THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITYsimply took over the main framework of the Byzantine administration and
continued to use Greek-speaking offi cials to run it. The real change was to
come only later, from the late seventh century onwards, and especially with
the end of the Umayyad dynasty and transfer of government east to Baghdad
in the mid-eighth century.
The course of the early conquests and the reasons behind them have been
endlessly debated, and it has long been recognized that for contemporary
sources we have to look to non-Islamic material; historical writing in Arabic
took time to develop, and when it did it was based on oral material, includ-
ing the sira (biographies of the Prophet), the hadith (acts and sayings of the
Prophet) and isnads (reported ‘chains’ of witnesses), the nature of which is also
controversial. Traditionalist modern accounts, and Muslim tradition itself, are
based on a broad acceptance of this evidence, while revisionist approaches are
strongly sceptical.^35 A more moderate position seems to be emerging, based
on very detailed analysis of the Arabic writers, and giving weight to their
presentation of pre-Islamic Arab culture, especially through the pre-Islamic
Arabic poetry they preserve. Analysis of the events of the conquests them-
selves is coloured by these different approaches, with some arguing for a cen-
trally controlled and determined programme of conquests driven by religious
motives and others for more inchoate beginnings, with the systematic devel-
opment of Islam itself seen as crystallizing only in the Syrian context. From
the perspective of the Christian and Jewish populations of the Near East, and
of the Byzantines in Constantinople, who were naturally preoccupied with
the experience of defeat, it is not surprising if it took time to understand the
phenomenon of emerging Islam. It seems unlikely that the anti-Jewish dia-
logues of the later seventh and eighth centuries were in fact veiled attacks on
Islam, as has sometimes been argued. Rather, there seems to have been little
actual awareness of the Qur’anic message before the later seventh century,
and John of Damascus’ eighth-century chapter on Islam (which he saw as a
Christian heresy) is the first discussion in any detail; even then the passage
is simply an extra chapter tacked on to the end of his listing of one hundred
heresies.^36 Apocalyptic literature circulated in Greek and Syriac towards the
end of the seventh century, but this was most concerned to place the defeat
of the Roman empire within an eschatological frame.
A turning point came during the caliphate of Abd al-Malik (685–705)
when a more aggressive line was adopted towards Christians, the Dome of
the Rock was built on the site of the Jewish Temple (below) and a new non-
figurative coinage was adopted. In 707 the great cathedral in Damascus,
itself built over a Roman temple, and which had hitherto been used for
prayer by both Christians and Muslims, was transformed into the Great
Mosque that we see today.
By about 700, after decades of warfare, and certainly by 718, when the
Arabs were already in Spain and a dangerous Arab siege of Constantinople
was narrowly resisted, it was clear that the new rulers of the east were there
to stay.