A CHANGED WORLDhis humility, by the patriarch Sophronius in 638; later tradition records the
‘Covenant of Umar’ with the people of Jerusalem. Alexandria fell in 642.
The unfortunate Heraclius saw his armies defeated at the Yarmuk; bidding
a famous farewell to Syria, as reported in later Syriac chronicles, he returned
to Constantinople, where he died in 641. Alexandria was taken in the next
year and the Arabs raided Cappadocia; they soon made damaging attacks
on Cyprus and won a spectacular naval battle in the bay of Phoenix off the
coast of Lycia in southern Asia Minor. They even reached the Bosphorus and
threatened Constantinople, though this time they were forced to retreat. A
few contemporaries recognized the importance of Muhammad, whom they
regarded as a false prophet. In the 630s the Doctrina Jacobi cites a contem-
porary letter, supposedly from a Palestinian Jew called Abraham, according
to whom a false prophet had appeared among the Saracens, foretelling the
coming of the anointed one. Abraham asked a wise old man, expert in the
Scriptures, about this, and the old man replied
‘He is an imposter. Do the prophets come with swords and chariot? Truly
these happenings today are the works of disorder.’Abraham then made enquiries himself and was told that the prophet claimed
to have the keys of paradise, which Abraham regarded as completely incredible
and therefore as confirming the old man’s words.^34 But at first the Byzantines
were slow to realize that the invaders were other than ‘Saracen’ raiders with
whom they had been familiar since the fourth century, and Christian sources
emphasize their ‘barbarian’ ferocity. It is in general only later that Byzantine
writers begin to show awareness of the religious content of Muhammad’s
teaching. The account given by the chronicler Theophanes (d. 817), based on
an earlier eastern source, mixes hostility and slander with genuine observa-
tion:
He taught his subjects that he who kills an enemy or is killed by an en-
emy goes to Paradise; and he said that this paradise was one of carnal
eating and drinking and intercourse with women, and had a river of
wine, honey and milk, and that the women were not like the ones down
here, but different ones, and that the intercourse was long-lasting and
the pleasure continuous; and other things full of profl igacy and stupid-
ity; also that men should feel sympathy for one another and help those
who are wronged.
(Theoph., Chron., 334, Mango and Scott, 465)Thus there was as yet little understanding, and there is a strong emphasis on
the sufferings of the local populations in the written sources, especially those
in Syriac. At the same time archaeological and other evidence suggests that the
‘conquests’ themselves did not at fi rst represent a major break in continuity
in the eastern Mediterranean provinces, especially as the Islamic rulers at fi rst