separated into sections, the main themes addressedare the theoretical, legal and practical aspects of convivencia within the Islamicstate, intellectual exchange (significantly titled 'Dialogue' in the introduction), andthe framework of Islamisation ('conversion' or 'apostasy' according to viewpoint).These are probably the most controversial thematic areas on the question ofMuslim/non-Muslim relations, and Hoyland has definitely chosen his camp.Among other things, the articles selected highlight the gap between the misleadingOfficial' discourse of confrontation and attempts at communal control, and apervading tendency towards melting-pot practices on the part of the population. Inthe editor's own words, 'inter-confessional exchange was, to the chagrin of religious leaders, all too common' (p. 30). The two (or more) worlds of 'Muslims andothers' are here shown in continuous interaction, of a kind that contributed to theirslow transformation and redefinition.As often in the study of this period, Egypt is practically absent from Bonner'scollection, which reflects above all the lack of interest in this province amongscholars of Arab-Byzantine relations, but even, to a point, among students of earlyIslam in general.""1 This geographical separation echoes the situation among specialistsf the Roman period, and can be explained in part by the difficulty of accessto Egyptian sources, especially papyri, usually perceived as hermetic and user-unfriendly. Nevertheless, papyri make fo r extremely important and useful sources,and are gradually becoming more widely recognised as such. Showing the extentof their contribution is one of the aims of the volume edited by Petra Sijpesteijn andLennart Sundelin under the title Papyrology and the history of early Islamic Egypt(PEIE), and this is clearly expounded in Sundelin's introduction. This is of coursenot entirely new material, as can be seen from the inclusion in MO of two articlesbased on Egyptian documentary evidence. But after more than a century of neglect,papyrologists have recently become more interested in the early Islamic period andthe corpus of published documents in Greek, Coptic and Arabic is steadily rising,so that more general studies using this evidence, even in the realm of Arabic literature,6 are now becoming an attainable goal.More than anything, the three volumes perfectly complement each other. Together, their thirty-nine articles and three introductions cover a number of importantissues in the history of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East of the early

.1. Note for example the exclusion of Egypt from the areas covered by the "Late antiquity and Earlyslam" project: A. Camfron and L. I. Conrad. Introduction, in The Byzantine and early Islamic NearEast, 1. Problems in the literary source material, ed. A. Cameron and L. I. Conrad. Princeton 1989.p. 10 (though it is 'hoped that the impact of other regions will receive du e consideration as the projectproceeds").6. R. . Khoi'ry. L'apport spcialement important de la papyrologie dans la transmission et lacodification des plus anciennes versions des Mille et une nuits et d'autres livres des deux premierssicles islamiques. PEIE. p. 63-95.


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170 ARIETTA PAPACONSTANTINOUIslamic period, and fo r all their differences, they converge in covering a numberof themes on which research has tended to focus, but also in bringing up someissues that are in bad need of further study. One might also hope that they willhave the salutary effect of fostering more sustained intellectual relations betweenArabists and Byzantinists - or should one say between Islamicists and Others',probably even less developed than the former. Their choice of articles by specialistsn various fields should help bridge the persistent bibliographical and histo-riographical gaps from which the relevant disciplines still suffer.In its own way, each of the three collections tells the story or stories of thevarying and multi-faceted encounters between what became Islam and the material, ultural and political environment in which this happened. The best known andmost traumatic events in those encounters were probably the conquests, followedby the continuing warfare that was to plague certain key areas for a long time.7 Oneof these was the Arab-Byzantine frontier in Anatolia, which roughly followed theline of the Taurus, from the coast of Cilicia to Armenia. As all pre-modern frontiers,it tended to spread over a large area, practically affecting the whole of Asia Minor.Bonnerbegins his collection with Clive Foss's classic 1975 article 'The Persians inAsia Minor and the end of antiquity',8 which has little to do with Arab-Byzantinerelations, but argues that the Persian destruction of Asia Minor was such that notonly did it facilitate the Muslim conquests, it also downgraded the region for centurieso come. Its status as a frontier region after the Muslim conquest was of courseinstrumental in maintaining it under constant tension, and in creating very specificlocal patterns of settlement, based on small-scale, fortified kastra or simply ontowns with citadels, studied in parallel fo r both sides of the divide by John Haldonand Hugh Kennedy in another well-known article from 1 980.9Another effect of the continuing warfare was the need for efficient military(re)organisation on both sides, a subject addressed among other things by Haldonand Kennedy fo r the frontier region. The origin and evolution of the Byzantine'thematic system' as a way to maintain a local, self-sustained army have been thematter of considerable debate and speculation, and the thorough re-evaluation of theevidence by John Haldon is also included in ABR.{0 Less prominent in scholarship,

7. J. Wellhausen, Arab wars with the Byzantines in the Umayyad period, ABR, p. 31-64, a translationf Die Kmpfe der Araber mit den Romern in der Zeit der Umaijiden, Nachrichten von derkniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gttingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse 4, 1901, p. 414-447.8. English Historical Review 90, 1975, p. 721-774; ABR, p. 3-29.9. J. Haldon and H. Kennedy, Th e Arab-Byzantine frontier in the 8th and 9th centuries: militaryorganisation and society in the borderlands, ZRVI 19, 1980, p. 79-1 16; ABR, p. 141-178. Several papersat the Dumbarton Oaks Spring Symposium on 'Urban and rural settlement in Anatolia and the Levant,00-1000' (April 2005) dwelt at least partly on this question in the light of recent archaeological finds(in particular the contributions by Michael Decker, Christopher Lightfoot, Marc Waelkens and MarkWhittow).10. J. Haldon, Seventh-century continuities: the ajnd and the 'thematic myth', in The Byzantineand early Islamic Near East, III, States, resources and armies, ed . A. Cameron, Princeton 1 995, p. 379-423; ABR, p. 95-139. This article is meant to close a debate with Man Shahd concerning the relationbetween the themes and the early Islamic ajnd: see Bonner's introduction, p. xxui-xxiv, and nowC. Zuckerman, Learning from the enemy and more: studies in 'Dark Centuries' Byzantium, Millennium 2,2005, p. 125-134.


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THE FORMATION OF THE EARLY ISLAMIC OIKOUMENE 1 7 1and disregarded by Bonner, has been the question of naval warfare and the organisation of the fleet. Arabic apocalyptic accounts going back to the early Islamicperiod show that for some time there was fear of a Byzantine attack on the coastalareas." By the mid-650s, the Arabs had at their disposal an efficient fleet, and thefuture caliph Mu'wiya has come down as its initiator. The papyri clearly showhow the system worked, although the earliest texts, dating from the late seventhcentury, post-date Mu'wiya. The building and manning of the fleet was basedon requisitions of Christian craftsmen and crewmen, several of which have beenpreserved. Only the fighters on the ships were Arabs. This system of corves wassufficiently resented to be remembered in later Christian texts such as the Historyof the Patriarchs of Alexandria, as the article by Frank Trombley in PEIE shows.12A recent study of the Byzantine evidence by Constantine Zuckerman has shownthat this system - corves and all - was almost immediately copied by the Byzantineemperor Constans II (641-668), who, 'learning from the enemy', set the bases fo rthe creation of 'the first regular Byzantine war fleet'.13One of the questions raised by Bonner in his introduction is that of the cost ofthis continuous warfare (p. xviii). He finds the huge amounts given in the sourcesmight be exaggerated, although recent work by John Haldon tends to confirm anextremely high global cost.14 In most cases, and Bonner gives some examples, thesymbolic gain of these otherwise totally negative-balance expeditions seems tohave been sufficient to ensure the victors domination over internal affairs - stilltoday a powerful incentive for seemingly pointless wars of aggression.In recent years, historians have tended to regard frontiers as zones of interactionwhere a specific 'frontier culture' emerges, a question Bonner also briefly discussesin his introduction, although he maintains in his choices a predominantly militaryvision. In his opinion, this view is sustained by the Arabic sources, which present'the frontier district as an ideologically charged place where people came, not tomix with those different from themselves, but rather to fight them and to stake outmore securely their own territory of self (p. xxvii). One may of course reverse thisperspective, considering that if the Arabic sources insist so much on 'separation', itis perhaps precisely because they did not find it sufficient in practice. It is not onlya question of the people who 'came', fo r whatever reason, to the frontier, but also

U.S. Bashear, Apocalyptic and other materials on early Muslim-Byzantine wars: a review ofArabic sources. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series. 1. 1991, p. 173-207 (here p. 182-183);ABR.p. 181-215 (p. 190-191).12. F. Trombly, Sawrus bn al-Muqaffa' and the Christians of Umayyad Egypt: war and societyin documentary context, PEIE, p. 199-226. Less well-known are the requisitions of workers for thegreat Umayyad building sites, in particular the mosques of Damascus and Jerusalem, and the palaceof the amir al-mu'minm in both cities: F. Morei.li, Legname, palazzi e moschee. P. Vindob. G 31 e ilcontributo dell'Egitto alla prima architettura islamica. Tyclw 13. 1998, p. 165-190.13. Zuckerman. Learning from the enemy (n. 10). p. 107-125 (quot. p. 108).14. Th e high cost is to be explained mainly by the logistics involved: see J. Haldon, La logistiquede Mantzikert : quelques problmes d'approvisionnement au xiL ' sicle, in Guerre et socit' (ixe-xut sicle), d. D. Barthlmy and J -CL Chf.ynet. Paris (forthcoming 2006). whose calculations could beapplied, with adaptations, to most military campaigns. An overview of the question of campaign expensesn M. F. Hlndy. Studies in the Byzantine monetary economy c. 300-1450. London - New York 1985.p. 221-224.


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1 72 ARIETTA PAPACONSTANTINOUof those who were naturally there. It is a pity that Bonner does not mention in thiscontext Elizabeth Key Fowden's work on the cult of St Sergius as a frontier cultpromoting a specific form of interaction between the various groups that populatedhe zone between Rome and the Sasanid empire, notably the Arabs.15 Her finalchapter on the early Islamic period shows that although the Syrian plain slowly lostthis frontier status, cultural integration was strong enough for the saint's cult site tobecome common to Muslims and Christians.Situations specific to the frontier region are also at the centre of Bonner s ownarticle on the development of jihd ideology in the context of the move of Muslimlegal and religious scholars and ascetics to the frontier zone,16 although he haschosen to put it in the final section in the company of 'martyrdom'. Bonner sees thefrontier as the environment in which ideas of holy war and martyrdom were formed,both in their literal sense as in the symbolic version of the struggle against the self,and this is certainly true to a great extent. It would probably be helpful in studyingthe development of this concept to take into consideration the role of the late antique literary heritage, and in particular the borrowing and remodeling of Christianhagiographical topoi in Islamic literature.17Beyond the long-term practical and discursive management of warfare, maintainingnd administering the immense conquered territories involved the organisationof a stable state, a subject on which Egyptian evidence gives extremely preciousinsights.18 In particular, papyri show with great clarity the increasing centralisationof the state from the late seventh century onwards. They yield much informationon the various levels of the Muslim administration in the provinces, on the fiscaladministration and the practical aspects of tax levies, and on the introduction of thepoll tax (Jizya, in Greek ). Texts such as the one published by KlaasWorp in PEIE, a list of town quarters that were separate fiscal units,19 show the sortof organisation involved at a very local level, and make clear that the Arab systemwas immediately efficient in great part because it relied on a pre-existing administrative etwork.Another example is afforded by the band, or postal service, an essential instrumentfo r maintaining cohesion and control over a vast territory. The article by AdamSilverstein in PEIE shows that despite its oft-noted 'loose' character, the Islamicstate was held together early on by a number of essential structures, functioningfrom Africa to Central Asia.20 Although the main documentary evidence datesfrom the early Abbasid period, a sahib al-barld already existed in Egypt under thegovernor Qurra ibn Shark (709-714) and even served as an intelligence agent forthe governor.

15. . . Fowden, The barbarian plain: saint Sergius between Rome and Iran, The Transformationof the Classical Heritage 28, Berkeley 1999.16. Some observations concerning the early development of jihd along the Arab-Byzantinefrontier, Stadia islamica 75, 1992, p. 5-31; ABR, p. 401-427.17. On this question see Sizgorich, Narrative and community (n. 3) .18. See P. M. Sijpesteun, Shaping a Muslim state. Papyri related to a mid-eighth-century Egyptianofficial, Diss. Princeton University 2004, and ead., Th e Arab conquest of Egypt and the beginning ofMuslim rule, in Egypt in the Byzantine world, 450-700, ed. R. S. Bagnall (forthcoming).19. K. A. Worp, Town quarters in Greek, Roman, Byzantine and early Arab Egypt, p. 227-248.20 . A. Silverstein, Documentary evidence for the early history of the Band, p. 153-161.


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THE FORMATION OF THE EARLY ISLAMIC OIKOUMENE 173With time, and parallel to the process of centralisation, the papyri show Arabsgradually settling on agricultural land from the late seventh century onwards, andthe emergence of an expanding group of Muslim landowners in the eighth century.

A document published by Petra Sijpesteijn in the same volume shows their integrationn the local agricultural and commercial network, a fact that fostered a relatively high degree of interaction with the local population, not only through trade,but also through the employment of Christian workers.21 Much of the commercialactivity took place in cities, and this document, like many others, gives informationone rarely gets from other sources. Not only does it bring to light the existence ofRosetta (Rashd) almost a century and a half before the foundation date given bylater Muslim sources (735 instead of 870s), it also highlights the continuing importanceof Alexandria within the economic system of early Islamic Egypt, a fact thathas been obscured by the swift rise to prominence of Fustt. Other than an importan tort of commerce, it was also a key political and military site because the fleetwas partly stationed there, and ships were built and repaired in its shipyards. Thegovernors of Egypt even chose to reside in Alexandria part of the time, which is notsurprising considering not only the garrison stationed in the city, but also the greatnumber of Bedouin creating unrest in the surrounding area,22 as well as the presenceof the Coptic Patriarchate, the governing institution of the largest religious group inthe country.This brings up another aspect of state organisation, namely the way Muslimsdealt with the non-Muslim communities, still, and for some time to come, themajority of the population. As the text presenting MO claims, this is 'arguably thesingle most important issue in the history of the early Islamic Middle East, sincethe Muslims were initially a minority in the lands that they had conquered and sohad to reach some modus vivendi with the various religious communities in theirrealm'.23 Thejizya and the corves for the fleet were of course one aspect of thoserelations, but otherwise the Muslims had a 'laissez-faire' attitude (MO, p. xiii) thatthe locals certainly appreciated to a certain point, especially those who had longresented state interference in their affairs. This also prompted a certain degree ofreshuffling and redefinition, especially among Christian communities accustomedto using state privilege in their dealings with each other, with the aim to gain adominant position through the support of the new rulers.24

The organisation of non-Muslims in autonomous, self-governing and self-contained communities based on religious allegiance was already under way beforethe arrival of Islam, a development first charted by Michael Morony for Iraq inthe article included in MO and then refined in his later work.25 The efficiency and

21. P. M. Sijprsikijn. Travel and trade on the river. PEIE, p. 1 15-152.22. See C. Dcobert, Marotide mdivale. Des Bdouins et des chrtiens, in Alexandrie mdivale , d. C. DHcoBhRi. tudes alexandrines 8. Cairo 2002. p. 127-167.23 . Quotation from the presentation of the volume on th e Ashgate site: http://www.ashgate.com24 . Still in the 760s the Monophysite History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria shows the twoChristian communities bringing rival petitions before th e Muslim governor: Hist. Patr. 18 (PO 5, 120-26).25. M. Morony. Religious communities in late Sasanian and early Muslim Iraq, Journal of th eEconomic and Social History of the Orient 17. 1974. p. 1 13-135: MO. p. 1-23. See also id.. Iraq afterthe Muslim conquest, Princeton 1984.


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1 74 ARIETTA PAPACONSTANTINOUrigidity of this communal organisation were helped by the semi-official recognitionhat the Sasanians had accorded it, and only intensified under the Muslims.Morony's model is built up mainly out of evidence from Iraq, and concerns thetransition from the Sasanian to the Islamic state. However, it has also been widelyaccepted for the passage from Byzantium to Islam, since the integrationist policiesof both pre-Islamic 'superpowers' are seen to have resulted in a centrifugal driveon the part of dissident religious groups and in their gradual transformation intoindependent communities.26 The relevance of this model is perhaps less immediatefo r Egypt, where the extremely centralised structure of the two main churches,Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian, did not allow for any important implantationof dissident groups during the Byzantine period - though these undeniably existed.Several articles are included in MO, chosen so as to cover both the theoreticaland the practical aspects of the legal and religious status of non-Muslim communities.ahmoud Ayoub's theologically-oriented analysis of the notion of dhimmain the Qur'an and the hadith is followed by two studies of the legal situation ofthe communities to which the term was applied. A little-known and very helpfularticle by Nophyte Edelby on the legislative autonomy of the Christian communitiesurveys the situation in the various fields of legal practice, concluding that theyhad full autonomy in the exercise of private justice as long as no prejudice wasbrought to public order. This finds a perfect complement in Antoine Fattal's muchbetter-known study of the court procedures to which dhimml were subject, seenmainly through Muslim sources. In both these subjects much remains to be done,especially in terms of chronological differentiation, an aspect not much taken intoconsideration here. It is a field where documentary evidence can be put to gooduse, and yield a more nuanced view, as S. D. Goitein's article on minority self-ruleshows. It is based on the documents of the Cairo Geniza, and shows how day-to-daylegal dealings between Jews and Muslims functioned in practice.27The system of self-rule was of course an efficient way of administering byproxy and maintaining public order, but it also greatly contributed in definingmore and more sharply the new Muslim identity by opposing it to that of the othergroups. This was reinforced by the spelling out of rules of differentiation, especially between Muslims and the other monotheistic religions, where confusion wasmore of a risk. Once again, MO couples two complementary articles, M. J. Kister's' "Do not assimilate yourselves..." Ltashabbah...\ an analysis of the ideologybehind the separation and a study of the various recommendations given to Muslims;and Albrecht Noth's examination in this light of the famous Ordinances of 'Umar',

26 . See for instance J. P. Berkey, The formation of Islam: religion and society in the Near East,600-1800, Cambridge 2003, p. 91-92 and n. 2; also MO, p. xm.27 . M. Ayoub, Dhimmah in Qur'an and hadith, Arab Studies Quarterly 5, 1983, p. 172-182; MO,p. 25-35; N. Edelby, The legislative autonomy of Christians in the Islamic world, MO, p. 37-82 (transi,of: L'autonomie lgislative des chrtiens en terre d'islam, Archives d'histoire du droit oriental 5, 1950-1951, p. 307-351); A. Fattal, How Dhimmis were judged in the Islamic world, MO, p. 83-102 (transi,of: Comment les dhimmis taient-ils jugs en terre d'Islam, Cahiers d'histoire gyptienne 3, 1951,p. 321-341); S. D. Goitein, Minority selfrule and government control in Islam, Studia Islamica 31,1970, p. 101-1 16; MO, p. 159-174.


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THE FORMATION OF THE EARLY ISLAMIC OIKOUMENE 1 75which reinterprets this much-debated list of regulations as intended to protectMuslims rather than to discriminate against others, which is how it had long beenunderstood (and still is in many cases).28 Both authors argue that although thoserules and recommendations are preserved in late sources, their themes seem tobelong to a phase when the Muslim community still needed to construe its distinctiveature.The independence of these religious communities meant among other thingsthat they were to live 'by the book', and Hoyland rightly points out in his introductionhat this must have posed a problem for the Christians, who could evidently notuse the Gospels as the Jews used the Torah (p. xv). This led to the composition ofchurch legislation among these communities, which naturally included the field ofprivate law. The consequences of this were twofold: within Christian communities,the church acquired a profile of 'civil' authority, which it did not have in Romantimes; but also, many aspects of life that used to be thought of as being outside thereligious sphere took on a definitely - and exclusively - religious hue.This seemingly stiff and immobile community system, however, was underminedirst and foremost by the simple coexistence of the communities in the samecities, where their members interacted during festivals and other occasions, andparticipated in all forms of commerce, not only material. The Mazdean regulationson interaction with other communities studied by Jean de Menasce29 reflect howwary most religious leaders were of the religious volatility of their flocks, and theirattempts at communal control. In the long run, these communities gradually underwent process of Islamisation which for all its slowness did know some importantpeaks. The various factors involved in this process are still the matter of- sometimeseated - debate, where one of the most controversial points is the degree offorce and coercion exerted by the Muslims. This is unfortunately a question oftenplagued by the recent context and ideas of an 'intolerant' Islam, or coloured by theretrojection of later relations between East Christians and Muslims onto the earlymedieval period, which tend to obscure the situation of the early period.It is however noteworthy that martyrological literature does not figure veryprominently in early East Christian writings - at least when one compares thequantity of texts that were inspired by the Roman persecutions. Bonner includes inhis collection the recent article by David Woods on the Sixty Martyrs of Gaza,members of the Gaza garrison said to have been martyred at the arrival of the Arabsbecause they did not convert, which is however of very doubtful authenticity, at

28 . M. J. Kistek, "D o not assimilate yourselves..." La tashabbahu..,. Jerusalem Studies in Arabicand Islam 12, 1989, p. 32 1-353; MO, p. 125- 157; A. Noth, Problems of differentiation between Muslimsand non-Muslims: re-reading the "Ordinances of 'Umar' (al-shurat al-'umurixxa). MO, p. 103-124(transi, of: Abgrenzungs-probleme zwischen Muslimen und nicht-Muslimen. Die "Bedingungen"Umar's (as-surtal- 'umariyya)' unter einem anderen Aspekt gelesen, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic andIslam 9. 1987. p. 290-315).29 . J. DB Menasce, Questions concerning the Mazdaeans of Muslim Iran, MO, p. 331-341 (transi,of: Problmes des mazdens dans l'Iran musulman, in Festschrift fr Wilhelm Eilers, ed. G. Wiesshnkr.Wiesbaden 1967. p. 220-230; the article is also reprinted in J. de Menasck. tudes iraniennes - Cahiersde Studia lranica 3. 1985. p. 97-107).


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1 76 ARIETTA PAPACONSTANTINOUleast concerning the martyrdom account.30 The reasons for conversion that appearin contemporary sources are in fact quite different, and have to do with social andeconomic status, as the three articles in MO show quite clearly. Among the first toargue this was Claude Cahen in an article exploring the socio-economic logic ofIslamisation, where he brought to light the various sources of converts, of whichslaves were one of the most important, and the motivations that could lead to conversion, such as the possibility to abandon work on the land.31 On these questions,the volume of documentation has risen since Cahen's article, in particular throughthe publication of new papyri, the value of which is evident in the short but importantrticle by Gladys Franz-Murphy on the economic and symbolic aspects ofconversion in Egypt, where the author goes beyond the mechanical explanation ofconversion as a way to avoid the jizya and relates it to the transfer of tax liabilityfrom the church to the Muslims, which entailed a great loss of both prestige andinfluence for communal institutions.32 The third article by Daniel Pipes tackles theproblem of the mawl status in early Islam, which varied with period and context,but always implied servile status of some form.33 A non-Arab convert had tobecome the mawl (client) of a Muslim, which initially at least put off individualsof some status, leaving conversion fo r the lower classes.The Arab conquests did not only durably change the political status quo in theeastern Mediterranean: they were intrumental in creating a new balance in thecultural sphere too, since the Arabs with their language and their religion now hadto be considered on equal terms by the one-time superior Byzantines. The culturalencounter had, in fact, been going on fo r centuries but with a very different flavour.Scholars, especially Byzantinists, have tended to see 'Islam' and 'Byzantium' astwo different worlds, basically watertight, with some discrete, uncontinuous borrowing. This is, for instance, the view offered by John Meyendorff in his influential1964 article 'Byzantine views of Islam', and by Gustav von Grunebaum concerninghe fields of philosophy, literature and piety, both part of Bonner 's collection.34A mirror article by Ahmad Shboul on the image of the Byzantines in Arabic literature does not fundamentally change the picture. It charts the evolution from agenerally positive image in pre-Islamic times to the antagonistic view that emerged

30. D. Woods, The 60 Martyrs of Gaza and the martyrdom of Bishop Sophronius of Jerusalem.Aram 15, 2003, p. 129-150; ABR, p. 429-450; for an assessment of this text see R. G. Hoyland, SeeingIslam as others saw it. A survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian writings on earlyIslam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 13, Princeton 1997, p. 347-351.31. C. Cahen, Socio-economic history and Islamic studies: problems of bias in the adaptation of theindigenous population to Islam, MO, p. 259-276 (transi, of: Histoire conomico-sociale et islamologie:le problme prjudiciel de l'adaptation entre les autochtones et l'Islam, Correspondance d'Orient,Brussels 1961; repr. in C. Cahen, Les peuples musulmans, Damascus 1977, p. 169-188).32. G. Frantz-Murphy, Conversion in early Islamic Egypt: the economic factor, in Documents del'Islam medieval: nouvelles perspectives de recherche, ed . Y. Raghib, Cairo 1991, p. 11-17; MO, p. 323-329. 33. D. Pipes, Mawlas: freed slaves and converts in early Islam, Slavery and Abolition 1, 1980,p. 132-177; MO, p. 277-322 (also published in Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, vol. 1, ed .J. R. Willis, London 1985, p. 199-247).34 . J. Meyendorff, Byzantine views of Islam, DOP 18, 1964, p. 115-132; ABR, p. 217-234;G. E. von Grunebaum, Parallelism, convergence and influence in the relations of Arab and Byzantinephilosophy, literature and piety, DOP 18, 1964, p. 91-111; ABR, p. 295-316.


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THE FORMATION OF THE EARLY ISLAMIC OIKOUMENE 7after the conquest of Syria. This is also the view offered by Muslim apocalyptictexts, where expectations of a Byzantine comeback are prominent.3"1 The waterti-ghtness thesis is however disturbed by Lawrence Conrad's famous article on theArabic sources used by the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes, which gave an unexpected view of the extent and character of early Arabic narratives in Syria and theircirculation beyond Muslim circles.36 H. A. R. Gibb's study of the continuing commercial and cultural relations between the Umayyads and Byzantium despite theconstant wars also goes in the same direction.37The articles in MO give a very different picture by bringing to light the deeperlevels, beyond the exchange of stereotypes, where intercultural traffic took place.This happened, of course, in a very different context, one in which both Muslimsand non-Muslims had to constantly negotiate their relative positions. A tradition of'gentlemanly' disputations (A/0, p. xxi) and controversy was established under thefirst Abbasids and flowered in subsequent centuries,38 greatly helped by the adoption f Arabic as a lingua franca - and perhaps even offered an incentive for theadoption of Arabic by some communities. Many of the texts that have come downto us are apologetic, and perhaps intended, at least partly, for internal consumption,considering the fear of apostasy and the Abbasid assimilationist policies. However,as the articles by Sidney Griffith, Sarah Stroumsa and perhaps even more, by CarlBecker demonstrate, these texts and the ideas they contained were known toMuslims and in several cases contributed to the formation of Islamic theology anddogma, especially through the questions they asked and the general conceptualframework in which these were formulated and answered.39

35 . A. Shboul. Byzantium and the Arabs: the image of the Byzantines as mirrored in Arabic literature, n Byzantine papers: proceedings of the First Australian Byzantine Studies Conference, ByzantinaAustraliensia 1. ed . E. Jeffreys. M. Jeffreys and A. Moffatt. Canberra 1981, p. 43-68; ABR, p. 235-260: S. Bashfar. Apocalyptic and other materials on early Muslim-Byzantine wars: a review of Arabicsources, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 3rd series. 1. 1991, p. 173-207; ABR, p. 181-215.36. L. I. Conrad. Theophanes and the Arabic historical tradition: some indications of interculturaltransmission. BF 15. 1990, p. 1-44; ABR. p. 3 17-360. On this question, see also R. Hoyland, Arabic.Syriac and Greek historiography in the first Abbasid century: an inquiry into inter-cultural traffic.Aram 3, 1991, p. 211-233. More generally, a less static view of Arab perceptions of Byzantium isgiven in N. M. Ei.-Cheikh. Byzantium viewed by the Arabs. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 36,Cambridge MA 2004.37. H. A. R. Gibb. Arab-Byzantine relations under the Umayy ad Caliphate, DOP 12 , 1958, p. 219-233; the reprint is taken from Gibb's Studies on the civilisation of Islam. Boston 1962 (repr. Princeton1982). p. 47-61 , which is a pity because the footnotes have jumped to the end, while there is no changein the text justifying this preference: ABR. p. 65-79.38. See for instance S. Griffith. Th e Kitb Misbhal-'Aql of Severus ibn al-Muqaffa": a profile ofthe Christian creed in Arabic in tenth-century Egypt, Medieval Encounters 2. 1996, p. 15-42.39. S . H . Griffith, Comparative religion in the apologetics of the first Christian Arabic theologians.Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Conference, Villanova University 4. 1979. p. 63-86 ; MO. p. 175-199; S. Stroumsa, Jewish polemics against Islam and Christianity in th e light of Judaeo-Arabic texts, in Judaeo- Arabic Studies: Proceedings of the Founding Conference of th e Society forJudaeo-Arabic Studies, ed. N. Gold, Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations 3, Amsterdam 1997, p. 241-250; MO. p. 201-210; C. H. Becker, Christian polemic and the formation of Islamic dogma, MO.p. 241-257 (transi, of: Christliche Polemik und islamische Dogmenbildung. Zeitschrift f r Assyrio-logic 25 . 1911, p. 175-195). See also J. Waardenburg, Muslim studies of other religions: the medievalperiod, in The Middle East and Europe: encounters and exchanges, ed. G. J. van Gelder and E. df:Moor. Orientations 1. Amsterdam 1992. p. 10-38: MO. p. 21 1-239.


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178 ARIETTA PAPACONSTANTINOUThe role of Roman and Byzantine art forms in the formation of Islamic art hasalso been a favourite subject, especially in the work of Oleg Grabar whose earlyarticle on the subject is included in A/?.40 Grabar argued that ultimately, what theMuslims picked out of the models they had at hand was the classical heritage ratherthan the specifically Byzantine forms. He focuses among other things on theUmayyad palaces, which, with their agricultural ties, their numerous buildings andtheir display of luxury 'resembled in many aspects Roman and late antique palacearchitecture rather than Byzantine' (p. 77 / 271). Still in the late sixth / early seventhcentury, however, there were very similar 'Byzantine' palaces in rural areas, suchas the famous Apion estate in Oxyrhynchos, which though not excavated is knownfrom documents to have possessed all the attributes of a 'late antique' palace.41Grabar also insists on the way the borrowed forms were given new meaning, bydwelling on the example of Qusayr 'Amra - on which there has been a considera

blemount of work since that article, perhaps in part ignited by his remarks.42Artistic exchange also needs to be understood through the wide circulationof objects of all sorts, through trade of course (pottery etc), but also through moreofficial channels such as diplomatic gift exchange, a subject that has exploded inrecent years. Bonner has kept 'diplomacy' in the 'war' section, by including HughKennedy's overview of the known embassies between the two courts from theconquest to the eleventh century.43 However, much recent work, in particular byAnthony Cutler, has concentrated on the role played by these embassies in culturaltransmission and exchange in the broadest sense, especially through gift exchange,which included not only objects and textiles, but also manuscripts, and thus texts.44The ceremonial aspects of diplomatic exchange have also been studied, especially

the Umayyad and Fatimid borrowings from Byzantine and Persian ceremonial. S

40 . O. Grabar, Islamic ar t and Byzantium, DOP 18, 1964, p. 69-88; ABR, p. 263-293.41 . See R. Mazza, L'archivio degli Apioni. Terra, lavoro e proprit senatoria nell'Egitto tardoan-tico, Munera. Studi storici sulla Tarda Antichit 17, Bari 2001, esp. the description of the residencep. 84-86.42 . See now Fowden, Qusayr 'Amra (n. 3), with further bibliography.43 . H. Kennedy, Byzantine-Arab diplomacy in the Near East from the Islamic conquests to themid-eleventh century, in Byzantine diplomacy. Papers from the Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium ofByzantine Studies, Cambridge, March 1 990, Aldershot 1992, p. 133-43.44 . See for instance A. Cutler, Les changes de dons entre Byzance et l'Islam (ixe-xic sicles),Journal des Savants 1996, p. 51-66; id.. Imagination and documentation: eagle silks in Byzantium, theLatin West and 'Abbsid Baghdad, BZ 96, 2003, p. 69-74; id.. Th e emperor's old clothes. Actual andvirtual vesting and the transmission of power in Byzantium and Islam', in Byzance et le monde extrieur. Contacts, relations, changes, d. M. Balard, Byzantina Sorbonensia 21 , Paris 2005, p. 195-210;and the more economic perspective in id., Gifts and gift exchange as aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, andrelated economies, DOP 55, 2001, p. 247-278. See also O. Grabar, Th e shared culture of objects, inByzantine court culture from 829 to 1204, ed . H. Maguire, Washington DC 1997, p. 1 15-129, andA. Shalem, Objects as carriers of real or contrived memories in a cross-cultural context, Mitteilungenzur sptantiken Archologie und byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte 4, 2005, p. 101-119.45 . O. Grabar, Notes sur les crmonies umayyades, in Studies in memory of Gaston Wiet, ed .M. Rosen-Ayalon, Jerusalem 1977, p. 51-61; M. Canard, Le crmonial ftimite et le crmonialbyzantin: essai de comparaison, Byz. 21, 1 95 1 , 355-420, repr. in his Byzance et les musulmans du Proche-Orient, London 1973, no. XIV.


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THE FORMATION OF THE EARLY ISLAMIC OIKOUMENE 1 79Lying between art and theology, the question of attitudes to images has been atthe centre of much debate, bearing, to put it briefly, on the possible relation betweenIslamic aniconism and the development of Byzantine Iconoelasm in the wake of

the conquests. The iconophile Byzantines accused their opponents of propagatingIslamic - and ultimately Jewish - doctrines and practices, calling them - or , and this idea was long taken for granted. MainstreamByzantinism from the middle of the twentieth century onwards has preferred tostress the internal dynamics of Byzantine theology or of the political crisis the empireas going through, and to deny any outside influence, especially from Islam,deemed, sometimes even explicitly, too culturally immature to be apt to influenceByzantine Christianity.46 This is a position first criticised in passing by Peter Brownin a famous article on the iconoclastic controversy,47 and systematically deconstructedy Patricia Crone in another famous article entitled 'Islam, Judaeo-Christianity,and Byzantine iconoelasm'. 4S Although Crone's is a detailed, nuanced and near-exhaustive examination of the subject dating back to 1980, it seems to have had noimpact whatsoever, either positive or negative, on most Byzantinists writing onIconoelasm, and one may hope that its inclusion in Bonner's volume will give itsome new impetus. Beyond the specific case of Iconoelasm, Crone's article alsohas the merit of opening up a whole world of small religious groups functioningat the intersection of the three mainstream monotheist religions, whose impact ontheological debates has been - and often still is - underestimated by manyByzantinists, who tend to adopt the view from the capital and to consider that smallgroups only had side effects and that Eastern Christians were now living in a differentworld.One last field where cultural exchange appears is that of language. Islam arrived in an area of largely bilingual societies, which in some cases adopted Arabic asa third language, at least fo r a time. This raises various questions, barely touchedupon in MO, which is concerned with Islamisation but not Arabicisation. This lastsubject is tackled by Sebastian Richter in PEIE through the question of linguisticinterference between Arabic and Coptic. Richter notes its almost total absence untilthe translation movement of the tenth century, except to refer to new realities suchas amir or mawl.49 In the eleventh century, however, the last Coptic documentaryarchives show greater penetration of Arabic, even of words that might have been

46 . See for instance G. Dagron, L'iconoclasme et rtablissement de l'orthodoxie (726-847).Histoire du Christianisme. IV, Evques, moines et empereurs (610-1054), d. G. Dagron. P. Riche andA. Vaichfz. Paris 1993. p. 103.47 . P. Brown. Adark-age crisis: aspects of the iconoclastic controversy, English Historic al Review 88.1 973. p. 1 -34; repr. in his Society and the holy in late antiquity, Berkeley 1 982, p. 25 1 -30 . with a presentationof the endogenic" argument p. 252-254.48 . Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 2. 1980, p. 59-95; ABR. p. 361-397; see also onthis question S. H. Griffith, Images, Islam and Christian icons: a moment in the Christian/Muslimencounter in early Islamic times, in La Svrie de Byzance I 'Islam, vif-vnf sicles, ed. P. Canivetand J.-P. Rfy-Coquais. Damascus 1992. p. 121-138, and the interesting remarks in Becker, Christianpolemic. MO. p. 253-257.49 . T. S. Richter, O.Crum Ad. 15 and the emergence of Arabic words in Coptic legal documents.PEIE. p. 97-114.


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1 80 ARIETTA PAPACONSTANTINOUtranslated. This is a conclusion that actually fits the more general picture of theprogress of Arabic in Egypt, since it was practically ignored by Egyptian Christianauthors until the tenth century, contrary to their Syrian counterparts who adopted itas early as the eighth century. PEIE also contains two articles on Greek/Egyptianlinguistic contact, focusing only partly on the Islamic period. Sarah Clackson'spiece criticises the linguistic divisions of scholars working on a bilingual society,showing how separation of academic disciplines has brought prejudice to the studyof late antique and early Islamic Egypt, and it is nicely complemented by SofiaTorallas Tovar's survey of Egyptian intrusions into the Greek of Egypt, which willbe a useful instrument fo r further research in the field.50 Though still the productsof literate members of society, papyri are in many respects sources that are closerto orality than the scholarly and redacted texts that have come down to us throughthe manuscript tradition, and thus allow an invaluable side glimpse into the linguisticractices of the population. This is certainly a field in which much remains to bedone.As is evident from the above, the three volumes cover a number of issues pertaining to the formation of the Islamic world, and it would be unfair to complainabout what is missing. Like papyrology, there are other areas that allow a new ordifferent appreciation of these issues. For instance, epigraphy and archaeology inmany ways shed light on the relations between Christians and Muslims, by revealinghe existence of shared holy places in the Umayyad period,51 or of the buildingof churches by Christian communities despite the much-decried prohibition containedn the Ordinances of 'Umar';52 and important work on the numismatics of theperiod has shown interesting patterns of cultural borrowing and redefinition, and hasbrought new insights concerning early state administration and economic history.53As for the little-known diyrt literature, which brings to light the complex, thoughperhaps purely literary, interaction between Muslim elites and monastic culture,one feels it would have deserved a place in MO.54

50. S. J. Clackson, Papyrology and the utilization of Coptic sources, PEIE, p. 21-44; S. TorallasTovar, Egyptian lexical interference in the Greek of Byzantine and early Islamic Egypt, PEIE, p. 163-198.51. See E. K. Fowden, Sharing holy places, Common knowledge 8, 2002, p. 124-146.52. Much material in R. Schick, The Christian communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamicrule: a historical and archaeological study, Princeton 1995.53. C. Foss, A Syrian coinage of Mu'awiya?, Revue numismatique 158, 2002, p. 353-365 (but seeJ. Johns, Archaeology and the history of early Islam: the first seventy years, Journal of the Economicand Social History of the Orient 46 , 2003, p. 419-421). More generally, C. Morrisson, Le monnayageomeyyade et l'histoire administrative et conomique de la Syrie, in La Syrie de Byzance l'Islam(n. 48), p. 309-3 1 7. For a recent bibliographie survey see A. Oddy, Whither the Arab-Byzantine coinage? review of fifty years' research, BMGS 28, 2004, p. 1 2 1 - 1 52 .54 . Though admittedly scholarly literature has tended to make too much of the 'information' onmonasteries, while these are in fact treated as stereotyped settings. For instance G. Troupeau, Les couvents chrtiens dans la littrature arabe, Nouvelle revue du Caire 1, 1975, p. 265-279, repr. in his tudessur le christianisme arabe au Moyen ge, Aldershot 1995, no. XX. See now H. Kilpatrick, Monasteriesthrough Muslim eyes: the diyrt books, in Christians at the heart of Islamic rule: church life and scholarship in 'Abbasid Iraq, ed. D. Thomas, History of Christian-Muslim Relations 1, Leiden 2003, p. 19-

37, with references to previous bibliography, and the forthcoming study by . . Fowden, Th e lampand the wine flask: early Muslim interest in Christian monasticism, in Islamic crosspollinations, ed .J. Montgomery.


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THE FORMATION OF THE EARLY ISLAMIC OIKOUMENE ] 8 1In a way, the need for these collections is self-evident, in that they demonstrateow separately scholarly traditions touching upon the early Islamic world haveevolved, and how useful it can be to break down those barriers. They are timely

volumes, reflecting the recent surge of interest in that period, and more particularlythe insistence on the cultural context within which Islam was gradually formed.Although the way to such a vision was opened some time ago, by early Islamicistslike Oleg Grabar or, more polemically, Patricia Crone (and, as some articles in ABRand MO show, even before that), it has only recently entered the mainstream of'later' late antique studies and begun touching specialists of the other religiousgroups involved. Hoyland's own Seeing Islam as others saw it was a landmark inthis "promiscuity of approach ',^ which today should appear as an obvious necessityo anyone working in the field, and Clackson's plea in PEIE for multilingualstudy of multilingual societies is here perfectly to the point.The tw o Variorum volumes are well-thought, the experience of the CollectedStudies series having served to improve user-friendliness and to make citation of the

works easier. Outside the actual reprints, copy-editing is of varying quality, mostcareful in MO, which contains several translated - and thus not photographicallyreprinted - articles, less satisfactory in ABR, which only contains one translatedarticle. Bonner has a tendency to misquote famous titles, such as, note 90 of theintroduction, 'R. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic history: a framework for interpretation"1. inquiry), or, note 45, 'Robert Hoyland, Islam as others saw if (1. SeeingIslam...), which is also misdated (1995 for 1997). The listing of the entire series (p. iiof both volumes) misprints Hoyland's middle initial.A more general problem of Variorum reprints is the lack of a list of journalabbreviations, or of a reference to an external list, both for the reprinted articles(which admittedly presents a practical problem), and for the introduction or translations, or which it would have been easier. The difficulty becomes particularly acutein the case of volumes such as these, whose readership will go well beyond specialistsn each field.

Arietta PapaconstantinouUniversit Paris I - CNRS (UMR 8167)

Cited n. 30 : see p. 32 for the quotation.