UNDERSTANDING ISLAM II

SETTING THE STAGE FOR MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM

By Paul Stenhouse

This is the second of a series of seven articles

WHEN EMPEROR THEODOSIUS I died in 395 AD, Arcadius [395-408], his older son, inherited the Eastern , and ruled from Constantinople; Honorius [393-423] the younger son, inherited the Western Empire, and ruled from Milan, and then from Ravenna in northern Italy. Both were minors. Honorius was under the guardianship of Stilicho, a brilliant commander who ably defended Italy against the invading Goths. The last Western Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was to die in 476. From that time the Roman Empire was ruled from the East, from Constantinople.

N 405 AD ALARIC, leader Honorius found Stilicho's loyal troops Years ago I read with interest 'If of the Visigoth [Western defected in large numbers to Alaric. Don John of Austria had married Goth] hordes, was advancing Had Honorius done none of those, Mary Queen of Scots' by G. K. towards Italy from the East. would Aleric the Visigoth and his Chesterton; and 'If Louis XVI had What if ... the young horde still have succeeded in 410 AD taken the advice of Anne Robert and inexperienced Western in doing the unimaginable? Would Jacques Turgot his brilliant Finance emperor Honorius had not they - for the first time in eight Minister and instituted the reforms he authorized the withdrawal of all the hundred years - have'been able to recommended,' by Andre Maurois. legions on Rome's northern border besiege and sack Roma Pulcherrima, Both were published in 1932. Along along the Rhine river in 402/403? 'Rome most beautiful,' as Virgil with an article by Winston Churchill Having done so, in the unusually cold described her, and lux orbis terrarum 'If Lee had not won the battle of winter of 406 when the Rhine was et arx omnium gentium 'light of the Gettysburg. ^ deeply frozen over, hostile Germanic world, and refuge of all peoples,' in History is littered with these 'What tribes - the Alans, Suebi and Vandals the words of Cicero?' if ...'s. - were able to cross it, passing This is as true of the history of unchallenged <> <> <> Muhammad by the many and the rise unmanned of Islam as it Roman forts. is of the fall Perhaps more of the Roman to the point, empire; or of what if ... the the beheading same emperor of Mary Queen Honorius of Scots for hadn't listened treason based to malicious on largely gossip from circumstantial jealous courtiers evidence; or and allowed his of the fall of most capable the Bourbons general, his in France after mentor and his more than 500 father-in-law Flavius Stilicho, years, with to be arrested the beheading and executed in HAGIA SOPHIA, the cathedral built in Constantinople by Emperor Justinian between 532-537. It is now a of Louis XVI museum in Istanbul. The disc on the right has the name 'Uthman, the 3rd Caliph after Muhammad. The and Marie August 408 ? disc on the left has the name 'AH - the 4th Caliph. In the background, the disc on the right reads Allah, Having done so. and the one on the left reads Muhammad. Antoinette.

ANNALS AUSTRAU^SIA 6 APRlLyMAY2015 internal dissension neither empire From Chevalier Press would be prepared for the fierce assaults from an unexpected quarter - nomadic Arab Muslim forces from the FIRST & SECOND MACCABEES Hijaz in north westem Arabia. Damascus would fall in 635 AD, and the whole of the Roman province of Syria would be lost from north to south by 636. the Persian capital, and the once mighty Persian empire, would cease to exist by 637. Baghdad would be built from Ctesiphon's ruins. Constantinople would hold on for another eight hundred years, until 1453, but by then the city of 'New Rome' built by Constantine the Great between 324 and 330 AD, would be all that was left of the once vast Byzantine Empire. It would be steadily gnawed away by Persians, Seljuk and Ottoman Turks, Turkomans, Huns, Vandals, Avars, Alans, Visigoths and Introductory Commentaries Ostrogoths and all manner of Muslim MICHAEL FALLON, MSC forces. Impregnable Constantinople, the pearl in the vanished empire's These two very different books tell the story of the successful struggle crown, would fall to the Turks on of the Jews to hold on to their faith and their religious traditions against Tuesday May 29, 1453. But that all the overwhelming pressure to be part of the Hellenistic culture that still lay in the future. threatened to swamp them in the second century BC. I Maccabees highlights the heroic resistance of the priest Mattathias, and the brilliant Byzantine and Persian and finally successful guerrilla campaign led by his sons Judas, Jonathan Empires: What might and Simon. II Maccabees was written a decade later. It recognizes the have been providential significance of Judas Maccabaeus (after whom the books In 581 AD Flavius Mauricius are named), but the author's focus is on God, not on the Hasmonaean Tiberius Augustus was crowned dynasty of which he clearly disapproves. Byzantine emperor in Constantinople. $20.00 [includes GST and postage within Australia] He inherited a bankrupt empire that Available now from CHEVALIER PRESS PO Box 13, Kensington NSW 2033 on and off for more than a century had been obliged to pay untold Ph:(02) 9662 7894, (02) 9562 7188. Fax: (02) 9662 1910 thousands of pounds of gold each Email: [email protected] year to successive Parthian/Sasanian ASK FOR A LIST OF OUR OTHER CATHOLIC PUBLICATIONS emperors of Persia as tribute for an uneasy peace between the two empires. A war to spawn That war was to wage, on and off, Then, in 590, Persian balance of countless wars for one hundred and twenty-six years. power shifted. The Sasanian king It would prepare the way for the of Persia Hormizd IV was deposed, In 502 AD war broke out between rise of Political Islam that, in the blinded and killed. His son, Khosrau the Eastern Roman - the Byzantine words of Reinhart Dozy, would II, was proclaimed king in a coup - Empire and the Parthian/Sasanid unleash untold centuries of war that organized by two of Khosrau's Empire of Persia. Emperor Kavad 'would drench Spain and Sicily, the Parthian uncles, Vinduyih and I needed money to pay off the deserts of Atlas and the banks of the Vistahm - his mother's brothers. , known as the White Huns, Ganges with blood'.^ The young king was quickly who had helped him regain the throne When the war between Ctesiphon deposed in his turn by his own of Persia. When the Byzantine Emperor and Constantinople ended in 628 AD military commander-in-chief Bahram Anastasius I refused to pay the subsidy both empires would be exhausted Chobin, and fled to Syria, or, demanded, Kavad declared war. financially and militarily. Riven by according to some, to Constantinople, ANNALS AUSTRALASIA 7 APRIL/MAY 2015 with his uncles. Against the advice commanders in dealing with their settlements and laying siege to Bosra of his Senate, Byzantine emperor Arab 'allies'. in southern Syria. Mundhir's eldest Maurice decided to help the young In 573 Mundhir, sheikh of the son negotiated with Maurice, and Persian prince regain his throne. powerful Ghassani Arab clan, learnt under a guarantee of safe-conduct In 591 a combined Byzantine- by chance, of a plot to kill him went to Constantinople where he Persian army won a decisive victory that involved Emperor Justin II. was treacherously packed off to join over the usurper, and Khosrau 11 was Mundhir renounced his allegiance his father in Sicily. restored to the throne of Persia in to Constantinople and allowed Arab In 599 or 600, apparently strapped Ctesiphon. He would occupy it for the forces loyal to the Persians to attack for cash, Maurice - then emperor next thirty-seven years, until 628. Byzantine territory. After some time - refused to ransom 12,000 of his So far so good. Or ... was it? the situation was normalised, but soldiers who had been captured by Khosrau II rewarded Maurice by deceit and mutual mistrust were fierce Avars - nomadic mounted granting him western Armenia up to rife.^ warriors of Scythian origin, cousins lakes Van and Sevan, and a number In 580, before Maurice became to the dreaded Huns. The prisoners of cities, including Martyropolis and emperor, he was commander of a were executed by their captors and Yerevan. combined force of Byzantine and a subsequent Byzantine military The Byzantine Empire had never Ghassani forces aiming to capture delegation headed by an officer been so powerful. The peace between Ctesiphon. The attack had to be called Phocas was humiliated and Ctesiphon and Constantinople meant called off when it became clear that ignored in Constantinople. that no tribute needed to be paid. An the Persians had been alerted to their In 602, again perhaps because of unprecedented Golden Age seemed to plans. Maurice shifted blame onto lack of money to pay his soldiers, be looming. sheikh Mundhir who was accused of Maurice ordered the army to winter A series of regrettable and treason, and exiled to Sicily. beyond the Danube. The army avoidable bad judgements over the His four sons and the whole protested and eventually mutinied, next ten years by 'the two monarchs Ghassan clan responded by pillaging demanded that Maurice abdicate and which balance the world; the two Byzantine towns and military nominated Phocas as emperor. great luminaries by whom it is vivified and adorned,'" put an end to that dream. And set the stage, as we shall see, for much else besides. The Shroud of Turin Mis-steps by HERE ARE two possibilities, the scientists write, on how the sheet of Emperor Maurice Tthe Shroud was placed around the corpse: placed above and below (not in full contact with the whole body stiffened by rigor mortis) or For long-term security from pressed on the body and tied In order to be in contact with almost the sudden military incursions by entire body surface. 'The first method Is supported by the fact that there enemies, Byzantines and Persians is a precise relationship between the intensity (gradient) of the Image alike depended on friendly Arab and the distance between the body and the cloth. Furthermore, the clans whose encampments dotted the image is also present in areas of the body not in contact with the cloth, deserts, and the fringes of towns and such as immediately above and below the hands, and around the tip of cities of both empires. the nose. The second method is less likely because the typical geometric Not all Byzantine commanders deformations of a three dimension body brought into contact In two were brilliant strategists like the dimension sheet are missing. Moreover, there is no imprint of body Bulgarian-born General Flavius hips. Consequently, we can deduce that the Image was not formed by Belisarius who died in 565 AD. contact between linen and body'. It Is this observation, 'coupled with He defeated Persians, Vandals the extreme superficiality of the colouring and the lack of pigments' that and Ostrogoths by using military 'makes It extremely unlikely that a shroud-like picture was obtained using strategies employed by the Eastern a chemical contact method, both in a modern laboratory and even more Empire's fiercest enemies, the Huns so by a hypothetical medieval forger'. 'There is no image beneath the and the Goths. bloodstains. This means that the traces of blood were deposited before Few Byzantine commanders were the image was. Therefore, the image was formed after the corpse was as flexible as Belisarius. The Persians, laid down. Furthermore, all the blood stains have well-defined edges, no on the other hand, were skilled in burrs, so it can be assumed that the corpse was not removed from the adjusting to desert conditions and sheet. 'There are no signs of putrefaction near the orifices, which usually cooperating with their Arab allies who occur around 40 hours after death. Consequently, the image is not the knew the terrain and how to turn it to result of putrefaction gases and the corpse was not left in the sheet for their advantage, better than they. more than two days'. Byzantine emperors were no ~ The Holy Shroud, New research from ENEA on the sacred Linen kept in Turin, by Marco Tosatti, Rome. less clumsy than their military ANNALS AUSTRALASIA 8 APRIL/MAY 2015 Maurice fled to Chalcedon, and and the Persians in the ongoing wars to re-possess the Armenian territory was captured. On November 27, between the two empires. he had granted to Maurice in 691. He 602, he was forced to watch five of Nu'man had evidently refused to reclaimed that lost territory, and then his sons being killed before he was help the young prince Khosrau II in his armies invaded Syria. In 608 they himself beheaded. Theodosius, his his fight with Bahram back in 590 and were heading towards Constantinople. heir, had fled towards Ctesiphon - Khosrau still nursed a grudge. He put reminiscent of youthful Khosrau II's a puppet on the throne of Hira - lyas The Emperor flight in 590 - was apprehended, ibn QabTja who had helped him when In 610, a thirty-six year old and then beheaded in Nicea. he was fleeing Bahram. soldier with red-gold hair and almost Maurice's wife Constantina, and her Khosrau, had foolishly cut his nose excessive personal courage - Flavius three daughters were beheaded at off to spite his face. His empire would Heraclius Augustus - rebelled against Chalcedon sometime in 605. not long survive his removing the last emperor Phocas, killed him and was Lakhmid king loyal to the Persian Mis-Steps by throne. For centuries the Lakhmids crowned Byzantine emperor. King Khosrau 11 had been a feared and respected buffer He tried to make peace with In the meantime in Persia, Khosrau against nomadic Arab infiltration of Khosrau II but the latter had lost II had grown suspicious of his Persia's borders. With Nu'man a patience with Byzantine double-talk. conspiring uncles to whom he owed victim He had the unfortunate ambassadors his throne. He had rewarded them -fj^.-- of Heraclius sent for this purpose, killed. with positions of power. Realising Heraclius was to reign until 641. his mistake, he quickly had He would live to see Islam arise as Vinduyih executed, but self-proclaimed heir presumptive Vistahm rebelled in to the thrones of Zoroastrian 594/5 when he heard Ctesiphon and Christian of his brother's fate Constantinople. But that was and the battle for still in the future. power between nephew and uncle Jerusalem falls ~ actually between to the Persians Sasanian and Parthian - dragged In 614 - probably on for seven in spring or summer as crippling years. this was the time that Even after Vistahm ancient societies went to was assassinated, his war^ - the Persian army troops fought on and under command of General the rebellion was not , laid siege to quelled until 602. Jerusalem. In 602 Kosrau II After twenty-one days the city miscalculated again by setting fell, tens of thousands of Christians a trap for an Arab ally whom he were killed, and many more thousands thought to be an enemy. He enticed enslaved, many churches were A gold coin of Khosrau II, him to Ctesiphon with a letter that emperor of Persia 590-628 AD destroyed, the Church of the Holy said, 'the King has business with Sepulchre was set on fire, and the you'.' He arrived and was imprisoned Holy Cross was taken to Ctesiphon as Khosrau's duplicity, Persia lost its in a Sasanian fortress at Khaniqin to spoils of war.' the north east of Ctesiphon, where he most powerful defence on its south The Persians conquered Egypt died. This, however, was no ordinary western flank, and would prove to be in 618. Meanwhile the Byzantines Arab enemy. helpless against the hostile Muslim were disrupted by internal disputes He was a powerful Arab king, Arab forces that would build up and rebellions, and were under Nu'man IV who ruled the Lakhmid within twenty-eight years in north dynasty whose centre was Hira, on westem Arabia.' pressure from hordes of Avars who the west bank of the Euphrates, not When news had reached him of were moving from their camps in far from Ctesiphon. His Arab subjects the coup in Constantinople, Khosrau Hungary, through Thrace, to attack were mainly Christian. Since the late II was probably genuinely offended Constantinople. With Palestine, Syria 4* century the clans that made up this by the shameful murder of his patron and Alexandria lost, Constantinople powerful Arab kingdom had alternated and his sons in November that year. 'was hemmed in by the Mongols on between supporting the Byzantines, But, just as probably, was he anxious the land and the Persians on the sea'.^° ANNALS AUSTRAiT^SIA 9 APRIUMAY2015 Heraclius defeats Khosrau II unstable Persian kingdom. Kavad a force of 3,000 Arab warriors had was to out-live his murdered father easily been repelled when they entered Heraclius, however, was biding his Khosrau II by only eight months, some villages south east of the Dead time. What seems to have re-motivated dying of the plague." Sea called Masharif and Mu'ta, before him was a blasphemous and insulting By the time Muhammad died fleeing into the desert. letter written by Khosrau II attacking in Medina in 632, the throne of It was assumed that the force had Heraclius's honour and his faith. Ctesiphon had been occupied 'by been sent to avenge the killing of an It was yet another of Khosrau's nine candidates who disputed with envoy from a nomadic Arab chieftan miscalculations. The letter was read sword or dagger the fragments of by a Ghassanid tribesman Shurahbil from the pulpits of all the churches: an exhausted monarchy'.^^ Anarchy bin 'Amr. The imperial troops decided 'You claim to put your and factionalism infested the Persian not to pursue the fleeing nomads.^" confidence in God; then why has he not saved Caesarea, Jerusalem and empire and the whole region. Had the imperial troops known that Antioch from my hands? If I desire The Byzantines, however, the murdered envoy was Al-Harith bin it can I not destroy Constantinople recovered all their territories as well as 'Umair,^^ and that he had been sent in exactly the same fashion? As for their soldiers who had been captured. by Muhammad bearing a letter to the your Christ, do not deceive yourself They received war damages, along Ghassani Prince of Bosra - capital by reposing vain hopes in Him: He with the and other relics of the Roman Province of Arabia, was not even capable of Saving taken from Jerusalem in 614.^^ It was and today a town in southern Syria Himself from the hands of the Jews only after this victory that Heraclius - inviting him to convert to Islam, who crucified Him'." and his successors adopted the official would they have pursued the Arab Between April 6, 622 - the same title of as equivalent to the fighters? We shall never know. But year that Muhammad with some of his Persian title Shahanshah which meant had they pursued and defeated them followers fled from Mecca to Medina - 'King of Kings'. the course of history would almost and 626, Heraclius waged a number of But it was too late. None of this certainly have been changed. successful campaigns against Khosrau compensated for what the long Led by Muhammad's adopted son II. drawn-out war had cost. It was more Zaid ibn-Harithah, these Muslim Finally, The Byzantines moved than a century too late for Heraclius tribesmen had been sent to avenge the against the Persian capital Ctesiphon and the Persians to take seriously killing," but also to collect coveted in 627. After the Battle at Nineveh in what Greek King Pyrrus of Epirus MashrafTyah swords manufactured December that year, Persian resistance said when he was congratulated on in Masharif and Mu'ta, to be used was shattered, and Khosrau II fled to the his victory against the Romans at in Muhammad's attack on Mecca in mountains seeking help from Satraps Asculum in Italy in 279 BC: 'Another 630.2^ ' there. victory like this one, and we are Khalid ibn al-Walid led the In 628 Heraclius forced the brother- ruined'.^' They were ruined. And an shattered force back to Medina where in-law of Khosrau II, Parthian General enemy was waiting in the wings to their fellow-Muslims treated them as Shahrbaraz, to retreat from Anatolia benefit from their ruin. cowards for running away.^" when the latter attempted to capture Later to be known as Saifallah 'the Constantinople with the help of Avar The Holy Cross Restored Sword of Allah,' Khalid ibn al-Walid forces. The date of the restoration of the was to lead the Muslim forces that The Persian army rebelled and True Cross to the Basilica of the Holy would capture Damascus in 635, Khosrau was captured and imprisoned. Sepulchre is traditionally given as and in 636, at the Battle of Yarmuk, Kavad II - Khosrau's son by the September 14, 629. Heraclius bore would capture the whole of Roman Byzantine Princess Maria, daughter of the sacred relic on his own shoulders, Syria from south to north. Heraclius the emperor Maurice, Khosrau's former and divested himself of diadem and is supposed to have exclaimed on protector - proclaimed himself king of purple - the symbols of worldly that occasion: 'Farewell, O Syria: and the Sasanian/Persian Empire. He ordered authority and power - out of respect what a wonderful country this is for all his brothers and half-brothers - for the holy ground which Jesus had the enemy'." seventeen in alP^ - to be killed. walked, and where he died.^^ By 637 Ctesiphon had fallen, and On the fifth day of his father's Amid the rejoicing, storm clouds by 647 the Persian empire would imprisonment - February 25, 628 were gathering unbeknown to the cease to exist. In 651 its last Sassanian AD - Kavad ordered that Khosrau be exultant throng of worshippers, emperor Yazdajird III, aged 27, beheaded by Mihr Hurmuz whose father soldiers, diplomats and members of would be slain treacherously as he had been ill used by Khosrau." the Imperial Court. fled from the Muslim army pursuing In February 629,while the him. And emergent militant Islam Pyrric Victory Christian world was celebrating - an unfamiliar power-broker on the Then Kavad II made peace with Heraclius's restoration of the relic of world's political stage - confronted Heraclius who did not make exorbitant the True Cross to Jerusalem, his troops the ever-dwindling Byzantine empire demands on the now dangerously beyond the Jordan were reporting that of Heraclius. ANNALS AUSTRALASIA 10 APRIL/MAY 2015 What if 7 What if... heresies lilce Arianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism had not split the unity of Christians ? What if... the words of Isaiah [58, 9-10] had been taken more to heart by the Christian rulers of the Byzantine empire, and the sheikhs and kings of the Christian Arab tribes: jF YOU CEASE to pervert justice, to point the accusing finger and lay false charges, if you feed the hungry from your own plenty and satisfy the needs of the wretched, then your light will rise like dawn out of darkness and your dusk be like noonday.

Next Month: ISUTTI, the Sword or the Tax.

1. Publius Vergilius Maro aka Virgil, Georgics Book IV, 11.532-534; Marcus Tullius Cicero, Oratio IV in L. Catilinam,VI, 11. 2. //... it had Happened Otherwise, ed. J. C. Squire, Longmans, Green and Co, London, 1932, pp.21ff; 49 ff. Maurois was the pen-name of Emile Herzog. 1885-1957. 3. Reinhart Dozy, Spanish Islam, London, 1913 p.68 4. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Ward, Lock & Co. London, undated, vol.ii, p.254. 5. J. Spencer Trimington, Christianity among the Arabs in Pre-lslamic Times, Longmans, 1979, pp.185-188. 6. The History of Al-Tabari, State University of New York Press, 1999, vol. 5, p.355. 7. ibid. p.359. See also J. Spencer Trimingham, Christianity among the Arabs in Pre-lsiamic Times, Longman London, 1979. p.200. 8. 2 Sam 11,1. 9. Philip Hitti, History of the Arabs, Macmillan 1968, pp.254-265. 10. H. Daniel-Rops, The Church in the Dark Ages, J. M. Dent and Sons, London, 1959 pp, 315-316. 11. /bid. p.315. 12. Sic ! Al-Tabari, vol.cit. p.398; Gibbon, ml.cit. p.280. says 'eighteen'. Other sources read 'twenty-four' or 'fifteen'. 13. Al-Tabari vol.cit. pp.395-398. 14. Al-Tabari, ml.cit. p.399. The Byzantine historian Theophanes claims that he was poisoned by his step-mother according to A Christensen, L'Iran sous les Sassanides, 2" enlarged ed. Copenhagen, 1944, p.497. note^ 15. vol.cit. p.280 16. Al-Tabari vol.cit. pp.404-405] records a tradition that would have the Holy Cross returned by Buran, daughter of Khosrau II who was the third successor as ruler of Ctesiphon after the death of her brother Kavad II. She reigned for one year and four months. 17. Plutarch's Lives, by John and William Langhorne, Ward, Lock & Co., London, undated, 'Pyrrhus,' p. 284. 18. Daniel-Rops, op.cit. p.317. 19. Jumada 1, AH [after the Hijra] 8. 20. Ibn Ishaq, in the edition of ibn Hisham: As-Sira on-Nabawlyyah, Dar Ehia al-Tourath al-Arabi, Rue Dakkkache, Beirut, Lebanon, vol.4, pp. 25-26. See also pp. 20ff. Cf also Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, ed. by CosimoClassics, New York, 2006, p.377. 21. Margoliouth, op.cit., loc.cit. 22. ibid. 23. Hitti, op.c/t.p.l47. 24. Ibn Ishaq, ed.cit. p.30. 25. Hitti. op. cit. p.152.