Christians and Others in the Umayyad State.

• Author: Simonsohn, Uriel
• Position: Book review

Christians and Others in the Umayyad State. Edited by ANTOINE BORRUT and FRED M. DONNER. Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East, vol. 1. Chicago: ORIENTAL INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 2016. Pp. ix + 213. $24.95 (paper).

This volume--the first in a new book series, "Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East" (LAMINE), from the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago--is a collection of essays following the conference "Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians in the Umayyad State" held at the University of Chicago in June 2011. From the outset, the editors, Antoine Borrut and Fred Donner, point to the haziness of religious and cultural boundaries among late antique and early medieval Islamic communities as the premise of their inquiry. While they note the growing scholarly interest in the different spheres of interreligious encounters, they also refer to what is, to their mind, a relative absence of studies devoted to the question of "non-Muslims within the early Islamic state" (p. 2)--given the problematic nature of the extant sources, the Umayyad era is treated far less in this regard in comparison with later times.

Moreover, the Umayyad period heralded a crucial historical moment, during which conceptions of in and out, of believers and non-believers, gradually molded into a clearer vision of a Muslim community. Borrut and Donner belong to a school of historians that for some time now has been arguing that the Muslim-non-Muslim dichotomy only became operative toward the end of the seventh century, when, initially, the threshold of the community established in Medina was broadly termed by belief. The early Umayyads "seem to have conceived themselves as a regime of 'Believers'" (p. 3), a notion that is supported by early administrative documentation. Accordingly, Umayyad conceptions of non-Muslims who ascribed to the idea of the unity of God as believers were likely to dictate a social reality that was governed by a unique set of considerations.

Thus, both methodological shortcomings and conceptual ambiguities have contributed to the relative scholarly neglect of the topic at hand, rendering the eight chapters in this volume, written by a highly distinguished group of scholars, especially welcome. These touch upon a diverse set of questions, and present not only the thematic diversity pertaining to the place of non-Muslims under the Umayyad regime but also a plethora of methods by which the topic can be approached. That said, the editors are well aware of the partial image they are offering--the volume's title has for good reason been changed to Christians "and others."

The first chapter, "Notes for an Archeology of Mu'awiya: Material Culture in the Transitional Period of Believers" by Donald Whitcomb, is the only one concerned with material evidence. Instead of addressing the question of non-Muslim, or rather Christian, participation in the Umayyad state, the essay looks at the fascinating blend of Arabian, Byzantine, and Islamic features embodied in the architectural enterprises of the founder of Umayyad rule, Mu'awiya b. Abl Sufyan (r. 661-680). Thus, for example, the palace of Sinnabra, a castle by the Sea of Galilee, which was initially a seasonal residence of the governor of Syria and later of the Umayyad caliph, resembles, Whitcomb notes, the Roman praetorium in Tiberias, reflecting an Umayyad accommodation of Roman imperial edifices. The trend can be seen also in the caliph Hisham's (r. 724-743) hall in Rusafa, where Umayyad governmental and religious centers were erected adjacent to Christian and Roman complexes. In exploring what he terms the "archeology" of Mu'awiya, Whitcomb presents him as a leader who sought to balance his authority among a mixed religious population. His construction initiatives suggest a transitional phase of cultural symbiosis that attempted to meet the needs of a nascent Islamic civilization while at the same time sustaining pre-Islamic Arabian and broader Near Eastern...