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

Journal of the American Oriental Society 135.4 (2015) 791

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

Thomas a. Carlsonoklahoma sTaTe UniversiTy

The Islamization of Syria, a multi-faceted social and cultural process not limited to demography, was slow and highly variable across different locales. This article analyzes geographical works—ten in Arabic, one in Persian, and one in Hebrew—as well as the earliest Ottoman defters of the province to outline the process of Islamization 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 religiously mixed population with multiple kinds of Christianity present alongside Judaism and pagan-ism. When the Ottoman sultan Selim I conquered Mamluk Syria nine centuries later in 922/1516, the region’s religious diversity looked distinctively more Muslim, with Sunnis of four legal schools sharing the land with Druze, Nuṣayrīs, Ismailis, and Twelver Shiites, in addition 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 Muslims formed 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 tax census records of the sixteenth century. After Selim I’s conquest, the bulk of Syria was divided between provincial governments (sg. eyalet) based in Aleppo, Tripoli, and Damas-cus, although portions of eastern Syria around al-Raqqa were assigned to Ruhā (modern Urfa), while areas historically regarded as northern Syria were incorporated into the eyalet of Dūlqādir or the Ramaḍānid principality. 1 The tax registers (sg. defter) produced by the new provincial 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 sixteenth century 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. The author records his gratitude for their corrections and recommendations, while acknowledging that all remaining errors are his own.

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

(Şener and Dutoğlu 2010); I have not found any edition or analysis of defters from Tripoli. Analyses of the defters from Damascus and ʿAjlūn, two of the nine districts (sg. sanjak) of the province of Damascus, have been published in Bakhit 1982b; Bakhīt and Hamūd 1989 and 1991. Fifteen defters for four additional sanjaks of the province of Damascus were analyzed in Cohen and Lewis 1978. Finally, Bakhit 1982a is a synthesis of the Christian portion of the non-Muslim population of the province of Damascus as a whole.

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 how quickly 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 of Islamization. The Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (r. 65–86/685–705) is generally credited with replacing Byzantine coins with aniconic “Islamic” coins and with building the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, showing that state-sponsored Islamization had numismatic and architectural implications. Governmental Islamization was only one component of the broader, and far slower, process by which Syria became in some sense “more Islamic.” That process transformed urban environments, as mosques replaced churches, synagogues, and temples 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 typical relationships between members of different religious groups. Islamization was a complex and multi-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’s many advantages, “some [of its people] have apostasized.” 7 Yāqūt al-Hamawī (d. 626/1229) mentioned a village named ʿImm between Aleppo and Antioch, “in which today everyone is Christian,” but he quotes the Risāla of Ibn Buṭlān from the eleventh century to say that two centuries 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 and the 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 Frankish rule 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 to speak of proportions of the total population of the region at one time. Tapu defteri 401 for the district of Damascus in ca. 950/1543 seems to indicate a population approximately 90% Muslim, 9% Christian, and 1% Jewish, based on 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 figure of 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 proportion of a population that was non-Muslim.

4. The classic studies of urbanism in Islamic society are Kennedy 1985; Lapidus 1967. For a more complete historiography 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 is credited with building a church in eastern Anatolia (Sanjian 1969: 205).

7. Al-Muqaddasī 1994: 139; 1906: 152.8. Yāqūt al-Hamawī 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.

793Carlson: The Geography of Islamization in Syria, 600–1500

Fig. 1. Cities, towns, and villages of medieval Syria.


to be developed in order to handle difficult social questions regarding marriage and slavery in such cases. 10 As Benjamin Kedar concludes, “in the Frankish Levant, passages from Islam to 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 the Euphrates to the town of al-ʿArīsh on the Egyptian coastline southeast of Gaza, and from the Arabian desert to the Mediterranean Sea (see map on previous page). 12 This definition leaves open 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 considered to be the boundary of Byzantine control, sometimes even including Malaṭya on the upper Euphrates as the northern edge of Syria. 13 On the other hand, Yāqūt does not include any major 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 border of Syria the Taurus Mountains of southeastern Anatolia, excluding Malaṭya but including the border 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 of specifically Muslim names in several different regions across the Islamic world, making cer-tain approximate assumptions about length of generations and age of conversion. He argued that these distinctively Islamic names first appear within a lineage for a convert to Islam or for his children, and graphing the incidence of Islamic names for the ulema in a biographical dictionary gives a curve (p. 19) that can be taken as the conversion curve for the region as a whole. 15 The result is a summative S-curve that displays the Muslim proportion of the population as monotonically increasing, whose slope represents the rate of conversion, first slow, 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, he acknowledges (pp. 110, 112) that his proposed conversion curve is difficult to correlate with the political, social, or religious history of Syria, and he concludes, “Syria does not present a tidy, easily understandable picture.”

10. Kedar 1985: 326.11. Kedar 1997a: 196.12. Yāqūt al-Hamawī 1990, 3: 355.13. Ibn Hawqal 1964a: 154; 1964b, 1: 164–65.14. Yāqūt al-Hamawī 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.” This interpretation picks up on certain nuances of Bulliet’s language, but Bulliet himself (1979: 1) seems to slip into identifying the conversion curve with broader demographics, for example in his conclusion of “a causal relationship between the conversion of a majority of a region’s population and the dissolution of central Islamic government in that region” (emphasis mine). It is also unclear how the “stage in the conversion process” to which Bulliet frequently ascribes causal force would be comparable across countries if in one region it represented a large majority of the population 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.


Somewhat more recently, Nehemia Levtzion (1990: 290) summarized what is known about 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, and although 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 describing regional Islamization. Michael the Syrian, for example, is interested almost exclusively in the secular rulers and in his own denomination of Christianity, and thus says very little about other Christian groups such as the Chalcedonians, much less the Jewish population of Syria. Al-Balādhurī’s Futūḥ al-buldān primarily collects traditions about the seventh-century conquests, 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 of the Islamization of Syria.

Studies of Islamization in Syria since 1990 have focused on specific themes, restricted source 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. Uri Simonsohn (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 city to the end of the Umayyad dynasty, while Amikam Elad (1995) examined pilgrimage to holy places in Jerusalem, primarily but not exclusively in the first couple of centuries of Islam. R. Stephen Humphreys (2010a) argued that Christianity continued to prosper under the Umayyad dynasty, bringing together a range of literary, economic, and archaeological sources. For a later period, the conversion of Syria’s religious topography was analyzed by Daniella Talmon-Heller (2007a) for the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, indicating that Islamization was not merely an early Islamic phenomenon. These studies, each important for its scope, do not provide or permit the synthesis of a trajectory of Islamization, especially after 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 the Ottoman 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 the medieval period. An eclectic body of Islamic geographical literature, primarily in Arabic but partly in Persian, preserves indications of the progress of Islamization at different periods. The complexity of this literature requires methodological nuance to interpret it, but properly understood 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 and one in Hebrew. On the basis of these works it sketches a trajectory of Islamization in Syria until the Ottoman conquest. The Islamic conquest of Syria began the process of Islamization with 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 already lived in the region before the seventh century. By contrast, there is little evidence for rural Islamization before the tenth century, and the evidence that exists suggests that before this period 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


than others, such as the area north of the Ghūṭa around Damascus and the coastline. Rule by Christians and the confiscation of certain urban mosques may also have lent urgency to the process of founding Muslim rural shrines, although in many cases the earliest shrines that are 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 the last Crusaders, they also devastated the coastline, leaving Christianity primarily attested in northern Syria. 16 Even under Mamluk rule, however, certain villages located along major roads north of Damascus which were still entirely or predominantly Christian would have reminded 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 body of 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 conquered by the Muslims. The geographers of the Balkhī school, such as Ibn Hawqal (d. ca. 362/973) and al-Muqaddasī, divided their works by regions, each provided with a map. By far the most extensive geographical work is the Muʿjam al-buldān of Yāqūt al-Hamawī, arranged as 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 intended to convey geographical information. Nevertheless, the authors in the geographical discourse utilized earlier works in different genres and freely quoted other authors, as is typical for medieval Islamic scholarship.

Methodological ChallengesThe 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’s Futūḥ al-buldān only mentions Syrian Jews briefly with respect to Damascus, Tripoli, Himṣ, and Qaysāriyya, 18 but even after the massacre ordered by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius in 629, Tiberias was an important center of the Jewish population. 19 The greater interest in Christians than in Jews, in al-Balādhurī and later Muslim geographers, is probably due to political opposition with the Christian empire of Constantinople rather than to demographic realities. On the other hand, the Samaritan population of Filasṭīn is singled out for attention by 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 can be 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, nor can these lists be presumed to be representative. Furthermore, different authors have diverse interests 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, which continued 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.


recording religion, the absence of a reference to a particular religious community or expected religious edifice does not indicate its absence from the location. For example, while Ibn Baṭṭūṭa frequently mentions mosques in his descriptions of the places he visited, no matter how 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 any mosque in Syria other than the Umayyad mosque of Damascus, being primarily interested in recording the tribal affiliations of the various Arab populations. By contrast, Benjamin of Tudela (1907) is principally interested in recording the distance between cities and the size of 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 earlier source without attribution, which makes it challenging to identify the period to which any given assertion may pertain. 21 The result is that these works cannot simply be transformed into a database on which statistical analysis can be performed; rather, each text must be read as a literary and linguistic performance, yet one intended to communicate certain facts about the world. 22

In a way, some of these challenges turn out to be surprising opportunities for writing the history of Islamization. Literary geographical texts sometimes indicate whether the authors regarded certain details as surprising or typical, which partially compensates for the lack of comprehensive or representative data. Even the adoption of earlier texts’ words without mod-ification or attribution, although bearing a different relationship to the author’s experience than new composition, typically reveals what the author regards as well said and plausible enough. 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 of Islamization 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 and primarily sedentary non-Muslims. The core of the first Muslim community in Syria was formed 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 their common 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 period was viewed as “an Arab society” is perhaps indicated by the account of the Banū Taghlib in 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 critiques Miquel 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, he rendered it impossible to engage with the texts as literature. In the latter trait, however, he merely follows in the footsteps of Yāqūt al-Hamawī.

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


paying jizya it paid double the normal Muslim ṣadaqa. 24 Al-Balādhurī presented the ruler as saying, “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 them in the city of Bālis on the Euphrates within three years of the battle of Yarmūk. 27 It is unclear how 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 religious boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims in the countryside to approximate the divide between nomads and sedentary farmers. 28

The Islamization of the sedentary population seems to have begun in major cities and coastal towns, due to the presence of Muslim governors and garrisons. 29 As presented by the geographers of subsequent centuries, the circumstances of many cities’ surrender or conquest provided a location to be used for the mosque, whether part of the city’s cathedral or a new site. 30 A quarter of the main church of Himṣ was made into a mosque, 31 while the cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Damascus had a portion set aside for Muslim prayers. 32 Aleppo’s mosque was a new construction, 33 as was that of Latakia on the coast. 34 The link between coastal garrisons and mosques is made explicit by an account reported by al-Balādhurī that the caliph ʿUthmān directed his cousin Muʿāwiya, then governor of Syria, to garrison the coastal towns, to build new mosques, and to enlarge existing mosques. 35 Thus, al-Balādhurī referred to mosques in the cities of ʿAsqalān “in the days of Ibn al-Zubayr” (d. 73/692), the newly founded district capital al-Ramla by 101/720, al-Maṣṣīṣa by 84/703, and Ṭarsūs by 172/788. 36 He also indicated that Muʿāwiya transferred Muslim populations to the coastal cities of Tyre, Acre, and Antioch. 37 Later geographers mentioned Jerusalem’s Dome of the 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 Syrian ulema included in later biographical dictionaries were mostly Arab. However, his conclusion is based upon the preponderance of ulema from inland as opposed to coastal Syria, and he assumes that people from an area including Damascus 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 Hitti’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 the existence 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, see al-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 central Jordan; abandoned churches would become private residences far more commonly.

31. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 189; 1916: 201; al-Muqaddasī 1906: 156; 1994: 144; Yāqūt al-Hamawī 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.


earlier mosque in the city was mentioned by a Latin pilgrim who visited the city around 680. 39 Al-Harawī and Yāqūt al-Hamawī would include Bethlehem outside Jerusalem as a city that acquired a mosque under the second caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, but the fact that al-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. 40

How 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 Umayyad Mosque took place during the reign of the caliph al-Walīd b. ʿAbd 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 cathedral of Himṣ 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. Ibn Hawqal’s statement, “In [Himṣ] is a church, part of which is the Friday mosque, and half of it belongs to the Christians,” 42 may indicate that it was still divided in the middle of the tenth century. On the other hand, his pupil al-Muqaddasī later in the century only refers to the division at the time of the conquest. 43 A story reported later by Yāqūt refers to a young Muslim “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 The early construction of mosques in the major cities of Syria added an Islamic focus to urban centers, 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 delayed diffusion of rural mosques and Muslim shrines. In the tenth century Ibn Hawqal remarked that the region of Filasṭīn had “around twenty minbars [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 the many 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 their own mosques, and these are more populous and more flourishing than most of the cities of 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-Hamawī 1990,

1: 618.41. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 171; 1916: 191–92.42. Ibn Hawqal 1964a: 162; 1964b, 1: 173.43. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 156; 1994: 144.44. Yāqūt al-Hamawī 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 the fact that cities taken over by Muslim conquerors continued to have a non-Muslim majority for an indeterminate period.

46. Ibn Hawqal 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 have reverted 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


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

On the other hand, Ibn Hawqal’s concessive clause (“despite its small size”) seems to indi-cate that in the diffusion of mosques Filasṭīn was more Islamized than Ibn Hawqal expected, which may hint that throughout the rest of Syria at that time there were not many village or rural mosques. Since the number of Muslims that a mosque could serve might range from tens to thousands, it is impossible to estimate the Muslim population of Filasṭīn based on this figure, but it does suggest that in the mid-tenth century only the largest villages would have had 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 for Muslims and non-Muslims, and thus conduits of Islamization. Al-Muqaddasī listed six “large villages possessed of their own mosques,” of which he located three (Kafr Sābā, ʿĀqir, and Kafr Sallām) on main roads. 50 Of the other three, two were also on important roads: Yubnā is between Yāfā and ʿAsqalān on the coastal road, and ʿAmawās is between al-Ramla and Jerusalem. Of the six villages, only Ludd is not on a major road, but in the late tenth century it 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 of people assemble from the capital, and from the villages around.” 51 By contrast, he reported no mosques in villages or cities away from roads, the coast, or the outskirts of the capital al-Ramla.

If the district of Filasṭīn was probably the Syrian district with the greatest concentration of mosques, al-Muqaddasī is explicit that it also had a greater number of rural shrines than other 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 them celebrate specifically Muslim figures. 53 The majority of these shrines and holy sites pertain to figures of ancient Jewish history who were venerated in common by Jews, Christians, and Muslims (although often not Samaritans): Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rachel, Job, Moses, Saul, David, Uriah, Solomon, and Jeremiah, some with multiple sites. A smaller number pertain to Jesus, 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 would include the mosque in commemoration of the caliph on Jabal Zaytā outside Jerusalem and al-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; see al-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 Himṣ than in the north or in al-Jazīra. While this may be the case, the restriction of mosques to cities and a few large villages implies regions devoid of Muslim inhabitants. If al-Muqaddasī’s list of mosques is comprehensive, then the city of Bayt Jibrīl between Hebron and ʿAsqalān not only lacked a mosque, but was not within 20 km of a mosque. The hill country between Jerusalem and Nābulus also lacked any mosques, in precisely the area found by Ellenblum (1998: 283) to be 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 be every bit as awkward.


shows a Muslim approach to pre-Islamic history. It is therefore unclear whether the many shrines to pre-Islamic personages were in any way distinctively Islamic, or whether they were 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, indicated that he turned aside from his travels down the coastal road in order to visit “a mountain where various prophets’ shrines are located” between Acre and Tiberias. 56 But the majority of these religious sites were dedicated to historical figures shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike: Esau, five sons of Jacob, the father-in-law and wife of Moses, the mother of Moses, Joshua b. Nun, Jonah, and Ezra. 57 Another shrine was dedicated to the legendary founder of Acre, namely ʿAkk, while two others of presumably Muslim origin were dedicated to 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 was the 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 geographers from ʿAlī al-Harawī onward mention there. 59

Over a century later, ʿAlī al-Harawī recorded clear instances of shrines shared between Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, he mentioned outside of the Jewish Gate of Aleppo a stone “at which votive offerings are made and upon which rosewater and sweet fragrances are poured. Muslims, Jews and Christians hold it in regard. It is said that beneath it is the tomb of one of the prophets . . . or the saints. God knows best.” 60 He also referred to shrines dedicated to pre-Islamic figures such as Joshua b. Nun, Alexander the Great, and the mother of 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 late twelfth 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 near Tiberias and a tomb at al-Fusṭāṭ), Hujr 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), Umm Kulthūm, Mudrik, Kannāz, Shaykh Sulaymān al-Dārānī, Abū Muslim al-Khawlānī, Umm ʿĀtika, and Ṣuhayb al-Rūmī (the last two likewise rejected by al-Harawī). 62 By al-Harawī’s time in the late twelfth century, the Ghūṭa around Damascus had the highest concentration of rural shrines. By contrast, he complained that due to Crusader rule, “in Ascalon’s cemetery are many saints, and Successors whose tombs are unknown; the same with Gaza, Acre, Tyre and 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.


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

Muslim devotion to pre-Islamic figures and prayers at shrines devoted to them were not problematic, 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, shared shrines 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 of reports from al-Muqaddasī to Nāṣir-i Khusraw to al-Harawī, however, seems to indicate that the creation of specifically Muslim holy sites in rural areas was a slow process, perhaps only beginning in the tenth century around the time of the Byzantine reconquest, and by no means complete by the end of the Crusader period. In particular, the late appearance of the tombs of Companions in rural areas even around Damascus, and often with questions regarding their authenticity, suggests that funereal veneration of the Companions was a late stage in the development of a specifically Islamic landscape. 65 The dedication of shrines to figures revered 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 Syrian countryside.

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 to marauding 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 authority was waning and Syria was contested between various Muslim rulers such as the Ṭūlūnids, Ikhshīdids, and Hamdānids. The new element introduced by the Byzantine reconquest of northern Syria was rule by Christians in a territory from which it had been absent for over three centuries. From the 350s/960s until the Crusader stronghold at Acre was captured by the Mamluk armies of Egypt in 690/1291, Syria was divided between multiple Muslim and Christian rulers, with a brief hiatus between the Byzantine loss of Antioch in 477/1084 and the Crusader conquest of the same city in 491/1098. This division of Syria widened the gap in Islamization between different portions of the region, reversing the coastal cities’ early adoption of mosques while perhaps encouraging the development of rural Islamic shrines.

The earliest geographers to observe the Byzantine reconquest painted the invaders as little more than raiders and deplored the sorry state of Islam that permitted them to succeed. Ibn Hawqal recorded Greek attacks on Himṣ, Aleppo, Qinnasrīn, Jabala, Hiṣn Barzūya, Antioch, al-Hadath, Marʿash, al-Hārūniyya, al-Iskandarūna, and he blamed the enemy’s success on failures 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 Aleppo itself, but apart from a tomb in the village of Rūḥīn that he identified as belonging to Quss b. Sāʿida al-Iyādī, all of the other shrines were dedicated to Jewish or Christian figures. Indeed, he reported that even the shrine of Rūḥīn was alternatively 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 the conquests were the first elements of that new environment.” Meri (2002: 257–58) suggests that early monuments to fallen Companions had very little connection to later medieval pilgrimage shrines.

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


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

The Byzantine invasion of Himṣ he credited to their confusion (khabāl) and luxury (yasār), while Hiṣn Barzūya’s surrender he ascribed to, among other factors, their “lack of faith” (qillat al-īmān). 68 Al-Muqaddasī devoted less space to the presence of Byzantines than his predecessor, because he consciously excluded from his description those portions of Syria ruled by the Christians, 69 but he described a climate of fear among the Muslims in Syria: “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 Muslim geographers 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 under Christian rule were content to accept the new system. Ibn Hawqal concluded his section on Syria with a pessimistic prediction that Byzantine rule and the jizya levied on Muslims would lead many of the people of Syria to abandon Islam: “Most of its people remained, while they accepted 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-Muqaddasī confirmed Ibn Hawqal’s dire predictions: “Some [of the people] have apostasized, while others pay tribute (jizya), putting obedience to created man before obedience to the Lord of 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 treat their 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, and there is no indication that the new Christian overlords prevented local Muslim rulers from repairing 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 under Muslim control was clearly regarded as a shameful fact, as ʿAlī al-Harawī complained to Prophet Muḥammad when the latter appeared to him in a dream in the mosque in ʿAsqalān in 570/1174, before Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s conquest of the city. 75 Ibn Jubayr polemicized against

67. Ibn Hawqal 1964a: 165.68. Ibn Hawqal 1964a: 162, 164; 1964b, 1: 173, 176.69. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 152; 1994: 140.70. Al-Muqaddasī 1994: 139; 1906: 152.71. Ibn Hawqal 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 sentence as an “allusion aux Juifs et au Chrétiens, sujets protégés,” in defiance of the context.

73. For example, in the city of Aleppo; see Ibn Hawqal 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 Christians were 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.


Muslims who chose to remain in lands ruled by non-Muslims: “There can be no excuse in the eyes of God for a Muslim to stay in any infidel country.” 76 On the other hand, both al-Harawī and Ibn Jubayr often emphasized how little the Franks had interfered with Muslim religious practice. 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 part of ʿAyn al-Baqar outside the city. 78 He also indicated that the Muslims of Tyre were treated better 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 lands ruled by Muslims. 80 Both of these authors clearly expected greater harassment from the Franks than they received. 81

Ibn Jubayr in particular laid out the Crusaders’ treatment of their Muslim subjects, and his 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 Byzantine cathedrals of Damascus and Himṣ 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 the Crusaders’ conquest of the city. 82 He explicitly likened the tax levied upon Muslims under Frankish rule with that levied upon Christians under Muslim rule: “The Christians impose a tax on the Muslims in their land which gives them full security; and likewise the Christian merchants pay a tax upon their goods in Muslim lands. Agreement exists between them, and there is equal treatment in all cases.” 83 In his polemic against Muslims choosing to dwell in lands ruled by non-Muslims, Ibn Jubayr alluded to the head-tax upon Muslims as “the abasement and destitution of the capitation.” 84 He gave the rate of the jizya as 1.25 dinars, as well as half of the crops. 85 However, a lighter tax could be assessed on travelers: Ibn Jubayr indicated 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 The Andalusi traveler had earlier marveled at the security of both Christian and Muslim travelers despite 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 seems to refute al-Harawī’s contention (1953, 1: 22; 2: 57; 2004: 44) that the Franks intended to make it a church, but were thwarted by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib mystically killing their night-watchmen. Yāqūt (1990, 4: 199) likewise alluded to the fact that ʿAyn al-Baqar was venerated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, including Jews in his list of worshippers there.

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.


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

Despite Ibn Jubayr’s assertions of the security of non-combatants in Syria even with the ongoing wars, geographical texts written during Syria’s divided period frequently mention raiding by both Muslims and Christians. Ibn Hawqal complained of raids not only by the Byzantine army, but also by the Bedouin who surrounded Himṣ after the Byzantine inva-sion. 88 He indicated that Byzantine incursions led to an increased use of the inland route from Damascus northward, where a sign of the degeneracy of the age was “the dominance of the Bedouin over the governors,” and he expected all travel to cease. 89 Ibn Jubayr himself noted that the khāns where travelers lodged in Syria were all heavily fortified, and that the road between Himṣ and Damascus was largely uninhabited except for a few large villages at the caravan stops. 90 He mentioned Frankish raiding possibilities from Hiṣn al-Akrād to Himṣ or Hamā, as well as on the road from Damascus to the coast. 91 Although he presented Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s capture of Nābulus in 580/1184 as a glorious conquest for Islam, the attack on the unwalled village was clearly more in the nature of a plundering raid. 92 While both Muslim and Crusader rulers may have avoided plundering merchant caravans, on which they found it easier to assess commercial taxes, the rural and semi-rural settled population probably fared worse 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 Armenians who settled in northern Syria and along the Cilician coast. Ibn Hawqal already mentioned that 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 as ʿAyn 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 Nahr al-Jawz between Aleppo and al-Bīra (modern Birecik) on the Euphrates. 95 Armenians would remain 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 the Fāṭimid dynasty held any possessions there, al-Muqaddasī mentioned Shiite populations only in Tiberias, ʿAmmān, half of Nābulus, and half of Qadas north of Tiberias. 96 A half-century later Nāṣir-i Khusraw referred to the Shiite population and Egyptian garrison in Tripoli, as well 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 the Ismaili 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 Hawqal 1964a: 162–63; 1964b, 1: 173.89. Ibn Hawqal 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 Hawqal 1964a: 166; 1964b, 1: 179.94. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 189; 1994: 172.95. Yāqūt al-Hamawī 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.


than the Sunnis, and have filled the land with their doctrines.” 99 As an exception in northern Syria he praised Manbij, whose population he indicated was entirely Sunni, “so that through them the town is undefiled by those dissident sects and corrupt beliefs that are found in most of this country.” 100 The Ismaili castles in the mountains of western Syria and Lebanon would become a refrain of later geographers. 101

Although 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 so extensively, such indications as do exist seem to indicate a marked decline in the Jewish population 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 Jerusalem in the late tenth century, but two centuries later Benjamin of Tudela indicated a population of only 200 Jewish men in the city. 102 Al-Balādhurī mentioned that Muʿāwiya had settled Tripoli with Jews in the seventh century, but Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century only indicated that a recent earthquake had killed many Jews and gentiles; his text does not indicate how many Jews remained in the city. 103 Al-Balādhurī’s figure of 20,000 Jews in Qaysāriyya, alongside 700,000 soldiers and 30,000 Samaritans, is clearly exaggerated even beyond 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 under Crusader 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 stark contrast: 3,000 for Damascus, 5,000 for Aleppo, even 2,000 each for Tadmur on the edge of the desert and Raḥba on the Euphrates. 106 This discrepancy and the fact that the Yeshiva of Jerusalem was headquartered in Damascus indicate a preference for medieval Syrian Jews to relocate outside of Crusader control, resulting in a much smaller Jewish population for coastal cities and Filasṭīn. 107

The religious character of the rural population also shifted markedly in this period. Ibn Jubayr’s remarks on Crusader rule over Muslims presumed that many of the Muslims were peasants, a point he made explicit with regard to the population around Bāniyās between Damascus and Tyre. 108 Ibn Jubayr’s remarks should not be taken to indicate that the rural population 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 Himṣ, as well as his

99. Ibn Jubayr 1952: 291; 1981: 227.100. Ibn Jubayr 1952: 259; 1981: 201.101. Yāqūt al-Hamawī 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, כג. As for the latter, the numbers given

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

103. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 174; 1916: 195; Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 17, יט.104. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 192; 1916: 217; Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 20, כא.105. Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 18, כ.106. Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 30–32, 34, לא–לב, לד.107. Benjamin of Tudela 1907: 30, לא.108. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 246–48; 1952: 315–17.


description of the respect with which Christian peasants treated Muslim hermits. 109 The peasants’ 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 as ʿAyn 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 this period, such as those enumerated by al-Harawī, may have been partly due to the loss of many urban mosques to Byzantine and Crusader conquests, but it was also partly due to the increase of Shiite Muslims who sometimes took over an urban mosque and sometimes dedicated rural shrines to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. 111 Nāṣir-i Khusraw described specifically Shiite shrines around Tripoli: “The people of this city are all Shi‘ites, and the Shi‘ites have built nice mosques in every land. They have edifices there like caravanserais, which they call mashhads, but no one lives in them. Outside the city of Tripoli there is not a single structure except for a couple of mashhads.” 112

Nor was the convergence of religious topography limited to rural settings. Ibn Jubayr mentioned that the main mosque of Acre was shared between Christians and Muslims, 113 and al-Harawī noted that the shrine around the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah was administered by Greek Christians in the days of Frankish rule, although he as a Muslim visited it. 114 Earlier Nāṣir-i Khusraw had commented that Muslims as well as Christians and Jews came as pilgrims to Jerusalem. 115 During Crusader rule the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was converted into a church, and al-Harawī’s account of his visit to the building mentions icons of Solomon and Christ. 116 Despite, or perhaps because of, this sharing of the Umayyad edifice, al-Harawī is the earliest geographer to describe the Rock as the place from which Muḥammad ascended on his night journey; Ibn Hawqal 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 of archaeological evidence that in the twelfth century Palestine still had large rural areas dominated by Christians and 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) pointed out that Ellenblum’s finding of religious segregation in Crusader-ruled Palestine is consistent with the absence of evidence for personal ties between Muslim peasants and the Franks according to an Islamic hagiographic text. It may, however, be objected that Kedar’s interpretation is an argument from silence; reporting such relationships may not 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 ʿAlī 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 of Aleppo.

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 Hawqal 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 ruling out 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 the Dome of the Rock.


If the appearance of Muslim peasants broke down the older division between Muslim nomads and the non-Muslim sedentary population, the partition of Syria between Christian and 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 further south, such as the Ghūṭa around Damascus. Ibn Jubayr noted that most villages of the Ghūṭa had a bathhouse, while Yāqūt described the village of ʿImm between Aleppo and Antioch as entirely Christian in his day, although he quoted Ibn Buṭlān’s statement that it had a mosque in the eleventh century. 118 If the Byzantine reconquest introduced a north-south axis, the Crusades 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 had resulted in an earlier Islamization in precisely the areas where the Crusaders now ruled. But al-Harawī complained of the inability to identify the tombs of early Muslims in the coastal cities due to the Frankish regime. 119 The noteworthiness of the level of rural Islamization in the Ghūṭa to Ibn Jubayr may reflect the fact that Damascus was one of the few cities of Syria not 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 Syria under 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 rule had 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 Mamluk conquests 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 them in northern Syria, whether in urban or rural settings. Most cities of northern Syria had a non-Muslim population, and some large towns on major roads continued to be entirely or primarily Christian at least into the fourteenth century.

Unlike the first Muslim conquerors of Syria over six centuries earlier, the new Mamluk rulers did not fortify the coast, but rather depopulated it to a significant degree and rendered it indefensible. The purpose was evidently not to prevent a new Crusader invasion, but to prevent the Crusaders from being able to hold anything on the mainland. Thus, according to Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, the Mamluk sultan Baybars (r. 658–676/1260–1277) destroyed the walls around Antioch when he captured the city in 666/1268. 120 Tripoli was demolished by the Mamluks in 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 Baṭṭūṭa indicating the same for the latter. 122 On the other hand, the ports that were the last Crusader strongholds, Tyre and Acre, were completely ruined after the Mamluk conquest, according

118. Ibn Jubayr 1981: 224; 1952: 288; Yāqūt al-Hamawī 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, but only to quote from older sources, so his text gives no indication of its current size.


to Abū l-Fidāʾ, who participated in the capture of the latter. 123 Between them, the formerly important port of Ṣaydā was in the fourteenth century merely a small village, while further south Qaysāriyya, Arsūf, and ʿAsqalān were also ruined. 124 Abū l-Fidāʾ seems to indicate that the main beneficiaries of this coastal destruction were Gaza, which became the main port for traders from the Hijāz, and the Cilician port of Āyās in the Armenian kingdom, which became the preferred port for Christian merchants from Europe; between them, Yāfā was the only port he identified as still active. 125 The coastal areas, where the early Islamization was most thoroughly reversed by the period of Crusader rule, were devastated rather than reconverted by the conquerors from Cairo, who generally moved their governmental centers inland.

Under Greek and Crusader rule, the coastline and northern Syria probably had a higher proportion of Christians than other regions. After the Mamluk devastation of the coastline, northern Syria remained the place where Christians were most frequently mentioned by geographers. 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 by Christians still in the fourteenth century. 126 Otherwise, references to Christian populations in Syria 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 Hamā, for which Christians would gather from all over northern Syria: Himṣ, Shayzar, Salamiyya, Kafr Ṭāb, Abū Qubays, Maṣyāf, Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān, Tīzīn, al-Bāb, Buzāʿa, al-Fūʿa, and Aleppo. 127 The annual festival at Dayr al-Fārūs outside Latakia likewise made an impression on al-Dimashqī, Abū l-Fidāʾ, and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa. 128 Urban Christian populations are indicated at Anṭarsūs on the coast and in Damascus, where Ibn Baṭṭūṭa recounted the combined prayer procession 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, according to al-Dimashqī. 130 On the other hand, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa adapted Ibn Jubayr’s description of the villages in the Ghūṭa around Damascus, adding Friday mosques and markets to the earlier traveler’s bathhouses as indicative of what most villages near Damascus possessed in the fourteenth century. 131 In rural areas, roads were important locations of non-Muslim visibility to the Muslim population. One of the main roads from Iraq to Damascus passed through al-Sukhna, east of Himṣ, 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-Hamawī 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 but still 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-Dimashqī omit 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.


he described it as “a fine town, most of whose inhabitants are Christian infidels.” 132 Closer to Damascus, the town of Qāra was described by Yāqūt as the first stopping point on the straight road from Himṣ 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 there under treaty and in which there are no Muslims.” 134 In the fourteenth century Abū l-Fidāʾ modified the description of Qāra’s population to “predominantly Christian,” indicating that this 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 former of 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 a small Muslim presence.

Following the Ottoman conquest of the early sixteenth century, tax registers survive that permit a more detailed summary of the state of religious diversity in Syria. These records indicate a small and almost exclusively urban Jewish population, comprising perhaps 2.6% of the population of Aleppo in 924/1518, 6% of Damascus in ca. 950/1543, and around twenty years 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% of Ṣafad, north of Tiberias, in the same year, 10% of Gaza in the same year, 2% of Hebron in 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, with the addition of the newly prominent Jewish center of Ṣafad. But this shift primarily reflects a decrease in the Jewish populations of inland Syria: the number of Jewish households in Jerusalem 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 Damascus was only a little over one-sixth what the twelfth-century traveler reported, and the Jewish population of Aleppo was a mere 6% of Benjamin of Tudela’s figure. 140 Over the course of the sixteenth century, Ṣafad would rise to prominence as the Jewish capital of Syria, until in the 970s/1560s the city had almost twice as many Jewish households as Damascus did, and its total population was almost evenly split between Jews and Muslims. 141

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

132. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 1964, 2: 175; 1958, 4: 916.133. Yāqūt al-Hamawī 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 variability is larger and less controlled.

138. Cohen and Lewis 1978: 94, 111, 128, 149, 161. Samaritans made up about 2.5% each of Gaza and Nābulus in 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 of Tudela (1907: 22, כג) mentioned 200 Jewish men; cf. Cohen and Lewis 1978: 94.

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


ern Syria under the early Mamluks, the Ottoman tax register of 943/1536 for the province of Aleppo presents a total population that was about 98% Muslim and 2% Christian. 142 In that 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 Hamā (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 A sizeable 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 reported as 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 into the Ramaḍānid principality or the Dulqādir province and thus not included in the register for the province of Aleppo, but the Christian population around Aleppo is far below what one might expect from the geographers’ characterizations. Perhaps the instability of the fifteenth century, when the area around Aleppo was again a frontier zone between the Mamluk rulers in Cairo and their Türkmen neighbors to the north and east, encouraged religious minorities to convert to Islam or emigrate to more stable regions.

Within the province of Damascus, the bulk of the Christian population was rural, although substantial numbers of urban Christians inhabited Gaza, Jerusalem, Beirut, Baʿlabakk, and the city of Damascus itself. 145 The town of Qāra, the important stopping-place between Damascus and Himṣ, was slightly over half Muslim by ca. 930/1523, and the surrounding countryside 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 outnumbered Muslims two to one in the middle of the sixteenth century. 147 On the other hand, large areas of 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 at the beginning of Ottoman rule than when incorporated into the Mamluk empire. The Syria registered 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 before 932/1526 and after 978/1570, but even including them would give a Jewish population of 0.5% of the province as a whole (ibid.: 15, 17).

143. Şener and Dutoğlu 2010: 16–17. The town of al-Quṣayr near Antioch should not be confused with the more famous town southwest of Himṣ, 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, had very 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 had about 20% and 10% Christian populations respectively in ca. 950/1543 (Bakhit 1982a: 41, 74).


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 expense manager 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 Muslim ruler employing a skilled non-Muslim. Later geographers transformed this account in ways that 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, but his 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 hiding them 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, Yāqūt al-Hamawī revisited Sulaymān’s construction of al-Ramla, but in his account the Christian accountant 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 order to destroy the church. 151 Finally, in the fourteenth century Abū l-Fidāʾ expanded on the animosity 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 large as al-Ramla, and was still around 40% Christian. 153 Even where non-Muslims continued to be a substantial portion of the population in Syria, the non-Muslim role in the construction of 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 of Islamization. These works remind us that Islamization was more than just the progressive conversion to Islam of the populace of Syria, but included the construction or conversion of mosques and the diffusion into the countryside. In the earliest period, Islam seems to be the religion only of the ruling elites and garrisons in cities and coastal towns, and some of the nomadic Arabs in the countryside. The evidence for sedentary rural Muslim populations, and for Muslim shrines outside of the cities, begins only in the geographies of the tenth century, and grows quickly in the subsequent period. The invasions of the Byzantines and the Crusaders divided Syria between Christian and Muslim rule, which reversed the trend of Islamization in areas under their rule, particularly in northern Syria and along the coast. Frankish governance in particular seems to have encouraged Jews to settle outside of Filasṭīn and inland, under Muslim rule. The division of government created two axes of differential Islamization within Syria, one north-south and the other coastal-inland. With the Mamluk devastation of the coast in the process of conquest, geographical works of the period came to mention Christian populations and institutions primarily in the urban and rural areas of northern Syria. Although Islam was now as much a peasant’s religion as a ruler’s, pockets of Syria remained entirely or largely non-Muslim to the end of Mamluk rule.

In light of the long duration process of Islamization, Bulliet’s conversion curve seems too steep and too early to represent the population of Syria as a whole. This is unsurprising

149. Al-Balādhurī 1957: 195; 1916: 220.150. Al-Muqaddasī 1906: 165; 1994: 151.151. Yāqūt al-Hamawī 1990, 3: 79. It is not clear in this account whether the scribe should still be thought of

as a Christian or not.152. Abū l-Fidāʾ 1840, 1: 241; 2,2: 18.153. Bakhit 1982a: 56.


for a graph based on the naming practices of the ancestors of ulema, which likely represent families that have been Muslim on average longer than families without Islamic religious experts. 154 The one-dimensional increase of Muslims as a proportion of the population, an artifact of Bulliet’s use of a summative S-curve, has been shown to be false for portions of Syria that came under Byzantine or Crusader rule, and the late proliferation of specifically Islamic rural shrines in the twelfth century, which was likely a contributing cause rather than an effect of the conversion of the rural population, reveals that Bulliet’s date of 1010 (1979: 131) for the “essential completion” of “the primary conversion process” is too early. The use of geographical works has also permitted a more locally nuanced account of the process of Islamization within one region considered by Bulliet, showing that different parts of Syria experienced very different trajectories of Islamization. 155

This study largely supplements the work of Levtzion and enriches our understanding of the process of conversion, where he was compelled by his sources to speak in generalities and, with regard to Islamization in particular, primarily about shifting government attitudes. The effect of religious spaces shared among Muslims, Jews, and Christians on the Islamiza-tion of Syria adds a new dimension to Levtzion’s account (1990: 297–99) of conversion to Islam largely in terms of governmental pressures and mob violence. The partial reversal of Islamization due to Byzantine and Frankish rule also puts a significant question mark next to his assertion (p. 299) that Middle Eastern Christians preferred Muslim to Christian rule. Some Christians who were particularly negatively affected by Byzantine or Crusader rulers likely did applaud the Mamluk conquests, but the areas that remained under Muslim rule experienced rural Islamization faster than areas conquered by Christians.

Research into Islamization has often focused on trying to identify an “age of conversions” in which the majority of a population had adopted Islam, sometimes even referring to the achievement of demographic majority as a “tipping point.” This study has omitted any spec-ulations regarding the date at which Islam became the religion of the demographic majority for three reasons. One is simply the lack of evidence that could validate such speculation. More importantly, such speculation ascribes an unwarranted significance to demographic precision and presumes an erroneous shape of Islamization. Premodern authors remarked on the relative size of religious groups, not with respect to large regions such as Syria, but with respect to specific locales such as particular cities or towns. 156 This is typical for phe-nomena that had no imperial significance but could affect daily life. However, it is difficult to see how the experience of living in a locale with large groups of non-Muslims would be noticeably different whether Muslims constituted 45% or 55% of the total population. No “tipping point” was proposed in this study because the conversion of 50.1% of the popu-lation had no significance. That is the second reason. Thirdly, Islamization was a complex process with different dynamics in different periods. To suggest an approximate date for a

154. The elite bias of biographical dictionaries has been pointed out by critics of Bulliet, and their complaints discussed by Morony 1990: 138; Harrison 2012: 38–39. These commentators omitted the specifically Muslim dimension of ulema elitism, since first-generation converts to Islam were rarely included among the ulema after the seventh century. While Harrison is correct to point out that basically all premodern literary sources are elitist, the geographical works used in this article may be less sharply elitist than biographical dictionaries.

155. Morony (1990: 138) suggested refining Bulliet’s conclusions for Iran by considering intra-regional differences.156. Tamer el-Leithy (2005: 27) pointed out both medieval Muslims’ general lack of interest in relative reli-

gious demography and the important but often overlooked lack of political significance associated with demo-graphic strength. El-Leithy’s remarks are a very necessary corrective, even if relative demographic strength might have had other social and cultural impacts despite medieval historians’ neglect, such as which holidays drew large crowds or whether the presence of non-Muslims was considered common or bizarre.


Muslim demographic majority, in Syria or any sub-region, would imply that Islamization was merely demographic, and only quantitatively different at different times. Islamization includes demographic change, but the qualitatively different character of processes of Islam-ization in different periods, from early conversions of Arab nomads and garrisons of major cities to the late medieval proliferation of Islamic shrines, cannot be reduced to proportions of populations.

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

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