Copyright © 2012 by Tom Holland
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.doubleday.com
Originally published in Great Britain by Little, Brown, a division of Hachette U.K., London.
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Cover design by Michael J. Windsor
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holland, Tom.
In the shadow of the sword : the birth of Islam and the rise of the global Arab empire / Tom Holland.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Islamic Empire—History. 2. Islam—History. I. Title.
DS36.85.H65 2012
956’.013—dc23
2012000207
eISBN: 978-0-385-53136-8
v3.1
To Hillos
In memoriam
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
List of Maps
Epigraph
I INTRODUCTION
1 KNOWN UNKNOWNS
II JAHILIYYA
2 IRANSHAHR
3 NEW ROME
4 THE CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM
5 COUNTDOWN TO APOCALYPSE
III HIJRA
6 MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
7 THE FORGING OF ISLAM
ENVOI: PLUS ÇA CHANGE?
Timeline
Dramatis Personae
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
About the Author
Also by Tom Holland
Acknowledgements
This is a book that has taken me a horribly long time to complete, and opened my eyes to entire realms of complexity and fascination that I had little idea existed when I first embarked upon the project. The debts of gratitude that I owe are correspondingly immense. Firstly, to my editor, Richard Beswick; to Iain Hunt, Susan de Soissons, and everyone at Little, Brown; to Gerry Howard; to Teresa Löwe-Bahners; and to Frits van der Meij. My thanks as well to that best of agents, Patrick Walsh, and to everyone at Conville and Walsh. Whether as a pygmy standing on the shoulders of giants, or as a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread, I owe a particular due to the scholars who have helped me to negotiate a field of historical study that is, perhaps, more interestingly seeded with landmines than any other. Reza Aslan, James Carleton Paget, Patricia Crone, Vesta Curtis, Gerald Hawting, Robert Irwin, Christopher Kelly, Hugh Kennedy, Dan Madigan, Ziauddin Sardar, Guy Stroumsa and Bryan Ward-Perkins all read parts or the whole of the first draft—with responses as varied as their kindness and generosity were unfailing. I am grateful as well to Fred Donner and Robert Hoyland for allowing me to pick their brains in private conversations, and to Robin Lane Fox for stiffening my backbone at a time when I was first waking up to the full scale of the challenge I had taken on. Like an infinitely greater historian than myself, “I must profess my total ignorance of the Oriental tongues, and my gratitude to the learned interpreters, who have transfused their science into the Latin, French, and English languages.” Translations from Arabic and Syriac were done for me by Salam Rassi, in whom prodigious learning goes hand in glove with remarkable patience and efficiency. Andrea Wulf, as ever, made good my lamentable lack of German. Last but not last, I must thank friends and family for putting up with five years of crazed mutterings about Hephthalites, Chalcedonians and Kharijites. Particular thanks, as ever, to Jamie Muir, for all his unstinting support, encouragement and advice; to Kevin Sim, who provided such a close and brilliant reading of the manuscript that he somehow managed to extract a film from it, and is now the person I automatically turn to whenever my desire to discuss Umayyad coinage becomes uncontrollable; and, of course, last but very much not least, to my beloved family—Sadie, Katy and Eliza.
Maps
map.1 The World of Late Antiquity
map.2 Iranshahr
map.3 The Roman Empire
map.4 Constantinople
map.5 Jerusalem
map.6 Holy Land
map.7 Arabia
map.8 Justinian’s Empire
map.9 Early Arab Conquests
map.10 The Caliphate Under the Umayyads
Do not look for a fight with the enemy. Beg God for peace and security. But if you do end up facing the enemy, then show endurance, and remember that the gates of Paradise lie in the shadow of the sword.
Saying of Muhammad, as recorded by Salih Muslim
I
INTRODUCTION
I shall include in my narrative only those things by which first we ourselves, then later generations, may benefit.
Eusebius,
The History of the Church
The degree of authority one can give to the evangelists about the life of Christ is relatively small. Whereas for the life of Muhammad, we know everything more or less. We know where he lived, what his economic situation was, who he fell in love with. We know a great deal about the political circumstances and the socio-economic circumstances of the time.
Salman Rushdie
1
KNOWN UNKNOWNS
Between Two Worlds
Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar, an Arab king celebrated for his long hair, his piety and his utter ruthlessness, had been brought to defeat. Leaving the reek of the battlefield, he rode his blood-flecked white charger down to the very edge of the Red Sea. Behind him, he knew, Christian outliers would already be advancing against his palace—to seize his treasury, to capture his queen. Certainly, his conquerors had no cause to show him mercy. Few were more notorious among the Christians than Yusuf. Two years previously, looking to secure the south-west of Arabia for his own faith, he had captured their regional stronghold of Najran. What had happened next was a matter of shock and horror to Christians far beyond the limits of Himyar, the kingdom on the Red Sea that Yusuf had ruled, on and off, for just under a decade. The local church, with the bishop and a great multitude of his followers locked inside, had been put to the torch. A group of virgins, hurrying to join them, had hurled themselves on to the flames, crying defiantly as they did so how sweet it was to breathe in “the scent of burning priests!”1 Another woman, “whose face no one had ever seen outside the door of her house and who had never walked during the day in the city,”2 had torn off her headscarf, the better to reproach the king. Yusuf, in his fury, had ordered her daughter and granddaughter killed before her, their blood poured down her throat, and then her own head to be sent flying.