Reviewed
by Dr Youssef Choueiri, University of Manchester
The
main aim of this book is to answer the following question: how does one account
for the speed with which the Arab empire was built? The period covered extends
from the rise of Islam down to the middle of the eighth century. The question
posed is largely rhetorical, intended to show that what was referred to as
‘staggering’, ‘near-miraculous’ or ‘a human tsunami speeding outwards’ was a much
more complicated affair. In other words, the author’s aim is to demonstrate
that the Arab conquests were a long-drawn process rather than a mere event as
some Western scholars, relying on Arabic sources of the ninth century, tend to
think. This reversal of starting points or conclusions is said to have become
feasible as a result of the discovery or rediscovery of a number of seventh and
eighth-century Christian and non-Arabic texts. Within this broad aim the author
wishes, in addition, to rehabilitate the subdued voices of the vanquished and
non-Muslim elements in both their attempts to repulse the conquests or
contribute to their ultimate success. The argument is underpinned by a running
thread that flags the underlying ‘Arab’ rather than the ‘Islamic’ character of
these conquests. In this respect Hoyland parts company with a large host of
historians who take the Islamic identity of these conquests for granted.
As
the author of a number of books on the history of the Arabs, including Arabia
and the Arabs, Robert Hoyland is ideally positioned to tackle such questions.
His historical methodology belongs to a school of thought that throws doubt on
the reliability of Arab sources and consequently seeks its primary data from
non-Muslim accounts which are considered to have been compiled as almost
eye-witness reports. In this sense, Arab historical accounts, produced almost
two centuries after the event under study, are deemed secondary sources that
have to be treated with extreme caution. Although, taken at its face value,
such a judgment seems a plausible one, it promises more than it can deliver.
It
is appropriate at the outset to point out that Hoyland’s non-Arabic sources are
largely of a fragmentary nature, with no connected narrative capable of drawing
together all the details in a consistent and comprehensive manner. The
authorities in question, listed in the select bibliography under ‘Key primary
sources’ (p. 282), refer to chronicles on various regions, such as that of
Sebeos, The Armenian History, and Theophanes’s Chronographia. Nevertheless,
included in the same list are some of the most renowned Arab and Muslim
historians, Baladhuri,Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam , Khalifa and Tabari. It is these last
sources that allow the historian to situate a certain event, or verify a date
,by furnishing one with a clear framework or structure.
That
said, In God’s Path offers a lively and fresh account of the Arab conquests.
While narration dominates and interpretation is introduced at the end of each
chapter as a sort of afterthought, this does not detract from the meticulously
laid out plan which carries forward the story in its successive stages. This
approach operates at two levels, whereby a straightforward narration of events
is immediately followed by an analysis of their significance and long-term
consequences. Seen from a generous angle, and having the non-specialist in
mind, this approach has much to commend it. But by serving a beginner’s
curiosity, it falls short of treating history as more than a mere logical or
plausible story, and neglects the complex characteristics of the conquests
adumbrated above. With each chapter offering a controlled narration of a
particular battle or series of battles, and a tentative explanation of that
battle and its consequences, much of the complexion and texture of this history
is lost. In other words, instead of weaving his own interpretation of the Arab
conquests into the narrative itself, the bare bones of a story are displayed
first, culminating more often than not in a moralistic adage. Alternatively, in
some cases an explanation is ventured only to be thwarted in midstream, as for
instance with some potentially illuminating remarks on the possible number of
troops, planning and army organisation of the Arab armies. These are mentioned
in a brief paragraph (p.42) ,but never to trouble the author again. If we take,
for example, the details of the structure of these armies, as mentioned in a
scattered manner, as gold nuggets buried in river beds, it is surely the duty
of the mining historian to keep prospecting until the desired object is fully
displayed, classified and slotted into place. After all, this is what a
historian writing almost 80 years ago did with convincing precision.
Nevertheless,
certain gaps in our knowledge of the process of Arab conquests are filled by
using non-Arab sources. This is brilliantly demonstrated in chapter 4, ‘The
push for Constantinople (652–685)’, which largely coincides with Mu’awiya’s
reign as governor of Syria as well as Caliph in his own right, and which
provides a cogent interpretation of this caliph’s policies and government that
is aimed at rehabilitating his maligned image as depicted by historians living
under the rival ‘Abbasid dynasty in the ninth century. Moreover, the use of
non-Arabic sources allows him to explain the failure of the second attempt by
Mu’awiya to storm Constantinople from the sea in 654. While Muslim historians
were content to highlight the first stages of the military encounter
culminating in the Arabs’ victory at the Battle of the Masts, south of modern
Antalya, they gloss over their subsequent decision to flee to safety. This
defeat is recorded by Sebeos, a contemporary chronicler of John of Nikiu, who
was writing in the early 660s.The Arab fleet was destroyed or sunk by a sudden
raging storm. Another example concerns the conquest of Egypt in 640–2. Our Arab
sources mention only one army under the leadership of ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, who
invaded the country from the east, but by referring to contemporary accounts
Hoyland stumbles across another army which had been marching from the south.
Although his source does not explain how the second army entered Egypt, Hoyland
ventures to offer his own explanation as to how it got there:
‘[P]erhaps
first sailing across the Red Sea from Arabia and then traveling overland to
reach the Nile. After passing to the west side of the river, it proceeded
northward until reaching Bahnasa, ancient Oxyrhynchus, which lay about 100
miles south of Babylon, near the southern entrance to the fertile Fayum oasis,
presumably intending to join up with their comrades to the north’ (p. 70).
Such
an explanation is in need of further elaboration: how did the Arabs acquire a
naval fleet at this early stage? Who built it? And where was built?
Whatever
primary material a historian uses to construct his own narrative, speculation
and conjecture become inevitable when no convincing evidence is available. It
is for this reason that this new history of the Arab conquests is obliged to
fall back on its Muslim sources in order to make sense of the process it
aspires to depict and analyse. In the
course of carrying out this operation, it may add to our knowledge by using
non-Muslim accounts, but does this exercise amount to the emergence of a new
paradigm? Is the reader offered a different version not yet fully explored by
previous texts? The answer is perhaps yes and no.
We
can answer in the affirmative by highlighting the positive statements that are
proffered as motives animating the whole enterprise. Firstly, there is the theoretical
approach intended to govern the deployment of facts and data. It must be said
that this is kept to a minimum or almost at a latent level, but it is possible
to glimpse of its general features or contours, and the historical method in
its classical sense (documentary or material evidence plus an endeavour to
interpret its significance) is adhered to in a measured and laudable fashion.
Moreover, the historian is able to observe new facts or deduce fresh
conclusions by standing outside the immediate flow of events with an enhanced
awareness of marginal and minority groups whose voices have been submerged or
silenced by those of the victors or ruling elites. By adopting a sceptical
attitude towards Arabic accounts written two centuries after the events they
describe, his non-Arabic sources gain a foothold in the scholarly arena and are
fully mined for obscure episodes, particularly in outlying regions such as
Caucasia, Armenia and Transoxania. This postmodern sensibility is both
illuminating and a welcome departure from more traditional accounts.
Nevertheless, the postmodern turn is more in the nature of a mood rather than a
full-blown theory. A paradigm shift is not yet to be expected.
Secondly,
the main text gives the impression that Arabic sources are generally unreliable
and many suffer from fatal defects. However, it is noteworthy that the book’s
endnotes testify to a sustained reliance on these sources in order to construct
a valid narration capable of pinpointing separate periods and turning points.
It is also significant that Hoyland incorporates the main episodes of his
historical subject as originally sketched out by these late annalists.
Muhammad, his mission, the Qur’an, the Meccan and Medinese stages of his career
and the distinctly Arabian background of his message are discussed as solid
facts related to each other since the rise of Islam. This acceptance is in
sharp contrast to earlier revisionist versions that threw serious doubts on the
whole origins and subsequent growth of Islam as detailed in Arabic sources.
Such doubts are brushed aside or displaced with the result that only the
sequence of certain events or the full details of a particular battle are
thought to be in need of further examination or verification. Such an approach
reconciles traditional accounts with modern research techniques, but leaves the
original account essentially intact, at least in its general outline.
Thirdly,
perhaps the most innovative contribution of this work is its sober frame of
mind that seeks to take the sting out of religious fever as the underlying
cause of the conquests. These are seen as worldly affairs related to social,
political and economic causes and are to be understood in this context whereby
religion was one element, albeit a significant one, in a constellation or
configuration of other elements or driving forces, and by no means the most
conspicuous one. The Arab identity of the conquests is thus stressed in order
to flesh out a wider network in which are enmeshed all the structures and discourses
of late antiquity. In this world both religion and political power hugged each
other in an intimate and tight embrace. This was true of Judaism,
Zoroastrianism, and Christianity and ultimately Islam. It was the era of what
Hoyland calls ‘the spread of universalising monotheism’ (p. 12).
Finally,
the book includes a number of maps, illustrations and tables, in addition to an
appendix on sources with critical remarks, a timeline and a list of dramatis
personae. It also boasts an extensive bibliography and an index. It is
professionally edited and produced. However, a puzzling postscript is added (p.
230) to alert the reader to the military and non-military or moral meanings of
jihad. Unless the postscript, consisting of five lines, is intended as postmodern
code, it seems to be redundant or at least out of place, since the entire
subject of the book, as its title indicates, hinges on the significance of
jihad in the path of God as represented by the Arab conquests.
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