The Termination of Hostilities in the Early Arab Conquests A.D
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THE TERMINATION OF HOSTILITIES IN THE EARLY ARAB CONQUESTS A.D. 654 - 656 b y D. R. H ill Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in Engineering of the U n iv e r sity of London 1949 Master of Letters of the University of Durham 1964 Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers Member <f the Institute of Linguists Thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy U n iv e r sity o f London March 1970 ProQuest Number: 11010373 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11010373 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 I ABSTRACT The work d eals with the Arab conquests from the f i r s t invasions of foreign territory up to the death of ‘uthman. The subject-matter comprises the reduction, pacification and occupation of the conquered areas, data being drawn from the major Arabic sources, from some Persian local histories, and from two Christian historians. A computer was used to assist in processing the information, the resulting documents being used in sorting, presenting and analysing the data. The work c o n s is ts o f th e fo llo w in g se ctio n s: I. Introduction. II. List of Primary sources, Secondary works and Isnads. III. Appraisal of the Sources. IV. Reports and Commentaries by Regions. For each region the reports on Terminations of H ostilities are presented systematically in categories, each report with full references. This list is followed by a Commentary, g iv in g f i r s t a b r ie f survey o f the conquest, and then a discussion and evaluation of the reports. V. Analysis of the Reports and Conclusion. The reports are considered as a whole, and are analysed by quantitative and qualitative methods. In the Conclusion the results of the work are summarized and a brief assessment is made of the effect of the Terminations of H ostilities upon the outcome of the conquests. 3. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my thanks to Professor Bernard Lewis for his valuable advice and suggestions. I would also like to thank Mr. F.R.C.Bagley, of the U n iv ersity o f Durham, fo r h is a ssista n c e over a number o f years, and the staffs of the Libraries of the School of Oriental Studies, University of Durham, and the School of Oriental aid African Studies. Finally I would like to express my appreciation for the unfailing encouragement and support I have received from my w ife. 4. CONTENTS Section Title Page A bstract ........................................................... Acknowledgements ..................................... I Introduction ................................................ II List of Sources, Works, and Isnads . • III Appraisal of Sources ........................... IV Reports and Commentaries by Regions., A. Egypt and N u b ia......................... B. North A frica ......................... C. S y ria *• •» •• •• •• D. Al-Jazira (Mesopotamia) .. E. ‘ira q ................................................ P. South and Central Persia •• Gr. North Persia ......................... H. Armenia ......................... V Analysis of Sources and Conclusion S ectio n I - INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION i) Purpose and Scope of the Work The purpose of this woifc is twofold: first, to present in a form readily available for reference the data given in the sources on the Termination of H ostilities - reports of treaties, conquests, and the terms imposed upon or agreed with the conquered peoples; secondly to evaluate the data, assess the reliability of the various reports, aad estimate the military and political effects of these terminations of hostilities in the immediate aftermath cf the early conquests. The period chosen for research is from A.D. 634/A.H. 12 to A.D. 656 /A.H. 35, i*e* from the first significant incursions into Byzantine and Sasanid territory until the death of ‘uthman. This, it is felt, is a clearly defined period of the Muslim conquests, which saw the permanent conquest of Egypt, Greater Syria, *Iraq, Mesopotamia, and the Iranian plateau, and the beginning of fu ll- scale operations in North Africa, Northern 5ran, and Armenia. In this period also can be placed the beginnings of Muslim civil ad ministration, the establishment of garrison towns, and the first considerable migrations of tribal Arabs into the conquered areas. This, the first phase of the Muslim expansion, ended at, or just before, the assassination of *Uthman. The internal dissensions which preceded and followed this event, which are themselves partly attributable to the success of the first conquests, appear to have caused a prolonged hiatus in the progress of Muslim arms, a progress which was not resumed with fu ll energy until the Umayyads were firmly installed in power. The subject has also been limited in two other ways. It was felt advisable to confine discussion to land operations. Seaborne operations were mainly a later development, and would certainly repay further detailed study, which is, however, beyond the scope of the present work. Nor was it felt desirable to include a specific examination of legal or fiscal problems, except insofar as they impinge upon military considerations. The early fiqh authors were, of course, consulted for the valuable narratives of the conquests which they contain. ii) Data Processing In the sources there are many hundreds of reports on the termination of hostilities. Although many reports are similar, others show wide variations; treaties for Khurasan, for instance, are quite different from treaties for Egypt, but, in addition, different reports forihe same event often vary widely. The process ing of this diverse data presented a certain problem, a difficult problem to resolve by conventional means, but one which lent itself 8 . admirably to resolution by formal treatment. It was decided, therefore, to code the reports, record them on data processing sheets, then onto punched cards, and finally sort the accumulated information on a computer. An ordinary electro-mechanical sorter with printing fa cilities, although more cumbersome, would have been equaEy effective, but the computer was preferred for two reasons. First, it was readily accessible to the author, and secondly its use in this manner gave valuable experience for fu tu re developments o f a more complex nature. The f a c i l i t y provided by a computer, for storing, and adding to, information on magnetic tape, and abstracting that information in the form required, especially if the output can give predictive results, obviously has wide applications for historical research. The method adopted fo r the presen t work was as fo llo w s: each report was coded for sorting, the first major key beingby area, to gi've a printout sorted into eight regicns. The second, and most important, coding was by nine keys, each for a given statement. If that statement occurred a 'Yf for 'Yes' was in serted, if not a 'N* for 'No1 was written. These statements were 1. eulh 2. aman 5. dhimma 4. .iiz.va 5. kharaj 6. tribute 7. other conditions 8. Shart 9. *Ahd. The final, minor, key was by Hijra date. All other relevant information - item no., source, isnad, place name, how the conquest was achieved, the contracting parties, and other details - was added on the data sheet, or on a separate handwritten card, or on both. A simple COBOL program was then written for the computer (a Honeywell Series *200' machine) requesting two different reports 1. Divided into regions, then sorted into terminations with identical terms, finally by Hijra date. 2. As 1. but not divided Into regions. These reports, to gather with the handwritten cards, then became the working documents for the preparation of the thesis in its final form. The writer found that this approach offered several advantages One was the convenience, once the coding had been established, of recording the date. More important was that one could defer the introduction of a typology until after the material had been coded and sorted, hence minimising the temptation to establish a pattern prematurely. Working with the computer facilitated orderly pre sentation of data, and moreover showed certain salient features at a glance e.g. the prevalence of 'tribute1 type treaties in Khurasan. iii) Presentation Section II lists the Primary sources, with the abbreviations used in references, the Secondary sources, and the Isnads. All isnads given were recorded and are included in this list, with the code which is used in the references. Section III is a discussion of the sources. This section is followed by the main part of the work, presented by regions, eachregion having first a list of reports, then an evalu ation o f th ese rep o rts and an ap p reciation . The f in a l se c tio n of the work is devoted to a brief analysis of the reports, and the Conclusion. The regional sections, therefore, consist of two parts - attestations aid commentary, aid the two are kept quite separate. The reports are set down without comments, either upon their con tents or their reliability, this evaluation being reserved for the second part of the section. The reports gire either the substance of the text or an exact translation; in the latter case, the state ment is placed in quotation marks.