contours of conversion: the geography of islamization in syria 600-1500

8/16/2019 Contours of Conversion: The Geography Of Islamization in Syria 600-1500

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 135.4 (2015) 791

Contours of Conversion:The Geography of Islamization in Syria, 600–1500

THOMAS A. CARLSON

OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

The Islamization of Syria, a multi-faceted social and cultural process not limitedto demography, was slow and highly variable across different locales. This articleanalyzes geographical works—ten in Arabic, one in Persian, and one in Hebrew—as well as the earliest Ottoman defter s of the province to outline the process ofIslamization in Syria from the Islamic conquest in the seventh century to the Otto-man conquest in the sixteenth. Geographical texts cannot be mined as databases,but when interpreted as literature they provide often detailed information regard-ing the foundation of mosques, the slow conversion of multi-religious shrines, and

areas within Syria known for particular religious affiliations.

INTRODUCTION

When Khālid b. al-Walīd invaded Syria in 13/634, the region was inhabited by a religiouslymixed population with multiple kinds of Christianity present alongside Judaism and pagan-ism. When the Ottoman sultan Selim I conquered Mamluk Syria nine centuries later in922/1516, the region’s religious diversity looked distinctively more Muslim, with Sunnis offour legal schools sharing the land with Druze, Nuṣayrīs, Ismailis, and Twelver Shiites, inaddition to reduced populations of Christians and Jews. The process of Islamization whereby

regions such as Syria slowly shifted from areas without Muslims to those where Muslimsformed the majority is one of the more dramatic transformations of the medieval world.

Both the mechanisms and the contours of Syria’s Islamization are poorly understood.In part this is due to the absence of surviving demographic data before the Ottoman taxcensus records of the sixteenth century. After Selim I’s conquest, the bulk of Syria wasdivided between provincial governments (sg. eyalet ) based in Aleppo, Tripoli, and Damas-cus, although portions of eastern Syria around al-Raqqa were assigned to Ruhā (modernUrfa), while areas historically regarded as northern Syria were incorporated into the eyalet ofDūlqādir or the Ramaḍānid principality. 1 The tax registers (sg. defter ) produced by the newprovincial governments, many of which survive, identify religious minorities due to the dif-

ferential taxation applied to non-Muslims. 2

These records demonstrate that in the sixteenthcentury the Muslim population of Syria formed an overwhelming majority in the countryside

Earlier versions of this article were greatly improved by suggestions from Michael Cook, the late Patricia Crone,Peter Brown, Christian Sahner, the Princeton Islamic Studies Colloquium, and the JAOS anonymous reviewers. Theauthor records his gratitude for their corrections and recommendations, while acknowledging that all remainingerrors are his own.

1. An account of the Ottoman conquest is found in Bakhit 1982b: 1–34.2. Scholarship on the Ottoman defter s remains uneven. The 1536 census records of Aleppo have been published

(Şener and Dutoğlu 2010); I have not found any edition or analysis of defter s from Tripoli. Analyses of the defter sfrom Damascus and ʿAjlūn, two of the nine districts (sg. sanjak ) of the province of Damascus, have been publishedin Bakhit 1982b; Bakhīt and Ḥamūd 1989 and 1991. Fifteen defter s for four additional sanjak s of the province of

Damascus were analyzed in Cohen and Lewis 1978. Finally, Bakhit 1982a is a synthesis of the Christian portion ofthe non-Muslim population of the province of Damascus as a whole.


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792 Journal of the American Oriental Society 135.4 (2015)

and a large majority in most towns and cities. 3 Much scholarly debate centers upon howquickly the majority of the population adopted Islam.

But demographic change was only one component of a multi-faceted process of Islamiza-tion in Syria. Many medieval Muslim jurists seem to have regarded widespread conversion to

Islam as irrelevant to Islamic society, while increased enforcement of regulations upon non-Muslims to demonstrate the superiority of Islam appears more important to their notion ofIslamization. The Umayyad caliph Aʿbd al-Malik b. Marwān (r. 65–86/685–705) is generallycredited with replacing Byzantine coins with aniconic “Islamic” coins and with building theDome of the Rock in Jerusalem, showing that state-sponsored Islamization had numismaticand architectural implications. Governmental Islamization was only one component of thebroader, and far slower, process by which Syria became in some sense “more Islamic.” Thatprocess transformed urban environments, as mosques replaced churches, synagogues, andtemples as the foci of cities. 4 Islamization included the conversion of landscapes, as monas-teries fell into ruin and Muslim shrines sprang up instead. 5 Concepts of areas as “primarily”one religion or another shifted with Islamization, as did social expectations regarding typicalrelationships between members of different religious groups. Islamization was a complex andmulti-dimensional process that spanned many centuries.

This lengthier process was also not one-directional. Muslims converted to Christian-ity as well as vice versa. Ruined non-Muslim religious sites could sometimes be rebuilt. 6 Al-Muqaddasī (fl. late tenth century) acknowledged that despite his high praise for Syria’smany advantages, “some [of its people] have apostasized.” 7 Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (d. 626/1229)mentioned a village named ʿImm between Aleppo and Antioch, “in which today everyone isChristian,” but he quotes the Risāla of Ibn Buṭlān from the eleventh century to say that twocenturies earlier it had a mosque. 8 In certain contexts Islam was not the only religion sup-ported by the state, as Muslim rulers sometimes provided stipends to Jewish and Christian

religious authorities in addition to the ulema. 9 Furthermore, the Byzantine reconquest andthe Crusades reintroduced non-Muslim rule to portions of Syria from 358/969 to 690/1291,so that even state support for Islam could not be taken for granted. Indeed, under Frankishrule a large enough number of Muslims sought to become Christian that canon law needed

3. Multiple tax registers were compiled at different times for different portions of Syria, making it impossible tospeak of proportions of the total population of the region at one time. Tapu defteri 401 for the district of Damascusin ca. 950/1543 seems to indicate a population approximately 90% Muslim, 9% Christian, and 1% Jewish, basedon tables in Bakhit 1982b: 37–89. The tax registers do not record total population, but rather households ( khāna)and bachelors (mujarrad ) for each religious group. Thus, proportions of the population are necessarily approximate,depending on the unknown average number of people per household in each community. Most scholars use a figureof about five people per household to estimate total population, but as long as the household size did not vary sig-nificantly across religious boundaries, the precise multiplier should not greatly affect calculations of the proportionof a population that was non-Muslim.

4. The classic studies of urbanism in Islamic society are Kennedy 1985; Lapidus 1967. For a more completehistoriography to 1994, and a critique of “Islamic city” as a category, see Haneda and Miura 1994.

5. The lengthy process of the conversion of holy sites is discussed by Talmon-Heller 2007b: 188–90.6. The twelfth-century Andalusi traveler Ibn Jubayr (1981: 253–54; 1952: 323–24) reported the conversion of a

traveling companion in Syria to Christianity. A fifteenth-century Türkmen ruler of the Āqqūyunlū confederation iscredited with building a church in eastern Anatolia (Sanjian 1969: 205).

7. Al-Muqaddasī 1994: 139; 1906: 152.8. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 4: 177 (the date of 540/1145 for the Risāla is incorrect, being about a century too

late).9. For an example of Fāṭimid financial support for Palestinian Jews in the late tenth century, see Gil 1992: 551. For

an example of Zangī giving a pair of church bells to a Syrian Orthodox church in al-Ruhā, see Chabot 1917, 2: 136.


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to be developed in order to handle difficult social questions regarding marriage and slaveryin such cases. 10 As Benjamin Kedar concludes, “in the Frankish Levant, passages from Islamto Christianity and vice versa were not rare at all.” 11

The boundaries of Syria in medieval Arabic geographical thought were different from

today. Yāqūt presented the most common definition of this region as extending from theEuphrates to the town of al-ʿArīsh on the Egyptian coastline southeast of Gaza, and from theArabian desert to the Mediterranean Sea (see map on previous page). 12 This definition leavesopen how far into modern Turkey the region was thought to extend, and before the Byzan-tine reconquest of the tenth century the northwestern border of Syria was simply consideredto be the boundary of Byzantine control, sometimes even including Malaṭya on the upperEuphrates as the northern edge of Syria. 13 On the other hand, Yāqūt does not include anymajor city north of Manbij and Aleppo, noting only in passing the border regions (thughūr )of al-Maṣṣīṣa, Ṭarsūs, Adhana, and Marʿash. 14 This article will take as the northern borderof Syria the Taurus Mountains of southeastern Anatolia, excluding Malaṭya but including theborder towns mentioned by Yāqūt.

The classic study of Islamization remains Richard Bulliet’s Conversion to Islam in the Middle Period (1979). Bulliet analyzed biographical dictionaries to graph the adoption ofspecifically Muslim names in several different regions across the Islamic world, making cer-tain approximate assumptions about length of generations and age of conversion. He arguedthat these distinctively Islamic names first appear within a lineage for a convert to Islam orfor his children, and graphing the incidence of Islamic names for the ulema in a biographicaldictionary gives a curve (p. 19) that can be taken as the conversion curve for the region asa whole. 15 The result is a summative S-curve that displays the Muslim proportion of thepopulation as monotonically increasing, whose slope represents the rate of conversion, firstslow, then increasing to a midpoint, and then decreasing to level off again as the number of

late adopters decrease. He suggests (pp. 109, 112) that conversions peaked from the late-eighth to the mid-tenth century, and that the rise of Shiite groups such as Druze, Nuṣayrīs,and Ismailis was occasioned by the late conversion of mountain Christians. Nevertheless, heacknowledges (pp. 110, 112) that his proposed conversion curve is difficult to correlate withthe political, social, or religious history of Syria, and he concludes, “Syria does not presenta tidy, easily understandable picture.”

10. Kedar 1985: 326.11. Kedar 1997a: 196.

12. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 3: 355.13. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 154; 1964b, 1: 164–65.14. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 3: 354.15. Alwyn Harrison (2012: 38) suggested that Bulliet’s graphs are often misunderstood to refer to the total

population, when in fact they refer only to the percentages “of those who would convert—of the ultimate unquantifi-able total of converts” and therefore “There is thus no way to extrapolate any quantifiable data regarding conversion,or to identify the point at which Muslims became a numerical majority and the ahl al-dhimma a minority.” Thisinterpretation picks up on certain nuances of Bulliet’s language, but Bulliet himself (1979: 1) seems to slip intoidentifying the conversion curve with broader demographics, for example in his conclusion of “a causal relationshipbetween the conversion of a majority of a region’s population and the dissolution of central Islamic government inthat region” (emphasis mine). It is also unclear how the “stage in the conversion process” to which Bulliet frequentlyascribes causal force would be comparable across countries if in one region it represented a large majority of thepopulation and in another conversion rates dwindled after the Muslim population reached around 20%. Michael

Morony (1990: 136–37, 138) critiques Bulliet’s use of the “conversion curve” as a cause rather than a consequence,but asserts that Bulliet’s curves represent the conversion of the population as a whole, albeit with some reservations.


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795CARLSON: The Geography of Islamization in Syria, 600–1500

Somewhat more recently, Nehemia Levtzion (1990: 290) summarized what is knownabout the contours of the Islamization of Syria and Palestine before the Ottoman conquest,based primarily on secondary scholarship with reference to primary sources by al-Balādhurī(d. 279/892) and Michael the Syrian (d. 1199). This account derives primarily from nar-

rative historical sources, whether used by Levtzion or by the other scholars he cites, andalthough narrative sources are helpful for connecting otherwise isolated data, their inter-ests are typically circumscribed in ways that limit their utility for the purpose of describingregional Islamization. Michael the Syrian, for example, is interested almost exclusively inthe secular rulers and in his own denomination of Christianity, and thus says very littleabout other Christian groups such as the Chalcedonians, much less the Jewish population ofSyria. Al-Balādhurī’s Futūḥ al-buldān primarily collects traditions about the seventh-centuryconquests, and only mentions non-Muslims to the degree that they figure in such traditions,without any attempt to discuss the state of non-Muslims in Syria in his own lifetime. Nar-rative sources need to be supplemented by additional evidence to provide a wider picture ofthe Islamization of Syria.

Studies of Islamization in Syria since 1990 have focused on specific themes, restrictedsource materials, and narrower time frames. Bethany Walker (2013) synthesized the archae-ological evidence for Islamization into the ninth century at a site in central Jordan. UriSimonsohn (2013) examined legal sources from the early Islamic period to clarify the pro-cess of personal conversions, especially reversed and repeated conversions. Nancy Khalek’s Damascus after the Muslim Conquest (2011) focuses on the transformation of a capital cityto the end of the Umayyad dynasty, while Amikam Elad (1995) examined pilgrimage toholy places in Jerusalem, primarily but not exclusively in the first couple of centuries ofIslam. R. Stephen Humphreys (2010a) argued that Christianity continued to prosper underthe Umayyad dynasty, bringing together a range of literary, economic, and archaeological

sources. For a later period, the conversion of Syria’s religious topography was analyzedby Daniella Talmon-Heller (2007a) for the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, indicating thatIslamization was not merely an early Islamic phenomenon. These studies, each important forits scope, do not provide or permit the synthesis of a trajectory of Islamization, especiallyafter the Umayyad period ending in 132/750.

One body of evidence that allows us to provide a first sketch of the contours of the Islam-ization in Syria over the longue durée, from the conquests of the seventh century to theOttoman annexation of Syria in the sixteenth century, consists of the geographical texts com-posed by administrators, travelers, and belles-lettrists describing the region of Syria in themedieval period. An eclectic body of Islamic geographical literature, primarily in Arabic butpartly in Persian, preserves indications of the progress of Islamization at different periods.The complexity of this literature requires methodological nuance to interpret it, but properlyunderstood it is a valuable body of evidence for the development of Syrian society.

This article analyzes ten Arabic geographical works, as well as one work in Persian andone in Hebrew. On the basis of these works it sketches a trajectory of Islamization in Syriauntil the Ottoman conquest. The Islamic conquest of Syria began the process of Islamizationwith the rapid installation of mosques and garrisons in the major cities and along the coast-line, while the first inhabitants of Syria to adopt Islam were many of the Arabs who alreadylived in the region before the seventh century. By contrast, there is little evidence for ruralIslamization before the tenth century, and the evidence that exists suggests that before thisperiod rural Islam in Syria was primarily a nomad’s religion. The Byzantine conquests of the

tenth to eleventh centuries and the subsequent Crusades reintroduced Christian rule in Syria,which resulted in certain segments of this region being known for Christian populations more


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than others, such as the area north of the Ghūṭa around Damascus and the coastline. Rule byChristians and the confiscation of certain urban mosques may also have lent urgency to theprocess of founding Muslim rural shrines, although in many cases the earliest shrines thatare known to have interested Muslims were dedicated to pre-Muslim figures, and in some

cases were maintained by Jews or Christians. When the Mamluks from Cairo expelled thelast Crusaders, they also devastated the coastline, leaving Christianity primarily attested innorthern Syria. 16 Even under Mamluk rule, however, certain villages located along majorroads north of Damascus which were still entirely or predominantly Christian would havereminded Muslim travelers that Syria was not an exclusively Muslim territory.

ARABIC GEOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE

The geographical literature that describes Syria under Muslim rule is an important bodyof sources for the long process of Islamization. 17 This literature does not form a single genre,but rather exists in several forms. Al-Balādhurī’s Futūḥ al-buldān is primarily a work of

history and traditions that describes places only by virtue of their having been conqueredby the Muslims. The geographers of the Balkhī school, such as Ibn Ḥawqal (d. ca. 362/973)and al-Muqaddasī, divided their works by regions, each provided with a map. By far themost extensive geographical work is the Muʿjam al-buldān of Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, arrangedas a dictionary with place names in alphabetical order. The works of Benjamin of Tudela (d.1173), Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/1217), and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 770s/1370s) are travelogues intendedto convey geographical information. Nevertheless, the authors in the geographical discourseutilized earlier works in different genres and freely quoted other authors, as is typical formedieval Islamic scholarship.

Methodological Challenges

The evidence provided by the geographical literature is complicated by several factors.Geographical works pay selective attention to certain non-Muslim groups more than others,and therefore cannot be used to infer relative demographic strength. Thus al-Balādhurī’sFutūḥ al-buldān only mentions Syrian Jews briefly with respect to Damascus, Tripoli, Ḥimṣ,and Qaysāriyya, 18 but even after the massacre ordered by the Byzantine emperor Heracliusin 629, Tiberias was an important center of the Jewish population. 19 The greater interest inChristians than in Jews, in al-Balādhurī and later Muslim geographers, is probably due topolitical opposition with the Christian empire of Constantinople rather than to demographicrealities. On the other hand, the Samaritan population of Filasṭīn is singled out for attentionby al-Balādhurī and later geographers, which likely reflects their presence exclusively in this

region. 20 No indication of the relative strength between Jews, Samaritans, and Christians canbe inferred from these references.

Other features of literary texts also complicate the use of geographical works. Geographi-cal literature often lists places, but lists of villages are necessarily not comprehensive, norcan these lists be presumed to be representative. Furthermore, different authors have diverseinterests that influence the selection criteria, so unless the author has a clear interest in

16. The adverb is necessary: Arabic geographical texts do not devote much space to Mount Lebanon, whichcontinued to have a substantial Maronite Christian population to the present; see Levtzion 1990: 306–7.

17. For a recent study of the literary aspects of this “discourse of place,” see Antrim 2012.18. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 170, 174, 183, 187, 192; 1916: 190–91, 195, 206, 211, 217.19. Gil 1992: 8–10, 70–71.20. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 215–17; 1916: 244–45.


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recording religion, the absence of a reference to a particular religious community or expectedreligious edifice does not indicate its absence from the location. For example, while IbnBaṭṭūṭa frequently mentions mosques in his descriptions of the places he visited, no matterhow briefly, Yāqūt only infrequently refers to mosques in his geographical dictionary. The

late ninth-century historian and geographer al-Yaʿqūbī (1918: 86–87) does not mention anymosque in Syria other than the Umayyad mosque of Damascus, being primarily interestedin recording the tribal affiliations of the various Arab populations. By contrast, Benjamin ofTudela (1907) is principally interested in recording the distance between cities and the sizeof the Jewish populations that lived there. Finally, as with most fields of medieval scholar-ship, information included in the geographical work may have been borrowed from an earliersource without attribution, which makes it challenging to identify the period to which anygiven assertion may pertain. 21 The result is that these works cannot simply be transformedinto a database on which statistical analysis can be performed; rather, each text must be readas a literary and linguistic performance, yet one intended to communicate certain facts aboutthe world. 22

In a way, some of these challenges turn out to be surprising opportunities for writing thehistory of Islamization. Literary geographical texts sometimes indicate whether the authorsregarded certain details as surprising or typical, which partially compensates for the lack ofcomprehensive or representative data. Even the adoption of earlier texts’ words without mod-ification or attribution, although bearing a different relationship to the author’s experiencethan new composition, typically reveals what the author regards as well said and plausibleenough. Such literary phenomena provide hints to the evolving expectations and assump-tions regarding the religious landscape of Syria, which are as much a part of the process ofIslamization as progressive personal conversions or architectural repurposing; yet such atti-tudes and conceptions would be largely absent from census records. With a nuanced literary

approach, geographical texts can be useful sources for a full-orbed account of Islamization.

THE EARLIEST STAGE: RURAL ARABS AND MAJOR CITIES

The earliest stage of Islamization of Syria reported by the geographical texts is the con-version of nomadic Arabs, resulting in a distinction between often nomadic Muslims andprimarily sedentary non-Muslims. The core of the first Muslim community in Syria wasformed by the conquering Arab armies. Al-Balādhurī reported that the Muslim command-ers appealed to the largely Christian Arabs who already lived in Syria on the basis of theircommon ancestry, with mixed results. Jabala, the chief of the Banū Ghassān, rejected Islam(although one account says he converted and then apostasized) and moved to territory still

under Byzantine control, while the Arabs near Qinnasrīn and Aleppo proved more agreeable,with many of them accepting Islam. 23 The degree to which the Islam of the conquest periodwas viewed as “an Arab society” is perhaps indicated by the account of the Banū Taghlibin the region of Diyār Rabīʿa to the northeast—the tribe remained Christian, but instead of

21. Antrim (2012: 72) indicates that some geographers use sources without acknowledgment after having spe-cifically criticized them elsewhere.

22. The performative aspect of geographical literature is cogently stated by Antrim 2012: 3. Antrim critiquesMiquel 1967 for neglecting this literary dimension and simply mining the sources for information. Guy Le Strange(1890) had earlier synthesized the geographical literature with regard to Syria, but in dicing up the sources, herendered it impossible to engage with the texts as literature. In the latter trait, however, he merely follows in thefootsteps of Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī.

23. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 185–86, 198; 1916: 209, 224.


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paying jizya it paid double the normal Muslim ṣadaqa. 24 Al-Balādhurī presented the ruler assaying, “Since it is not the tax of the unbelievers (aʿlāj), we shall pay it and retain our faith.” 25 The chief of the Banū Ghassān is said to have made a similar offer to pay ṣadaqa instead of jizya, but in his case it was rejected. 26 Syrian Arabs who had accepted Islam were already

sufficiently numerous for the military commander Abū ʿUbayda to station a garrison of themin the city of Bālis on the Euphrates within three years of the battle of Yarmūk. 27 It is unclearhow quickly the nomadic and semi-sedentary Arabs of Syria converted to the new religion,but the swifter adoption of Islam by Arabs than by non-Arabs likely caused the religiousboundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims in the countryside to approximate the dividebetween nomads and sedentary farmers. 28

The Islamization of the sedentary population seems to have begun in major cities andcoastal towns, due to the presence of Muslim governors and garrisons. 29 As presented by thegeographers of subsequent centuries, the circumstances of many cities’ surrender or conquestprovided a location to be used for the mosque, whether part of the city’s cathedral or a newsite. 30 A quarter of the main church of Ḥimṣ was made into a mosque, 31 while the cathedralof St. John the Baptist in Damascus had a portion set aside for Muslim prayers. 32 Aleppo’smosque was a new construction, 33 as was that of Latakia on the coast. 34 The link betweencoastal garrisons and mosques is made explicit by an account reported by al-Balādhurī thatthe caliph ʿUthmān directed his cousin Muʿāwiya, then governor of Syria, to garrison thecoastal towns, to build new mosques, and to enlarge existing mosques. 35 Thus, al-Balādhurīreferred to mosques in the cities of ʿAsqalān “in the days of Ibn al-Zubayr” (d. 73/692), thenewly founded district capital al-Ramla by 101/720, al-Maṣṣīṣa by 84/703, and Ṭarsūs by172/788. 36 He also indicated that Muʿāwiya transferred Muslim populations to the coastalcities of Tyre, Acre, and Antioch. 37 Later geographers mentioned Jerusalem’s Dome ofthe Rock, built by the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān in 72/691-2, 38 although a sizeable

24. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 249–52; 1916: 284–86. Richard Bulliet (1979: 106) also suggests that the early Syrianulema included in later biographical dictionaries were mostly Arab. However, his conclusion is based upon thepreponderance of ulema from inland as opposed to coastal Syria, and he assumes that people from an area includingDamascus should be presumed to be Arab. The precedence of the Bedouin in conversion to Islam is also indicated,with bibliography, by Humphreys (2010a: 49).

25. Al-Balādhurī 1916: 285; 1957: 250. I have emended Ḥitti’s translation.26. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 185; 1916: 209.27. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 205; 1916: 232.28. Early Muslim aversion to farming is indicated by a number of hadith analyzed by M. J. Kister (1997, 4:

270–86). That nomads did not overwhelmingly adopt Islam at the time of the initial conquests is indicated by theexistence of a Syrian Orthodox bishop “of the Arabs” consecrated in 686 who died in 724 (Tannous 2008).

29. For example, regarding the garrisons of the sea coast under ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb or ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān, seeal-Balādhurī 1957: 173; 1916: 195. In this regard it is revealing that several of the hadith analyzed by Kister (1997,4: 286–90) presume that Muslims are urban dwellers.

30. Walker (2013: 148–49) indicates that the conversion of a church into a mosque was quite rare in centralJordan; abandoned churches would become private residences far more commonly.

31. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 189; 1916: 201; al-Muqaddasī 1906: 156; 1994: 144; Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 2: 348.32. Khalek 2011: 96–97. Joseph Nasrallah (1992) cites the standard sources for the received narrative, although

with no critical engagement.33. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 200; 1916: 226.34. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 181; 1916: 204.35. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 175; 1916: 196.36. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 195, 226, 232; 1916: 220, 255, 262.37. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 160–61, 201; 1916: 180, 228.38. For example, al-Muqaddasī 1906: 169; 1994: 154. A recent architectural history of the building is Grabar

2006.


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earlier mosque in the city was mentioned by a Latin pilgrim who visited the city around680. 39 Al-Harawī and Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī would include Bethlehem outside Jerusalem as acity that acquired a mosque under the second caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, but the fact thatal-Muqaddasī did not mention such an edifice, although he was a native of the area and seems

disposed to mention all the mosques he knew, suggests that it was a more recent creation. 40How long did Christians and Muslims share sanctuaries? According to al-Balādhurī,the transformation of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Damascus into the UmayyadMosque took place during the reign of the caliph al-Walīd b. Aʿbd al-Malik (d. 96/715), indi-cating that the mosque in the capital city of the caliphate was shared for a few generations,continuing even after the construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. 41 The cathedralof Ḥimṣ was divided between Christians and Muslims even longer, although it is not pos-sible to say with certainty exactly how long on the basis of the geographical literature. IbnḤawqal’s statement, “In [Ḥimṣ] is a church, part of which is the Friday mosque, and halfof it belongs to the Christians,” 42 may indicate that it was still divided in the middle of thetenth century. On the other hand, his pupil al-Muqaddasī later in the century only refers tothe division at the time of the conquest. 43 A story reported later by Yāqūt refers to a youngMuslim “playing in the church with a ball, and it happened that the ball entered the mosque,”showing that the building was certainly divided, perhaps as late as the 170s/ca. 790. 44 Theearly construction of mosques in the major cities of Syria added an Islamic focus to urbancenters, but did not necessarily exclude or replace non-Muslims. 45

EXPANDING INTO THE COUNTRYSIDE: VILLAGE MOSQUES AND RURAL SHRINES

Outside of the major cities, the slower progress of Islamization is shown by the delayeddiffusion of rural mosques and Muslim shrines. In the tenth century Ibn Ḥawqal remarkedthat the region of Filasṭīn had “around twenty minbar s [i.e., mosques] despite its small size.” 46 On the one hand, twenty mosques would cover all the major cities but only a few of themany villages. That only very large villages possessed mosques is indicated not long after-ward by al-Muqaddasī, who said of Filasṭīn, “In this district are large villages with theirown mosques, and these are more populous and more flourishing than most of the citiesof al-Jazīra.” 47 Indeed, al-Muqaddasī listed twenty-one mosques in the region of Filasṭīn. 48

39. Adamnan 1958: 42–43.40. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 172; 1994: 156; al-Harawī 1953, 1: 29; 2: 70; 2004: 76–77; Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990,

1: 618.41. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 171; 1916: 191–92.

42. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 162; 1964b, 1: 173.43. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 156; 1994: 144.44. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 2: 349.45. Lapidus (1969: 57) asserted that in this period across the Muslim-ruled world “Muslim cities were isolated

in Christian, Zoroastrian, or pagan countrysides,” but this view neglects both the nomadic Arab Muslims and thefact that cities taken over by Muslim conquerors continued to have a non-Muslim majority for an indeterminateperiod.

46. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 159; 1964b, 1: 169.47. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 176; 1994: 160, where “al-Jazīra” is translated as “the Arabian Peninsula,” but the

region referred to by this phrase is more commonly upper Mesopotamia. André Miquel’s French translation (1963:208) likewise rendered “al-Jazīra” with reference to Arabia, and while it is the more likely interpretation, I havereverted to transliterating the Arabic to preserve the ambiguity.

48. Al-Muqaddasī mentioned mosques in al-Ramla, Dājūn nearby, Jerusalem, Jabal Zaytā (Mount of Olives)outside Jerusalem, Hebron, al-Yaqīn outside Hebron, Gaza, ʿAsqalān, Yāfā, Arsūf nearby, Qaysāriyya, Nābulus,Jericho, ʿAmmān, Ludd outside al-Ramla, Kafr Sābā on the road to Damascus, ʿĀqir on the road to Mecca, Yubnā


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Of these, it is clear that only two (Jabal Zaytā and al-Yaqīn) are properly rural, and sevenare described as being in villages (qurā), namely, Hebron, Ludd, Kafr Sābā, ʿĀqir, Yubnā,ʿAmawās, and Kafr Sallām.

On the other hand, Ibn Ḥawqal’s concessive clause (“despite its small size”) seems to indi-

cate that in the diffusion of mosques Filasṭīn was more Islamized than Ibn Ḥawqal expected,which may hint that throughout the rest of Syria at that time there were not many village orrural mosques. Since the number of Muslims that a mosque could serve might range fromtens to thousands, it is impossible to estimate the Muslim population of Filasṭīn based on thisfigure, but it does suggest that in the mid-tenth century only the largest villages would havehad a Muslim architectural presence. 49 This suggests that after the initial conquests Islamiza-tion was a process of diffusion from the cities to the villages and countryside.

Away from the coast, the roads connecting major cities overland were meeting-places forMuslims and non-Muslims, and thus conduits of Islamization. Al-Muqaddasī listed six “largevillages possessed of their own mosques,” of which he located three (Kafr Sābā, ʿĀqir, andKafr Sallām) on main roads. 50 Of the other three, two were also on important roads: Yubnāis between Yāfā and ʿAsqalān on the coastal road, and ʿAmawās is between al-Ramla andJerusalem. Of the six villages, only Ludd is not on a major road, but in the late tenth centuryit was essentially a suburb of the district capital al-Ramla; according to al-Muqaddasī, it“lies about a mile from al-Ramla. There is here a great mosque wherein large numbers ofpeople assemble from the capital, and from the villages around.” 51 By contrast, he reportedno mosques in villages or cities away from roads, the coast, or the outskirts of the capitalal-Ramla.

If the district of Filasṭīn was probably the Syrian district with the greatest concentrationof mosques, al-Muqaddasī is explicit that it also had a greater number of rural shrines thanother districts, especially in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, and he asserted that he had listed

most of them. 52 The most striking feature of the list he gave, however, is how few of themcelebrate specifically Muslim figures. 53 The majority of these shrines and holy sites pertainto figures of ancient Jewish history who were venerated in common by Jews, Christians, andMuslims (although often not Samaritans): Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rachel, Job, Moses, Saul,David, Uriah, Solomon, and Jeremiah, some with multiple sites. A smaller number pertain toJesus, Mary, and John the Baptist’s father Zakariyyā. 54 Of distinctively Muslim sites possi-bly outside of major cities, he referred only to “ʿUmar’s mosques,” which presumably wouldinclude the mosque in commemoration of the caliph on Jabal Zaytā outside Jerusalem andal-Yaqīn Mosque outside Hebron. Even his vague reference to the “shrines of the prophets”

near the coast, ʿAmawās between al-Ramla and Jerusalem, and Kafr Sallām near Qaysāriyya on the coastal road; seeal-Muqaddasī 1906: 165–66, 168–77, 182; 1994: 151, 153–60, 165.

49. Humphreys (2010b: 533–34) suggests a more rapid Islamization of Syria south of Ḥimṣ than in the north orin al-Jazīra. While this may be the case, the restriction of mosques to cities and a few large villages implies regionsdevoid of Muslim inhabitants. If al-Muqaddasī’s list of mosques is comprehensive, then the city of Bayt Jibrīlbetween Hebron and ʿAsqalān not only lacked a mosque, but was not within 20 km of a mosque. The hill countrybetween Jerusalem and Nābulus also lacked any mosques, in precisely the area found by Ellenblum (1998: 283) tobe dominated by Christian settlements two centuries later.

50. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 176–77; 1994: 160.51. Al-Muqaddasī 1994: 160; 1906: 176.52. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 184; 1994: 167.53. His list is found in al-Muqaddasī 1906: 151; 1994: 138.54. Josef Meri (2002: 195–201, 210–12, 243–50) discusses such shared shrines; Christopher MacEvitt (2008:

126–30, 132–34) discusses the sharing of churches between Franks and Middle Eastern Christians, which could beevery bit as awkward.


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shows a Muslim approach to pre-Islamic history. It is therefore unclear whether the manyshrines to pre-Islamic personages were in any way distinctively Islamic, or whether theywere shared between Muslims and non-Muslims, perhaps even in the possession of the latter.

Later geographical sources record increasing numbers of shrines. 55 The Persian poet and

philosopher Nāṣir-i Khusraw, whose account of his travels tends toward brevity, indicatedthat he turned aside from his travels down the coastal road in order to visit “a mountainwhere various prophets’ shrines are located” between Acre and Tiberias. 56 But the majorityof these religious sites were dedicated to historical figures shared by Jews, Christians, andMuslims alike: Esau, five sons of Jacob, the father-in-law and wife of Moses, the mother ofMoses, Joshua b. Nun, Jonah, and Ezra. 57 Another shrine was dedicated to the legendaryfounder of Acre, namely ʿ Akk, while two others of presumably Muslim origin were dedicatedto the pre-Islamic figures Hūd and Dhū l-Kifl. A mosque known as the “Jasmine Mosque”was situated to the west of Tiberias, while the only shrine dedicated to an earlier Muslim wasthe tomb of Abū Hurayra south of Tiberias, and the Persian traveler indicated that pilgrim-ages to it were impossible because the children of the local Shiite population harassed would-be visitors. 58 Even more significantly, he described and explained the “Spring of the Cows”(ʿayn al-baqar ) outside Acre without mentioning the mashhad of ʿAlī, which geographersfrom ʿAlī al-Harawī onward mention there. 59

Over a century later, ʿAlī al-Harawī recorded clear instances of shrines shared betweenMuslims and non-Muslims. For example, he mentioned outside of the Jewish Gate of Aleppoa stone “at which votive offerings are made and upon which rosewater and sweet fragrancesare poured. Muslims, Jews and Christians hold it in regard. It is said that beneath it is thetomb of one of the prophets . . . or the saints. God knows best.” 60 He also referred to shrinesdedicated to pre-Islamic figures such as Joshua b. Nun, Alexander the Great, and the motherof John the Baptist, in greater number than indicated by al-Muqaddasī. 61 On the other hand,

in his record of the pilgrim shrines he encountered in his travels through Syria in the latetwelfth century, shrines to figures of early Islamic history have greatly increased. In the coun-tryside around Damascus he recorded the tombs of Diḥya al-Kalbī (who also has a tomb nearTiberias and a tomb at al-Fusṭāṭ), Ḥujr b. ʿAdī, Zumayl b. Rabīʿa, Rabīʿa b. ʿAmr, Khālid b.Saʿīd, Saʿd b. ʿUbāda al-Anṣārī (although al-Harawī rejected the validity of this tomb), UmmKulthūm, Mudrik, Kannāz, Shaykh Sulaymān al-Dārānī, Abū Muslim al-Khawlānī, UmmʿĀtika, and Ṣuhayb al-Rūmī (the last two likewise rejected by al-Harawī). 62 By al-Harawī’stime in the late twelfth century, the Ghūṭa around Damascus had the highest concentration ofrural shrines. By contrast, he complained that due to Crusader rule, “in Ascalon’s cemeteryare many saints, and Successors whose tombs are unknown; the same with Gaza, Acre, Tyreand Sidon and all of the towns of the coastal plain.” 63 And it is noteworthy that he was

55. For discussion of the increasing number of Muslim shrines in medieval Syria, see Talmon-Heller 2007b:190–95; Meri 2002: 257–62.

56. Nāṣir-i Khusraw 1986: 17; 1975: 26.57. Nāṣir-i Khusraw 1975: 26–31; 1986: 17–19.58. Nāṣir-i Khusraw 1975: 29–31; 1986: 18–19.59. Nāṣir-i Khusraw 1975: 25–26; 1986: 17.60. Al-Harawī 2004: 12–13; 1953, 1: 4; 2: 9.61. Al-Harawī 1953, 1: 7, 23; 2: 14, 16, 59; 2004: 16, 66.62. Al-Harawī 1953, 1: 11–13; 2: 27–32; 2004: 24–30. For Diḥya al-Kalbī’s other tombs, see al-Harawī 1953,

1: 20, 37; 2: 52, 87; 2004: 40, 98.63. Al-Harawī 2004: 82; 1953, 1: 33; 2: 76.


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unable to list any Muslim shrine in the hinterland around Aleppo, despite wishing to exaltthe city of his final patron. 64

Muslim devotion to pre-Islamic figures and prayers at shrines devoted to them were notproblematic, as from a common Muslim perspective the prophets of old had preached Islam,

but the Jews and Christians had corrupted the message. Far from a religious difficulty, sharedshrines provided an opportunity for Muslims to have pilgrimage sites maintained by non-Muslims, and an opportunity for non-Muslims to convert more easily to Islam without for-saking the loca sancta and past holy figures upon which they relied. The progression ofreports from al-Muqaddasī to Nāṣir-i Khusraw to al-Harawī, however, seems to indicate thatthe creation of specifically Muslim holy sites in rural areas was a slow process, perhaps onlybeginning in the tenth century around the time of the Byzantine reconquest, and by no meanscomplete by the end of the Crusader period. In particular, the late appearance of the tombsof Companions in rural areas even around Damascus, and often with questions regardingtheir authenticity, suggests that funereal veneration of the Companions was a late stage inthe development of a specifically Islamic landscape. 65 The dedication of shrines to figuresrevered by multiple religions was an important step in the conversion of the rural population,but it was five centuries before distinctively Islamic shrines are attested in most of Syriancountryside.

SYRIA DIVIDED: BYZANTINE RECONQUEST AND CRUSADER STATES

When Nikephoros Phokas entered Syria at the head of a Byzantine army in 350/962,establishing Antioch as a Byzantine outpost in 358/969, Syria was already accustomed tomarauding armies. Neglected as a province after the caliphal capital moved from Damas-cus to Baghdad in the eighth century, by the later ninth century central ʿAbbāsid authoritywas waning and Syria was contested between various Muslim rulers such as the Ṭūlūnids,Ikhshīdids, and Ḥamdānids. The new element introduced by the Byzantine reconquest ofnorthern Syria was rule by Christians in a territory from which it had been absent for overthree centuries. From the 350s/960s until the Crusader stronghold at Acre was captured bythe Mamluk armies of Egypt in 690/1291, Syria was divided between multiple Muslim andChristian rulers, with a brief hiatus between the Byzantine loss of Antioch in 477/1084 andthe Crusader conquest of the same city in 491/1098. This division of Syria widened the gapin Islamization between different portions of the region, reversing the coastal cities’ earlyadoption of mosques while perhaps encouraging the development of rural Islamic shrines.

The earliest geographers to observe the Byzantine reconquest painted the invaders as littlemore than raiders and deplored the sorry state of Islam that permitted them to succeed. Ibn

Ḥawqal recorded Greek attacks on Ḥimṣ, Aleppo, Qinnasrīn, Jabala, Ḥiṣn Barzūya, Antioch,al-Ḥadath, Marʿash, al-Hārūniyya, al-Iskandarūna, and he blamed the enemy’s success onfailures of Muslim religious zeal. 66 He lamented over Antioch,

64. Al-Harawī (1953, 1: 5–6; 2: 10–11; 2004: 12–14) mentioned various Muslim shrines in and around Aleppoitself, but apart from a tomb in the village of Rūḥīn that he identified as belonging to Quss b. Sāʿida al-Iyādī, all ofthe other shrines were dedicated to Jewish or Christian figures. Indeed, he reported that even the shrine of Rūḥīn wasalternatively identified as belonging to Christian figures.

65. For a contrary view, Nancy Khalek (2011: 123) acknowledges that a specifically Islamic sacred landscape“was slowly being built up” over centuries, but contends that “Tombs of fallen Companions who had served in theconquests were the first elements of that new environment.” Meri (2002: 257–58) suggests that early monuments tofallen Companions had very little connection to later medieval pilgrimage shrines.

66. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 162–65, 167; 1964b, 1: 173–77, 179–80.


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The enemy has overcome it and possessed it, and before its conquest it had become disordered inthe hands of the Muslims, and now it is more severely disordered and abased. . . . Around it thereare sultans, Bedouin, lords, and kings, for each of whom his today distracts him from attentionto his tomorrow, and what is forbidden him and his vanities distract him from what God MostHigh enjoined and the governance and leadership incumbent upon him. 67

The Byzantine invasion of Ḥimṣ he credited to their confusion (khabāl) and luxury( yasār ), while Ḥiṣn Barzūya’s surrender he ascribed to, among other factors, their “lack offaith” (qillat al-īmān). 68 Al-Muqaddasī devoted less space to the presence of Byzantinesthan his predecessor, because he consciously excluded from his description those portionsof Syria ruled by the Christians, 69 but he described a climate of fear among the Muslims inSyria: “The people live in dread of the [Byzantine army], as if they were in a foreign land,for their frontiers have been ravaged, and their border defenses shattered.” 70 The Muslimgeographers of the tenth century depicted the division of Syria between Christian and Mus-lim rulers as a religious catastrophe.

Nevertheless, these same geographers indicated that most Muslims in the areas now underChristian rule were content to accept the new system. Ibn Ḥawqal concluded his section onSyria with a pessimistic prediction that Byzantine rule and the jizya levied on Muslims wouldlead many of the people of Syria to abandon Islam: “Most of its people remained, while theyaccepted jizya from them, and I think they will convert to Christianity, disdaining the humili-ation of the jizya and greedy to obtain provisions for honor and comfort.” 71 Al-Muqaddasīconfirmed Ibn Ḥawqal’s dire predictions: “Some [of the people] have apostasized, whileothers pay tribute ( jizya), putting obedience to created man before obedience to the Lordof Heaven. The general public is ignorant and churlish, showing no zeal for the [struggle],no rancour towards enemies.” 72 The new Christian rulers were evidently inclined to treattheir Muslim subjects much as their Muslim predecessors had treated Christian subjects: the

term jizya probably refers to a Muslim-specific head tax, analogous to the poll tax on non-Muslims levied by the caliphs. Although the Byzantine army reportedly destroyed mosques,such attacks seem to have occurred as an element of capturing and plundering a city, andthere is no indication that the new Christian overlords prevented local Muslim rulers fromrepairing mosques. 73

Muslim travelers through the Crusader states in the twelfth century adopted a curi-ously mixed attitude toward the Frankish rulers. 74 Christian rule in lands formerly underMuslim control was clearly regarded as a shameful fact, as ʿAlī al-Harawī complained toProphet Muḥammad when the latter appeared to him in a dream in the mosque in ʿAsqalānin 570/1174, before Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s conquest of the city. 75 Ibn Jubayr polemicized against

67. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 165.68. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 162, 164; 1964b, 1: 173, 176.69. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 152; 1994: 140.70. Al-Muqaddasī 1994: 139; 1906: 152.71. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 172.72. Al-Muqaddasī 1994: 139; 1906: 152. The translator’s rendering of jihād as “holy strife” is problematic and

has been changed here to the more neutral term “struggle.” André Miquel (1963: 154 n. 52) interpreted this sentenceas an “allusion aux Juifs et au Chrétiens, sujets protégés,” in defiance of the context.

73. For example, in the city of Aleppo; see Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 163; 1964b, 1: 174.74. For one synthesis of the evidence for Muslim subjects of the Crusader states, see Kedar 1990. Kedar (p. 145)

presumes that the majority of the population under Frankish rule was Muslim, while Christopher MacEvitt (2008:12), who analyzes the Frankish treatment of their Eastern Christian subjects, asserts without citation that Christianswere the majority of the population in “northern Syria,” a term that for him includes northwestern Mesopotamia.

75. Al-Harawī 1953, 1: 32; 2: 76; 2004: 82.


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Muslims who chose to remain in lands ruled by non-Muslims: “There can be no excuse in theeyes of God for a Muslim to stay in any infidel country.” 76 On the other hand, both al-Harawīand Ibn Jubayr often emphasized how little the Franks had interfered with Muslim religiouspractice. Thus, al-Harawī indicated three times that the Crusaders did not damage various

aspects of the Muslim sanctuaries in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. 77 Ibn Jubayr, for his part,ascribed to God’s intervention the preservation of part of the main mosque at Acre and partof ʿAyn al-Baqar outside the city. 78 He also indicated that the Muslims of Tyre were treatedbetter than those of Acre, and that they lived under a written guarantee of safety (amān), 79 while Muslim peasants enjoyed greater security under Frankish rule than they would in landsruled by Muslims. 80 Both of these authors clearly expected greater harassment from theFranks than they received. 81

Ibn Jubayr in particular laid out the Crusaders’ treatment of their Muslim subjects, andhis description mirrors the treatment of Christians by Muslim rulers. When the Franks cap-tured Acre, “Mosques became churches and minarets bell-towers,” but just as the Byzantinecathedrals of Damascus and Ḥimṣ were divided between Christians and Muslims in the sev-enth century, so Acre’s Friday mosque and the shrine at ʿAyn al-Baqar were shared after theCrusaders’ conquest of the city. 82 He explicitly likened the tax levied upon Muslims underFrankish rule with that levied upon Christians under Muslim rule: “The Christians impose atax on the Muslims in their land which gives them full security; and likewise the Christianmerchants pay a tax upon their goods in Muslim lands. Agreement exists between them, andthere is equal treatment in all cases.” 83 In his polemic against Muslims choosing to dwellin lands ruled by non-Muslims, Ibn Jubayr alluded to the head-tax upon Muslims as “theabasement and destitution of the capitation.” 84 He gave the rate of the jizya as 1.25 dinars, aswell as half of the crops. 85 However, a lighter tax could be assessed on travelers: Ibn Jubayrindicated that when he first entered lands under Crusader rule, the jizya he paid was levied

primarily upon Muslims from the Maghrib, due to a prior attack by a group of western Mus-lims on a castle of the Franks, and that other Muslims were not taxed in this manner. 86 TheAndalusi traveler had earlier marveled at the security of both Christian and Muslim travelersdespite the ongoing wars between Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn and the Crusaders, 87 and he was surprised,

76. Ibn Jubayr 1952: 321; 1981: 252.77. Al-Harawī 1953, 1: 25–26, 29; 2: 63–65, 70; 2004: 72, 76.78. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 249; 1952: 318–19.79. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 250, 252; 1952: 319, 321.80. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 247–48; 1952: 316–17.

81. These views counterbalance the evidence of Usāma Ibn Munqidh, whose Kitāb al-Iʿtibār mentions non-Muslims primarily in narratives of battles with Franks. But his book is almost exclusively concerned with elites,whether Muslim or Frankish, and battles loom large among the anecdotes related. Even Ibn Munqidh, however,indicated that the Franks who had been in Syria longer harassed Muslims less; see Ibn Munqidh 1930: 134–35, 140;2008: 147, 153.

82. Ibn Jubayr 1952: 318; 1981: 249. Ibn Jubayr’s description of sharing the mosque over ʿAyn al-Baqar seemsto refute al-Harawī’s contention (1953, 1: 22; 2: 57; 2004: 44) that the Franks intended to make it a church, but werethwarted by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib mystically killing their night-watchmen. Yāqūt (1990, 4: 199) likewise alluded to thefact that ʿAyn al-Baqar was venerated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, including Jews in his list of worshippersthere.

83. Ibn Jubayr 1952: 301; 1981: 235.84. Ibn Jubayr 1952: 322; 1981: 252.85. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 247; 1952: 316.86. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 247; 1952: 316.87. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 234–35; 1952: 300–301.


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and horrified, at the level of social integration that could be achieved between Christians andMuslims in Syria.

Despite Ibn Jubayr’s assertions of the security of non-combatants in Syria even with theongoing wars, geographical texts written during Syria’s divided period frequently mention

raiding by both Muslims and Christians. Ibn Ḥawqal complained of raids not only by theByzantine army, but also by the Bedouin who surrounded Ḥimṣ after the Byzantine inva-sion. 88 He indicated that Byzantine incursions led to an increased use of the inland routefrom Damascus northward, where a sign of the degeneracy of the age was “the dominanceof the Bedouin over the governors,” and he expected all travel to cease. 89 Ibn Jubayr himselfnoted that the khāns where travelers lodged in Syria were all heavily fortified, and that theroad between Ḥimṣ and Damascus was largely uninhabited except for a few large villages atthe caravan stops. 90 He mentioned Frankish raiding possibilities from Ḥiṣn al-Akrād to Ḥimṣor Ḥamā, as well as on the road from Damascus to the coast. 91 Although he presented Ṣalāḥal-Dīn’s capture of Nābulus in 580/1184 as a glorious conquest for Islam, the attack on theunwalled village was clearly more in the nature of a plundering raid. 92 While both Muslimand Crusader rulers may have avoided plundering merchant caravans, on which they found iteasier to assess commercial taxes, the rural and semi-rural settled population probably faredworse at their hands.

Nevertheless, significant demographic shifts happened during Syria’s divided period.The Byzantine reconquest brought Greek rule back to Syria, but it also brought Armenianswho settled in northern Syria and along the Cilician coast. Ibn Ḥawqal already mentionedthat when the Byzantines conquered Malaṭya in 319/931, they peopled it with Armenians. 93 Al-Muqaddasī noted Armenian control of Jabal al-Lukkām on the northern edge of Syria. 94 Two centuries later Yāqūt indicated Armenian control not only over Cilician cities such asʿAyn Zarbā, al-Hārūniyya, Sīsiyya, and Ṭarsūs, but also a dominantly Armenian population

in the fortress of Tal Bāshir two days north of Aleppo and the surrounding district of Nahral-Jawz between Aleppo and al-Bīra (modern Birecik) on the Euphrates. 95 Armenians wouldremain a substantial portion of the population in this region throughout Ottoman times.

On the other hand, the Shiite population of Syria grew during and after the “Shiite cen-tury,” in part due to Fāṭimid interests in Syria. Writing after the first invasions but before theFāṭimid dynasty held any possessions there, al-Muqaddasī mentioned Shiite populations onlyin Tiberias, ʿAmmān, half of Nābulus, and half of Qadas north of Tiberias. 96 A half-centurylater Nāṣir-i Khusraw referred to the Shiite population and Egyptian garrison in Tripoli, aswell as other Shiite groups in Tyre and in the countryside west of Tiberias, where they pre-vented Sunni pilgrims from visiting the tomb of Abū Hurayra. 97 Ibn Jubayr remarked on theIsmaili castles in Mount Lebanon, and formerly in al-Bāb between Aleppo and the Euphra-tes. 98 Indeed, he indicated the broad diffusion of Shiites in Syria: “They are more numerous

88. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 162–63; 1964b, 1: 173.89. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 165; 1964b, 1: 176.90. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 205, 209–10; 1952: 264, 269.91. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 206, 209, 246; 1952: 265, 268, 315.92. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 245; 1952: 314.93. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 166; 1964b, 1: 179.94. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 189; 1994: 172.95. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 2: 47, 213; 3: 338; 4: 33, 201; 5: 446.96. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 179; 1994: 162–63.97. Nāṣir-i Khusraw 1975: 21, 24, 30–31; 1986: 13, 16, 19.98. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 202, 206; 1952: 259–60, 264.


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than the Sunnis, and have filled the land with their doctrines.” 99 As an exception in northernSyria he praised Manbij, whose population he indicated was entirely Sunni, “so that throughthem the town is undefiled by those dissident sects and corrupt beliefs that are found in mostof this country.” 100 The Ismaili castles in the mountains of western Syria and Lebanon would

become a refrain of later geographers. 101Although most Muslim geographers pay little attention to the Jewish population, the trav-elogue of Benjamin of Tudela gives approximate Jewish populations for many cities of Syria.Although no other geographical work documents the presence of Jewish communities soextensively, such indications as do exist seem to indicate a marked decline in the Jewishpopulation of Filasṭīn and the coastlands in this period, relative to much larger Jewish popu-lations in the inland portions of central and northern Syria. Thus, al-Muqaddasī had com-plained of the greater numbers of Jews and Christians than Muslims in his native Jerusalemin the late tenth century, but two centuries later Benjamin of Tudela indicated a populationof only 200 Jewish men in the city. 102 Al-Balādhurī mentioned that Muʿāwiya had settledTripoli with Jews in the seventh century, but Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth centuryonly indicated that a recent earthquake had killed many Jews and gentiles; his text does notindicate how many Jews remained in the city. 103 Al-Balādhurī’s figure of 20,000 Jews inQaysāriyya, alongside 700,000 soldiers and 30,000 Samaritans, is clearly exaggerated evenbeyond the extent of the likely influx of rural refugees, but Benjamin of Tudela’s indica-tion of about 10 Jewish men in the city still indicates a dramatic decline. 104 No city underCrusader rule had a larger Jewish population than Tyre, with about 500 Jewish households. 105 The figures given for Jewish populations of cities still under Muslim rule stand in starkcontrast: 3,000 for Damascus, 5,000 for Aleppo, even 2,000 each for Tadmur on the edge ofthe desert and Raḥba on the Euphrates. 106 This discrepancy and the fact that the Yeshiva ofJerusalem was headquartered in Damascus indicate a preference for medieval Syrian Jews

to relocate outside of Crusader control, resulting in a much smaller Jewish population forcoastal cities and Filasṭīn. 107

The religious character of the rural population also shifted markedly in this period. IbnJubayr’s remarks on Crusader rule over Muslims presumed that many of the Muslims werepeasants, a point he made explicit with regard to the population around Bāniyās betweenDamascus and Tyre. 108 Ibn Jubayr’s remarks should not be taken to indicate that the ruralpopulation throughout Syria had largely converted to Islam, however; the contrary is indi-cated by his reference to the entirely Christian town of Qāra south of Ḥimṣ, as well as his

99. Ibn Jubayr 1952: 291; 1981: 227.100. Ibn Jubayr 1952: 259; 1981: 201.101. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 2:77, 119; 3: 243; 4: 535; 5: 168; al-Dimashqī 1866: 200, 202–3, 208, 209; 1874:

269, 274, 282–84, 286; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 1: 44–45; 1958, 1: 106; Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 229–30; 2,2: 7.102. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 167; 1994: 152; Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 22, . As for the latter, the numbers givenכג

in the Hebrew are usually of yəhūḏīm, which is ambiguous as to whether it includes women or refers only to Jewishmen. Despite the term being translated as “Jews” throughout, it is suggested (1907: 16 n. 2) that only male headsof households were in view.

103. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 174; 1916: 195; Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 17, .יט104. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 192; 1916: 217; Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 20, .כא105. Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 18, .כ106. Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 30–32, 34, ד , א– .107. Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 30, א .108. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 246–48; 1952: 315–17.


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description of the respect with which Christian peasants treated Muslim hermits. 109 Thepeasants’ veneration for Muslim holy men no doubt contributed to their progressive conver-sion to Islam, as did the rural shrines shared between Muslims and non-Muslims, such asʿAyn al-Baqar outside Acre mentioned by Ibn Jubayr and Yāqūt, the tomb of the unknown

prophet outside Aleppo, and the shrines visited by Nāṣir-i Khusraw between Acre and Tibe-rias. 110 The proliferation of shrines dedicated to specifically Muslim figures during thisperiod, such as those enumerated by al-Harawī, may have been partly due to the loss ofmany urban mosques to Byzantine and Crusader conquests, but it was also partly due tothe increase of Shiite Muslims who sometimes took over an urban mosque and sometimesdedicated rural shrines to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. 111 Nāṣir-i Khusraw described specifically Shiiteshrines around Tripoli: “The people of this city are all Shi‘ites, and the Shi‘ites have builtnice mosques in every land. They have edifices there like caravanserais, which they callmashhads, but no one lives in them. Outside the city of Tripoli there is not a single structureexcept for a couple of mashhads.” 112

Nor was the convergence of religious topography limited to rural settings. Ibn Jubayrmentioned that the main mosque of Acre was shared between Christians and Muslims, 113 andal-Harawī noted that the shrine around the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah wasadministered by Greek Christians in the days of Frankish rule, although he as a Muslimvisited it. 114 Earlier Nāṣir-i Khusraw had commented that Muslims as well as Christiansand Jews came as pilgrims to Jerusalem. 115 During Crusader rule the Dome of the Rock inJerusalem was converted into a church, and al-Harawī’s account of his visit to the buildingmentions icons of Solomon and Christ. 116 Despite, or perhaps because of, this sharing of theUmayyad edifice, al-Harawī is the earliest geographer to describe the Rock as the place fromwhich Muḥammad ascended on his night journey; Ibn Ḥawqal and al-Muqaddasī had identi-fied the stone as “the Rock of Moses.” 117

109. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 209, 233–34; 1952: 269, 300. Ellenblum (1998: 283) also concluded on the basis ofarchaeological evidence that in the twelfth century Palestine still had large rural areas dominated by Christiansand other rural areas dominated by Muslims. The former included western Galilee around Acre and the hill coun-try north of Jerusalem, while the latter included eastern Galilee and central Samaria. Kedar (1997b: 138) pointedout that Ellenblum’s finding of religious segregation in Crusader-ruled Palestine is consistent with the absence ofevidence for personal ties between Muslim peasants and the Franks according to an Islamic hagiographic text. Itmay, however, be objected that Kedar’s interpretation is an argument from silence; reporting such relationships maynot have served the hagiographer’s purpose.

110. See nn. 57–58, 60, and 82, above. Although Ibn Jubayr (1981: 254; 1952: 324) mentions very few shrines,he likewise mentions tombs dedicated to ancient Jewish figures around Tiberias.

111. ʿAyn al-Baqar outside Acre was dedicated to Aʿlī b. Abī Ṭālib, for example (al-Harawī 1953, 1: 22; 2: 57;

2004: 44). Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (1964, 1: 39; 1958, 1: 94) mentioned a Shiite mosque in the village of Sarmīn southwest ofAleppo.

112. Nāṣir-i Khusraw 1986: 13; 1975: 21.113. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 249; 1952: 318.114. Al-Harawī 1953, 1: 30–31; 2: 72–73; 2004: 78.115. Nāṣir-i Khusraw 1975: 34–35, 62–63; 1986: 21, 37–38.116. Al-Harawī 1953, 1: 24–25; 2: 62–63; 2004: 70; Grabar 2006: 160–69. The Dome of the Rock is likely the

“small mosque that the Franks had converted into a church” mentioned by Usāma Ibn Munqidh (2008: 147; 1930:134–35), in which he would pray with permission from the Templars.

117. Ibn Ḥawqal 1964a: 158; 1964b, 1: 168; al-Muqaddasī 1906: 151; 1994: 138; al-Harawī 1953, 1: 24; 2: 62;2004: 70. Miquel (1963: 147–48 n. 15) supplied other possible identifications of the Rock of Moses, without rulingout the identification as the Dome of the Rock. Indeed, al-Muqaddasī (1906: 169; 1994: 154) identified a separate“Dome of the Ascent” (sc. of Muḥammad; qubbat al-miʿrāj) near the Dome of the Rock, while Nāṣir-i Khusraw(1975: 43; 1986: 26) claimed that Muḥammad ascended from al-Aqṣā Mosque, which he distinguished from theDome of the Rock.


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If the appearance of Muslim peasants broke down the older division between Muslimnomads and the non-Muslim sedentary population, the partition of Syria between Christianand Muslim rule generated new axes of Islamization between different regions within Syria.The Byzantine reconquest and the accompanying influx of Armenians probably resulted in

the northern edges of Syria containing a higher proportion of Christians than areas furthersouth, such as the Ghūṭa around Damascus. Ibn Jubayr noted that most villages of the Ghūṭahad a bathhouse, while Yāqūt described the village of ʿImm between Aleppo and Antioch asentirely Christian in his day, although he quoted Ibn Buṭlān’s statement that it had a mosquein the eleventh century. 118 If the Byzantine reconquest introduced a north-south axis, theCrusades resulted in an east-west distinction between coastal areas and inland. This is partic-ularly significant since in the earlier centuries of Islam, the garrisons on the Syrian coast hadresulted in an earlier Islamization in precisely the areas where the Crusaders now ruled. Butal-Harawī complained of the inability to identify the tombs of early Muslims in the coastalcities due to the Frankish regime. 119 The noteworthiness of the level of rural Islamization inthe Ghūṭa to Ibn Jubayr may reflect the fact that Damascus was one of the few cities of Syrianot sacked by the Byzantines or the Crusaders.

THE RETURN TO MUSLIM RULE IN MAMLUK SYRIA

The Mamluk conquests of the last Crusader states on the Levantine coast reunited Syriaunder Muslim rule, although the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia continued to exist as a trou-blesome vassal of the sultans in Cairo until 776/1375. But three centuries of divided rulehad left Syria much more regionally diverse and the non-Muslim populations much reduced.While Crusader rule of the coast had encouraged Christian residence there, the Mamlukconquests were accompanied by deliberate destruction of the coastal settlements. As a result,most references to Christians in the geographical works of the Mamluk period situate themin northern Syria, whether in urban or rural settings. Most cities of northern Syria had anon-Muslim population, and some large towns on major roads continued to be entirely orprimarily Christian at least into the fourteenth century.

Unlike the first Muslim conquerors of Syria over six centuries earlier, the new Mamlukrulers did not fortify the coast, but rather depopulated it to a significant degree and renderedit indefensible. The purpose was evidently not to prevent a new Crusader invasion, but toprevent the Crusaders from being able to hold anything on the mainland. Thus, according toIbn Baṭṭūṭa, the Mamluk sultan Baybars (r. 658–676/1260–1277) destroyed the walls aroundAntioch when he captured the city in 666/1268. 120 Tripoli was demolished by the Mamluksin 688/1289 and refounded away from the coast. 121 Jubayl and Beirut may have fared some-

what better, with Abū l-Fidāʾ indicating that the former had a Friday mosque and Ibn Baṭṭūṭaindicating the same for the latter. 122 On the other hand, the ports that were the last Crusaderstrongholds, Tyre and Acre, were completely ruined after the Mamluk conquest, according

118. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 224; 1952: 288; Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 4: 177.119. He made a similar complaint regarding Crusader-ruled Jerusalem, which he visited before it was con-

quered by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (al-Harawī 1953, 1: 28, 33; 2: 68, 76; 2004: 74, 82).120. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 1: 43; 1958, 1: 103.121. Al-Dimashqī 1866: 207; 1874: 282; Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 253; 2,2: 30; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 1: 37; 1958,

1: 88. Sources disagree as to how far inland the new foundation was, between one mile (Abū l-Fidāʾ) and five miles(al-Dimashqī), which indicates that these reports are not all copied from the same source.

122. Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 247; 2,2: 26; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 1: 36; 1958, 1: 85. Abū l-Fidāʾ mentioned Beirut, butonly to quote from older sources, so his text gives no indication of its current size.


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to Abū l-Fidāʾ, who participated in the capture of the latter. 123 Between them, the formerlyimportant port of Ṣaydā was in the fourteenth century merely a small village, while furthersouth Qaysāriyya, Arsūf, and ʿ Asqalān were also ruined. 124 Abū l-Fidāʾ seems to indicate thatthe main beneficiaries of this coastal destruction were Gaza, which became the main port

for traders from the Ḥijāz, and the Cilician port of Āyās in the Armenian kingdom, whichbecame the preferred port for Christian merchants from Europe; between them, Yāfā wasthe only port he identified as still active. 125 The coastal areas, where the early Islamizationwas most thoroughly reversed by the period of Crusader rule, were devastated rather thanreconverted by the conquerors from Cairo, who generally moved their governmental centersinland.

Under Greek and Crusader rule, the coastline and northern Syria probably had a higherproportion of Christians than other regions. After the Mamluk devastation of the coastline,northern Syria remained the place where Christians were most frequently mentioned bygeographers. One interesting exception is al-Shawbak between ʿAmmān and Ayla in south-eastern Syria (today part of Jordan), which Abū l-Fidāʾ described as mostly inhabited byChristians still in the fourteenth century. 126 Otherwise, references to Christian populations inSyria in the geographical works of the Mamluk period all refer to northern Syria. It is indica-tive in this regard that al-Dimashqī describes the wildest party he knew of as Easter at Ḥamā,for which Christians would gather from all over northern Syria: Ḥimṣ, Shayzar, Salamiyya,Kafr Ṭāb, Abū Qubays, Maṣyāf, Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān, Tīzīn, al-Bāb, Buzāʿa, al-Fūʿa, andAleppo. 127 The annual festival at Dayr al-Fārūs outside Latakia likewise made an impressionon al-Dimashqī, Abū l-Fidāʾ, and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa. 128 Urban Christian populations are indicatedat Anṭarsūs on the coast and in Damascus, where Ibn Baṭṭūṭa recounted the combined prayerprocession of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in response to the arrival of the Black Death. 129 It thus appears that most if not all of the urban centers of northern Syria had, or were plausi-

bly reputed to have, Christian segments of the population into the fourteenth century.Particular rural areas also became known for Christians, such as the “Lake of the Chris-tians” north of Fāmiya (ancient Apamea), whose eels were enjoyed by Christians, accordingto al-Dimashqī. 130 On the other hand, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa adapted Ibn Jubayr’s description of thevillages in the Ghūṭa around Damascus, adding Friday mosques and markets to the earliertraveler’s bathhouses as indicative of what most villages near Damascus possessed in thefourteenth century. 131 In rural areas, roads were important locations of non-Muslim visibilityto the Muslim population. One of the main roads from Iraq to Damascus passed through al-Sukhna, east of Ḥimṣ, and when Ibn Baṭṭūṭa passed that way in the mid-fourteenth century

123. Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 243; 2,2: 20, 22; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 1: 35; 1958, 1: 83.124. Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 239, 249; 2,2: 17, 26; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 1: 34; 1958, 1: 81.125. Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 239, 249; 2,2: 16, 17, 27.126. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 3: 420; Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 247; 2,2: 25.127. Al-Dimashqī 1866: 280; 1874: 408.128. Al-Dimashqī 1866: 209; 1874: 285; Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 257; 2,2: 35; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 1: 49; 1958,

1: 115.129. Al-Dimashqī 1866: 207–8; 1874: 283; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 1: 60–61; 1958, 1: 144. A major textual variant in

the text of al-Dimashqī questions whether the church and monastery are in Anṭarsūs or in Anafa, a coastal village.The translator followed a Paris manuscript that ascribed them to the coastal village of Anafa northeast of Jubayl butstill placed another early monastery in Anṭarsūs.

130. Al-Dimashqī 1866: 205; 1874: 279; Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 41; 2,1: 51. Certain manuscripts of al-Dimashqīomit the reference to Christian fishermen, only referring to the eels.

131. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 224; 1952: 288; Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 1: 63; 1958, 1: 148.


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he described it as “a fine town, most of whose inhabitants are Christian infidels.” 132 Closerto Damascus, the town of Qāra was described by Yāqūt as the first stopping point on thestraight road from Ḥimṣ to Damascus, which is the main north-south road of central Syria. 133 Yāqūt also indicated tersely that “all of its people are Christians,” while a generation earlier

Ibn Jubayr had said at greater length that the village “belongs to Christians who dwell thereunder treaty and in which there are no Muslims.” 134 In the fourteenth century Abū l-Fidāʾmodified the description of Qāra’s population to “predominantly Christian,” indicating thatthis large town on a main road probably had its first Muslim inhabitants under Mamluk rule. 135 Further north, the same author indicated the need to pass through the entirely Christian vil-lage of Yaghrā near Antioch in order to reach the towns of Darbasāk and Baghrās, the formerof which had a mosque and minbar . 136 As late as the middle of Mamluk rule, Muslim travel-ers in central and northern Syria might be forced to spend the night in villages with only asmall Muslim presence.

Following the Ottoman conquest of the early sixteenth century, tax registers survive thatpermit a more detailed summary of the state of religious diversity in Syria. These recordsindicate a small and almost exclusively urban Jewish population, comprising perhaps 2.6% ofthe population of Aleppo in 924/1518, 6% of Damascus in ca. 950/1543, and around twentyyears earlier 11% of Sidon, 1.7% of Beirut, and 2% of Baʿlabakk, northwest of Damascus. 137 Further south, Jewish populations made up around 21% of Jerusalem in 932/1526, 24% ofṢafad, north of Tiberias, in the same year, 10% of Gaza in the same year, 2% of Hebronin ca. 945/1538-9, and 6% of Nābulus in the same register. 138 The centers of Jewish popu-lation partially shifted back to the coast and to Jerusalem after the end of Crusader rule, withthe addition of the newly prominent Jewish center of Ṣafad. But this shift primarily reflectsa decrease in the Jewish populations of inland Syria: the number of Jewish households inJerusalem in 932/1526 agrees almost exactly with the figure given by Benjamin of Tudela

over three centuries earlier. 139 By contrast, the number of Jewish households in Damascuswas only a little over one-sixth what the twelfth-century traveler reported, and the Jewishpopulation of Aleppo was a mere 6% of Benjamin of Tudela’s figure. 140 Over the course ofthe sixteenth century, Ṣafad would rise to prominence as the Jewish capital of Syria, until inthe 970s/1560s the city had almost twice as many Jewish households as Damascus did, andits total population was almost evenly split between Jews and Muslims. 141

The Christian population of Syria in the first century of Ottoman rule was increasinglymarginalized. In contrast to geographers’ reports of substantial Christian populations in north-

132. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 2: 175; 1958, 4: 916.

133. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī 1990, 4: 334–35.134. Ibn Jubayr 1952: 269; 1981: 209.135. Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 229; 2,2: 6.136. Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 261; 2,2: 38.137. Cohen and Lewis 1978: 16; Şener and Dutoğlu 2010: 15 n. 39; Bakhit 1982b: 49. Regrettably, in most

other cases the editors of the defter of Aleppo give “total figures” arrived at by simply adding together households,bachelors, religious figures, and other tax-exempt individuals. These totals could still give proportions of a popu-lation belonging to different religions, if the proportion of households to bachelors was constant, but the variabilityis larger and less controlled.

138. Cohen and Lewis 1978: 94, 111, 128, 149, 161. Samaritans made up about 2.5% each of Gaza and Nābulusin registers of 932/1526 and ca. 945/1538–9, respectively.

139. The defter of 932/1525–6 lists 199 Jewish households out of a total of 934 households, while Benjamin ofTudela (1907: 22, .) mentioned 200 Jewish men; cf. Cohen and Lewis 1978: 94כג

140. Bakhit 1982b: 49; Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 30, 32, –א ; Şener and Dutoğlu 2010: 15 n. 39.141. Cohen and Lewis 1978: 161; Bakhit 1982b: 49.


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ern Syria under the early Mamluks, the Ottoman tax register of 943/1536 for the provinceof Aleppo presents a total population that was about 98% Muslim and 2% Christian. 142 Inthat register, Christians were significant minorities in the areas of Jabal al-Aqraʿ on the coast(8%), al-Shughūr south of Antioch (8%), Shayzar northwest of Ḥamā (8%), and al-Quṣayr

south of Antioch (5%); only in the district of al-Suwaydāʾ on the Mediterranean coast south-east of Antioch did the Christian population approach the Muslim population (49%). 143 Asizeable rural village such as Zaytūniyya near al-Suwaydāʾ, with 82 households and 42 bach-elors, could still be 87% Christian, but the village of Yaghrā, which Abū l-Fidāʾ had reportedas entirely Christian, was entirely Muslim two centuries later. 144 Areas of Syria further north,which had significant Armenian populations in the Mamluk period, were incorporated intothe Ramaḍānid principality or the Dulqādir province and thus not included in the register forthe province of Aleppo, but the Christian population around Aleppo is far below what onemight expect from the geographers’ characterizations. Perhaps the instability of the fifteenthcentury, when the area around Aleppo was again a frontier zone between the Mamluk rulersin Cairo and their Türkmen neighbors to the north and east, encouraged religious minoritiesto convert to Islam or emigrate to more stable regions.

Within the province of Damascus, the bulk of the Christian population was rural, althoughsubstantial numbers of urban Christians inhabited Gaza, Jerusalem, Beirut, Baʿlabakk, andthe city of Damascus itself. 145 The town of Qāra, the important stopping-place betweenDamascus and Ḥimṣ, was slightly over half Muslim by ca. 930/1523, and the surroundingcountryside was a little over 60% Muslim. 146 Some villages remained entirely Christian,and in certain towns such as al-Karak, southeast of the Dead Sea, Christians outnumberedMuslims two to one in the middle of the sixteenth century. 147 On the other hand, large areasof the countryside were now entirely Muslim, with no non-Muslim inhabitants in the tax reg-isters, such as almost the entire triangle from Damascus to Beirut and south to Tyre. 148 The

areas where non-Muslims outnumbered Muslims were shrinking and were more remote atthe beginning of Ottoman rule than when incorporated into the Mamluk empire. The Syriaregistered by the Ottoman census-takers of the sixteenth century was a Muslim land, in popu-lation as well as in government.

142. Şener and Dutoğlu 2010: 17. The Jewish population of the city of Aleppo seems to have been deliber-ately omitted from this defter , since it appears with somewhat fewer than 300 households in registers from before932/1526 and after 978/1570, but even including them would give a Jewish population of 0.5% of the province asa whole (ibid.: 15, 17).

143. Şener and Dutoğlu 2010: 16–17. The town of al-Quṣayr near Antioch should not be confused with themore famous town southwest of Ḥimṣ, which was in the province of Tripoli. I have not been able to consult Otto-man tax registers from Tripoli.

144. Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 261; 2,2: 38; Şener and Dutoğlu 2010: 240, 266.145. Cohen and Lewis 1978: 93–94, 128; Bakhit 1982b: 49, 55, 80. Approximately as many Christian house-

holds were located in villages around Gaza and Jerusalem as in the cities themselves, as recorded by Bakhit (1982a:52–56), which must qualify the assertion of Cohen and Lewis (1978: 16) that non-Muslims were primarily town-dwellers.

146. Bakhit 1982a: 22; 1982b: 37.147. For example, the large town of ʿĀqūra outside Baʿlabakk was entirely Christian with 119 households and

11 bachelors in ca. 930/1523. Al-Shawbak, which was identified as entirely Christian in the Mamluk period, hadvery few Christians in the early Ottoman period; evidently many of them had relocated to Gaza (Bakhit 1982a: 32,44, 45, 55).

148. The only exceptions in this triangle seem to be the nāḥiyas of al-Zabadānī and Shūf al-Bayaḍ, which hadabout 20% and 10% Christian populations respectively in ca. 950/1543 (Bakhit 1982a: 41, 74).


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CONCLUSION

When the Umayyad prince Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Malik (d. 99/717) began to construct al-Ramla as the new capital for the district of Filasṭīn in the early eighth century, his expensemanager was a Christian scribe from the nearby Roman town of Ludd. 149 Al-Balādhurī, who

reported this story in the ninth century, evidently saw nothing out of the ordinary in a Muslimruler employing a skilled non-Muslim. Later geographers transformed this account in waysthat reveal the shifting place of non-Muslims, and particularly Christians, in Syria’s society.Al-Muqaddasī in the late tenth century omits the reference to the Christian accountant, buthis report of the minaret of al-Ramla being built by Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 105–25/724–43) from marble columns that he extorted from the Christians of Ludd, who were hidingthem in preparation for enhancing their own church, presents church construction as unre-markable in the latter days of the Umayyad dynasty. 150 In the early thirteenth century, Yāqūtal-Ḥamawī revisited Sulaymān’s construction of al-Ramla, but in his account the Christianaccountant is transformed into a threatening scribe whose desire to obtain the house beside

the church is thwarted, whereupon he suggests to Sulaymān that he build al-Ramla in orderto destroy the church. 151 Finally, in the fourteenth century Abū l-Fidāʾ expanded on theanimosity by stating that the Umayyad prince destroyed (akhrabahā) Ludd and founded al-Ramla. 152 Nevertheless, in the early Ottoman tax register, Ludd was approximately as largeas al-Ramla, and was still around 40% Christian. 153 Even where non-Muslims continued tobe a substantial portion of the population in Syria, the non-Muslim role in the constructionof a district capital was simply erased.

Despite the hermeneutical challenges it poses, the medieval Muslim geographical liter-ature is a rich body of source material for social history, and particularly for the history ofIslamization. These works remind us that Islamization was more than just the progressiveconversion to Islam of the populace of Syria, but included the construction or conversion

of mosques and the diffusion into the count

contours of conversion: the geography of islamization in syria 600-1500

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