Introduction
THE QUESTION OF
CONTINUITY
CONTINUITY OR CHANGE?
In the fourth decade of the seventh century A.D., Iraq was conquered
by Muslim Arabs. Since this conquest turned out to be permanent and
was part of the conquest of most of western Asia and northern Africa
by Muslims in the seventh and eighth centuries, it eventually came to
be seen as an historical watershed between the ancient and medieval
histories of these regions. There is a certain convenience to this view
that is based on the assumption that the Islamic conquest itself had
either immediate or eventual consequences, and it is justified to the
extent that changes that were taking place at the end of Late Antiquity
were caught up and institutionalized in Islamic civilization. But much
of the civilization of Late Antiquity either survived fairly intact or
found an Islamic form. The central question is: To what extent did
the civilization of these regions in the early Islamic period represent
a continuation of the past, and what was new about it? Military
conquest, the emergence of a new religious tradition, and political
domination by a different ethnic group would all seem to be reasonable
criteria for periodization. In the case of Iraq, the Islamic conquest had
the immediate effect of replacing Magian (or Zoroastrian) rulers who
belonged to the Sasanian Persian dynasty with Muslim Arab rulers.
Yet the designation of historical periods as late Sasanian or early
Islamic refers to a time boundary that may not be very meaningful
because such periodization tends to minimize continuities.
Exaggerations of the difference between Islamic civilization and the
civilization of Classical Antiquity are the result of overlooking Late
Antiquity, the period from about A.D. 300 until 600, during which
the changes taking place in western Asia made the culture of this region
look more and more "Islamic." By the sixth century, most of western
Asia was divided between two imperial states: the Late Roman or
Byzantine empire and the Sasanian empire. Both had experienced in-
ternal and external crises during the fifth century, and the reaction in
both had led to more complete administrative centralization and ab-
solutism in the sixth century when the rulers of both states attempted