THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITYArab and other Muslim followers, who received preferential treatment in the
form of financial annuities, provision for their religious needs and settlement
in new foundations. These included al-Kufa, very near to the Lakhmid centre
at Hira, al-Basra and Wasit, all in Iraq, Fustat in Egypt and Kairouan in North
Africa. Palestine and Syria were already highly urbanized and there and in
north Mesopotamia such settlements were few; as under the Persians, the
existing administration was largely left to run everything. But during the rule
of Abd al-Malik (685–705), in the late seventh century a more forceful policy
was adopted for the control of the Christian population and the assertion of
Islam. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem built by Abd al-Malik carries anti-
Christian verses round the inside of the dome,^46 and Christians were forbid-
den to parade the cross, figural motifs were removed from the coinage and
Arabic replaced Greek as the language of administration. The change was
clear. Some Christians longed for a restoration of idealized Roman rule, but
in many ways community life continued as before. This included the intel-
lectual activity of Christian writers in Syriac, who translated Greek texts and
wrote on theology, mathematics and philosophy, in a tradition which was to
continue for centuries. Jacob of Edessa (d. 708) was a prolific author who
had been born in the territory of Antioch in about 633 and entered the mon-
astery of Qenneshrin, travelled to Alexandria, became bishop of Edessa, but
then spent his life in monasteries including Tell ‘Adda, returning to Edessa
for only a few months just before his death. Jacob produced works on gram-
mar, history, exegesis, philosophy, liturgy, and collections of rules (‘canons’)
and rulings on matters to do with Christian life under the Muslims, some in
the form of answers to questions posed by others.^47 Just as earlier collec-
tions of questions and answers had dealt with the problems posed by inter-
sectarian divisions among Christians such as the validity of the Eucharist if
the elements had been consecrated by a ‘heretic’, so Jacob gave guidance to
Christians about their necessary relations with Muslims in daily life. Thus a
monk or deacon could participate in battle in the Muslim army if forced, but
must not kill; priests may bless a Muslim; Christians may attend funerals of
pagans and Jews.
Such were the day-to-day issues that faced all Christian communities, not
only the Syrian Orthodox. In Egypt there is abundant papyrological evidence
in Greek and Coptic for continuing Christian life in the early Islamic period.^48
In Palestine, the dyophysites who remained in communion with Chalcedonian
orthodoxy were later known as ‘Melkites’, meaning those who supported the
emperor, or the ‘king’. Their centre remained the patriarchate of Jerusalem
and the Palestinian monasteries, though they were certainly not confined to
these areas, and John of Damascus and his disciple Theodore Abu Qurrah,
bishop of Harran, who wrote in Arabic, were key theologians in the eighth
and ninth centuries. In the major centres and in the higher echelons of the
clergy, Greek continued in use among the Melkites, but by the ninth century
the Palestinian monasteries were multilingual, and the wider Christian popu-
lation in Palestine moved as easily from Aramaic to Arabic as monastic and