Jordan Valley Quake(s)

The Maronite Chronicle is an anonymous syriac chronicle thought by some to be completed shortly after 664 CE. It is likely a contemporaneous source for the events in question and may rely on eyewitness accounts (Marsham (2013)). The fact that it lists several dates (e.g. 9 June 659 CE) correctly accompanied by the day of the week (e.g. Sunday) further bolsters the case that it is contemporaneous and knowledgeable about the events it discusses. Despite this, it also appears to contain some forced synchronicities.

Palmer et al (1993:29) provides background

This chronicle goes up to AD 664 and was probably written by someone who was alive then. The writer is clearly one of the Maronites and a supporter of the Romans, i.e. the Byzantines; that makes it likely that he was writing before the Sixth Council (AD 680/1), which the Maronites rejected, and certain that he wrote before the disputes of AD 727. The accuracy of this chronicle as to weekdays makes it likely that it was compiled during and immediately after the events. Like the other West-Syrian chronicles, it seems to favour Mu‘awiya, rather than ‘Ali. The chronicler describes in tendentious terms the {Ar. dhimma} (denoting the ‘protection’ accorded to the {Ar. ahl al-kitib}, the People of the Book), by which the Jacobite patriarch had entered into a special relationship with the caliph and paid him a yearly tribute in return for the liberty to run the affairs of his own Church and the backing of the State for his authority. The inference that the Maronites were not so successful as the Jacobites in adapting to the new political system seems to be justified. The Maronite author uses a few success-stories from the Byzantine defence of Asia Minor to boost the morale of his readers, who would have liked to see the Byzantines back in Syria. The Jacobites only wanted the Byzantines back if they would reject Chalcedon; but if the Arab conquest had not convinced them of their error, what could? At this date the Jacobites were perhaps already accommodating themselves to what they saw as a situation that would continue.

The text of the Maronite Chronicle is preserved, with some lacunas, in BL Add. 17,216 (VIIIth or IXth century), fol. 12a, and edited in CM 2, pp. 43-74. The narrative of the earlier seventh century is lost and the chronicle resumes after the lacuna.

Penn (2015:54-57) also provides background

Maronite Chronicle

Maronite
Possibly mid- to late seventh century c.e.

The title of this universal chronicle no longer survives. Due to the theological affiliation of its anonymous author, modern scholars most often refer to it as the Maronite Chronicle. Because only fragments remain, basic questions such as the work’s composition date remain unresolved. Nevertheless, the Chronicle’s discussion of Islam, especially of Muʻāwiya’s caliphate, is particularly valuable. In addition to providing data on mid-seventh-century military and political history, the Maronite Chronicle includes three particularly interesting episodes of interreligious encounter.

The first relates a debate between Miaphysites and Maronites that allegedly took place in front of the Umayyad caliph Muʻāwiya. According to the Maronite Chronicle, Muʻāwiya judged in favor of the Maronites and fined the Miaphysites. The Miaphysite patriarch, however, soon turned this to his advantage by continuing to pay Muʻāwiya to protect the Miaphysites from the Maronites. The next episode discusses Muʻāwiya’s visit to Jerusalem, where he prayed at Golgotha, Gethsemane, and Mary’s tomb. The text then refers to Muʻāwiya’s issuing of gold and silver coins that broke from the widely used Byzantine coin type, no longer including the traditional depiction of the cross.

Although none of these anecdotes is innately implausible, scholars continue to debate their historical accuracy. Independent of their veracity, stories of a caliph who adjudicated intraChristian debates and prayed at Christian holy sites but refused to mint coins with a cross remind one that the characters found in early Syriac sources often defy attempts to pigeonhole them into easily defined, mutually exclusive religious categories.

Manuscript and Edition

The Maronite Chronicle survives in a single, fragmentary manuscript. A flyleaf now housed in St. Petersburg contains the Chronicle’s beginning. The remaining leaves come from later folios in the Chronicle and are now found in the British Library, where they have been rebound as part of British Library Additional 12,216. On paleographic grounds, William Wright dated the manuscript to the eighth or ninth century. The extant sections begin in the time of Alexander the Great and continue until the mid660s, although the discussion of the period between 361 and 658 no longer survives. With the exception of a missing leaf, BL Add. 12,216 does, however, preserve a continuous narrative from 658 until 665/66, when the manuscript breaks off prior to the Chronicle’s conclusion. In 1904 Ernest Walter Brooks published an edition of the surviving text.

Authorship and Date of Composition

The author’s allegiance to the Maronites is made quite clear in the Chronicle. In its depiction of an intra-Christian debate before Caliph Muʻāwiya, the Chronicle champions “those of the faith of Mār Maron” and vilifies the Miaphysites. This has led some scholars to suggest that the author was the famed mid-eighth century Maronite chronicler Theophilus of Edessa. More recent research on Theophilus has discredited this hypothesis, especially as there is no overlap between passages found in the Maronite Chronicle and the extensive fragments of Theophilus’s Chronicle that later authors quote. As a result, the clear majority of scholars now consider the Maronite Chronicle’s author unknown.

Because the British Library manuscript breaks off in 665/66, there is no indication of how much further the Chronicle originally extended. Nevertheless, some scholars have forwarded several arguments suggesting a composition date not long after the 660s, including the facts that the Chronicle betrays no familiarity with the division between the Maronites and the Byzantine church, which took place in the early 680s, or their intensifying conflicts in the early eighth century; and that the proper correlation of specific dates and days of the week in the Chronicle’s last pages suggest that it was written by a near contemporary of the events it describes. Others have noted that the Chronicle’s dating of Christ’s birth to the year 309 in the Seleucid calendar might betray a knowledge of Jacob of Edessa’s Chronicle, which was not finished until the 690s. So too numismatists debate whether the Chronicle’s reference to Muʻāwiya’s changing of Islamic coinage is plausible. Alternatively, it may be an anachronism based on the author’s knowledge of ʻAbd al-Malik’s famous coin reform in the 690s. As a result, it remains uncertain whether the Maronite Chronicle was written in the mid-seventh century or simply comes from a somewhat later author well informed about the 660s.

Shoemaker (2021:150-163) reports the following on the Maronite Chronicle

Background

This Syriac chronicle was originally a history covering events from Alexander the Great up to the early 660s, although today it survives only in a dozen or so folios that report on various intervals within this span. The section covering the period from the late fourth century through the beginning of the seventh is missing, for instance. Likewise, we do not have the opening section of the chronicle, and so we do not know what it may have been called in late antiquity. Nevertheless, the chronicle suggests an affiliation with a seventh-century Christian group known as the Maronites, the early medieval ancestors of the contemporary Christian group by this name, located primarily in Lebanon. In the seventh century, the Maronites were distinguished from other Christian groups in the Near East by their adherence to a doctrine known as Monothelitism, a belief that after the incarnation Christ had only a single divine will and no human will. Although many contemporary Maronites vigorously deny this element of the group’s formative history, the evidence for this confessional identity in the early Middle Ages is unmistakable.¹

Commentary

This section of the fragmentary chronicle opens abruptly with a notice concerning the First Civil War, or Fitna, in which Muhammad’s followers fought with one another over the leadership of their religious polity. The war was set in motion when the third caliph, Uthmān, was murdered in 656 CE, and ʿAlī, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was proclaimed caliph after him. Muʿāwiya had been governor of the important province of Syria since the reign of the second caliph, ʿUmar, who appointed him in 639, and he was a cousin of the murdered caliph Uthmān.⁷ When ʿAlī came to power, a conflict soon developed between him and Muʿāwiya for leadership of the Believers, in which Muʿāwiya emerged victorious following ʿAlī’s assassination in January 661 in Kufa by one of his own disaffected followers.

Although the beginning of this section is missing, the Maronite Chronicle appears to locate this event mistakenly in 658/59, but such errors in chronology are not uncommon in the historical writings of this era.⁸ Nevertheless, the Maronite Chronicle accurately reports that ʿAlī was murdered while praying in a mosque, and although it locates this mosque in Ḥira rather than Kufa, this is actually not incorrect. Kufa was a new military encampment established by the Believers in 639 adjacent to Ḥira, which had been the capital of the Lakhmids, the Christian Arab allies of the Sasanians mentioned in chapter 11 in relation to the Khuzistan Chronicle. Accordingly, it was not uncommon for medieval writers, and for Christians in particular, to use the names Ḥira and Kufa interchangeably.⁹ Given Ḥira’s importance for the Christians of the pre-Islamic Near East, it is no surprise to find that this text names the location of ʿAlī’s assassination Ḥira rather than Kufa.

As for Ḥudhayfa, or Muḥammad b. Abi Ḥudhayfa, he was one of the chief conspirators against Uthmān, although he was put to death shortly thereafter in 656.¹⁰ The Maronite Chronicle seems to place the death of ʿAlī’ and Ḥudhayfa mistakenly in the same year, 658/59 judging from what follows, an error in both instances. Yet despite these lapses in chronology, which again are endemic in the historical writing of this period, the author of this chronicle does indeed seem well informed about political developments among the Believers during the First Civil War and the establishment of the new Umayyad caliphate under Muʿāwiya.

...

The second interpretation, that Muʿāwiya here arbitrates a dispute among Christians because it affects members of the nascent community of the Believers, is in fact consistent with a number of other reports concerning Muʿāwiya and his personal involvement with Christianity, including especially the account of his coronation that follows in this very chronicle. Other Christian sources from this period, as we will see, similarly describe Muʿāwiya, almost reverently, for his tolerance of Christianity and his respect for the Christian faith and its churches. Moreover, the later Islamic historical tradition is often hostile to Muʿāwiya (and indeed, the Umayyads in general), accusing him of, among other things, being indifferent to the practice of true Islam while demonstrating what the later Islamic tradition considered inappropriate pro-Christian sympathies.¹⁷ One could attribute this memory of Muʿāwiya in the Islamic historical tradition as a result of its well-known anti-Umayyad bias.¹⁸ Yet, in light of a farily consistent pro-Christian portrait of Muʿāwiya that emerges from the contemporary Christian sources,¹⁹ maybe we should consider the possibility that the estimation of the Islamic historians concering Muʿāwiya may in this case be based in some historical realities.

If we follow Donner’s hypothesis regarding the interconfessional nature of the community of the Believers for the first several decades of its existence, these reports about Muʿāwiya from both Christian and Islamic sources converge to suggest a very different understanding of his actions and religious faith of the community that he led. From such a vantage, Muʿāwiya appears not as the Muslim caliph of an Islamic polity, but instead as the leader of an alliance of Abrahamic monotheists that included Christians. His preferred title, it would seem, was not caliph but amīr al-muʾminīn, “the leader of the Believers,” judging from the coinage, inscriptions, and papyri of his age. Moreover, his marriage to a Christian, the fact that the core of his army, not to mention his navy, consisted primarily of Christian troops, and his appointment of Christians to high-level positions in government certainly would all be consistent with his leadership of such an interconfessional community.²⁰

Indeed, perhaps nowhere in any of the relevant sources is such an interpretation of Muʿāwiya and the community that he led more strongly suggested than in this chronicle’s initial notice for the next year, 660/61. The chronicle reports that Muʿāwiya had his coronation in Jerusalem: presumably, the choice of this location was deliberate. Muʿāwiya chose to become the new leader of the Believers in the city of King David and of Christ the King. One imagines that these Jewish and Christian associations were not insignificant in his decision to be proclaimed ruler there. And there can be little question that Jerusalem was a locus of the highest sanctity for Muhammad’s followers in this age. Jersualem and the biblical Holy Land seem to have been the primary focus of the Believers’ sacred geography, holding far greater significance than Mecca and Medina in the Hijaz. These two Arabian cities would emerge as the foci of a new distinctively Islamic holy land only somewhat later in the history of the religious movement, as it sought greater distinction from the biblical religions that were its matrix.²¹

...

What Muʿāwiya is said to have done next is nothing short of astonishing, and if the report is accurate, his actions provide some of the strongest evidence for the interconfessional nature of the community that he was leading and the faith that it practiced. According to the chronicle, immediately after his enthronement, Muʿāwiya went and sat at Golgotha, the site of Christ’s crucifixion, where he prayed, and then went down to Gethsemane, to the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, and prayed there as well. These acts portray the new leader of the Believers worshipping in two of Jerusalem’s oldest and most important Christian shrines, showing his devotion to Jesus and Mary in the context of their Christian veneration. One could hardly ask for better evidence that the community of the Believers was confessionally open in its earliest history.²³ According to this chronicle, Muʿāwiya’s first act as the community’s leader was to pray not in a mosque or on the Temple Mount, but in the two holiest Christian shrines dedicated to the two most important figures of the Christian tradition. If the leader of the Believers worshipped in these two churches on such a momentous occasion, surely the confessional lines between Christians and the Believers were not yet firmly established, as they would later come to be.

The main question, however, is: did this really happen? It is hard to say with complete certainly. Penn again hesitates slightly, although he notes that there is certainly nothing implausible in the account, while Andrew Marsham concludes that “there are good reasons to believe that . . . the account of Muʿawiya’s actions is based in fact,” and Tannous judges the report as being “historically likely.” Tannous notes that the chronicle seems to have recorded these events only a few years after they happened, and as we have seen above, the Maronite Chronicle otherwise shows evidence of being well informed regarding developments in the leadership of the Believers, a judgment shared also by James Howard-Johnston.²⁴ There is certainly ample testimony that in the early history of the Believers movement, members of the community used Christian churches for their worship, either cooperatively or through cooption. Perhaps the most well-known example is the Believers’ use of the Church of St. John the Baptist in Damascus, which they ultimately appropriated in the construction of the Umayyad Mosque.²⁵ Yet reports of interconfessional sharing of sacred space are especially prominent in regard to Jerusalem during the early years of the community of the Believers. For instance, although the relevant sources are understandably complex, particularly in light of their tension with later Islamic confessional identity, it appears that the early Believers in Jerusalem initially joined the Christians in the Holy Sepulcher for their worship. After capturing the Holy City on Palm Sunday, as Heribert Busse argues, the Believers joined in the Christian celebrations of Holy Week. It did not take very long, however, before they abandoned this practice and turned their attention to the Temple Mount, where they would begin building not ong after the conquest, a project that would finally culminate in the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsā Mosque.²⁶

...

Finally, the Maronite Chronicle reports that in the same year of his coronation, Muʿāwiya issued new coins, both gold and silver, “but it was not accepted, because there was no cross on it.” There has been some debate about this passage, which is particularly important for understanding the history of early Islamic coinage.30 Of course, it is interesting that Muʿāwiya of all people would have removed the cross from his official coinage, inasmuch as he seems to have merged his political authority with Christianity so dramatically at his enthronement. Perhaps he wanted to distinguish his own currency from that of the Byzantines, whose coins frequently had a cross on their reverse. If that was the case, clearly it backfired, since the coinage was rejected, presumably since there was concern as to whether it was genuine or not without this feature, and all the more so given that the population of Syria and Palestine would have been overwhelmingly Christian at this time. So the cross was retained until the currency reform of ʿAbd al-Malik, in which, as part of a broader program of Islamicizing the state, he established a distinctively Islamic coinage without a cross and eventually without any figures at all, only text.³¹

Questions have been raised about the accuracy of this passage, causing some numismatic scholars even to propose a later date for the chronicle on this basis. The main issue concerns the minting of silver coinage, for which there is no clear evidence in Syria prior to ʿAbd al-Malik. Nevertheless, gold coins have been discovered from Muʿāwiya’s reign near Antioch with the cross on the reverse altered or removed, which can confirm the report that he introduced this change. Moreover, these coins show evidence that “the obverse die had seen heavy use and was beginning to deteriorate badly when this coin was struck,”³² meaning that these coins were produced in large numbers, yet this coin type is extremely rare. As Clive Foss explains, this evidence seems to indicate a situation in which a large number of coins were produced but failed to be accepted in circulation, precisely the circumstance that the Maronite Chronicle describes. Likewise, this would also explain the absence of any silver coinage. Although we know that Muʿāwiya minted silver in other regions, presumably no exemplars have been discovered from Syria because these crossless verions were rejected by the populus.³³

Footnotes

1. For example, Tannous, “In Search of Monotheletism.”

7. Humphreys, Muʿawiya, 28–33, 45–50.

8. See, e.g., Shoemaker, Death of a Prophet, 1–114.

9. See, e.g., Tannous, Making, 433.

10. See, e.g., Humphreys, History of al-T˘abarī, esp. 75n130.

17. Ibid., 9, 126.

18. See, e.g., ibid., 3–10, 15–19; Hawting, First Dynasty of Islam, 2–3, 11–18; Crone, Slaves on Horses, 3–8; Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 247–51.

19. In addition to the other sources included in this volume that present Muʿāwiya in highly positive terms, one should also see The Armenian Chronicle of 682, which describes him as having “worldly humility and human kindness”: Movses Daskhowrantsʻi, History of the Caucasian Albanians 2.27 (Shahnazariantsʻ, Մուսէս Կաղանկատուացի, vol. 1, 315). Although the chronicle in which this report occurs is itself later, dating to the 990s, here it draws on a much earlier source from the later seventh century: see Howard-Johnston, Witnesses, 105–28.

20. Humphreys, Muʿawiya, 61, 63, 97; Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, 176–77, 182; Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 690–92.

21. Shoemaker, Death of a Prophet, 218–65.

23. Donner oddly fails to consider this report, even though he is generally interested in other evidence of the Believers worshipping in Christian churches. Donner, “From Believers to Muslims,” 51–52; Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, 115

24. Tannous, Making, 305, 379; Howard-Johnston, Witnesses, 178.

25. Donner, “From Believers to Muslims,” 51–52; Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, 115. See also Creswell and Allen, Short Account, 65–67. In Jerusalem, the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives was similarly appropriated and transformed into a mosque: Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 124–25. Likewise, during the early Islamic period, a mihrab was added to the Church of the Kathisma, an early Nativity Shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary midway between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and it was converted into a mosque. Nevertheless, although Rina Avner and Leah Di Segni have argued that Christians and Muslims shared usage of this sacred shrine during the early Islamic period, in fact the evidence does not support this conclusion, but rather contradicts it, as I explain in a forthcoming article on the Kathisma shrine: Shoemaker, “Mary between Bible and Quran.” See Di Segni, “Christian Epigraphy,” 248–49; Di Segni, “Greek Inscription”; Avner, “Recovery of the Kathisma Church,” 180–81; Avner, “Kathisma: Christian and Muslim Pilgrimage,” 550.

31. See, e.g., Robinson, ʿAbd al-Malik, 72–78.

32. Metcalf, “Three Seventh-Century Byzantine Gold Hoards,” esp. 99n7.

33. Foss, “Syrian Coinage,” 362–63

• from Palmer et al (1993:29-32)

/p. 69/ .. .Mu'awiya, Hudhayfa, the son of his sister, and Mu'awiya gave orders that he be‘put to death.

‘Ali, too, threatened to go up once again against Mu'awiya, but they struck him while he was at prayer in al-Hira¹³³ /p. 70/ and killed him.¹³⁴ Mu'awiya (then) went down to al-Hira, where all the Arab forces there proffered their right hand to him,¹³⁵ whereupon he returned to Damascus.

In AG 970, the 17th year of Constans, on a Friday in June,¹³⁶ at the second hour, there was a violent earthquake in Palestine, and many places there collapsed.

In the same month the bishops of the Jacobites, Theodore and Sabukht¹³⁷ came to Damascus and held an inquiry into the Faith with the Maronites¹³⁸ in the presence of Mu'awiya. When the Jacobites were defeated, Mu'awiya ordered them to pay 20,000 denarii and commanded them to be silent. Thus there arose the custom that the Jacobite bishops should pay that sum of gold every year to Mu'awiya, so that he would not withdraw his protection and let them be persecuted by the members of the (Orthodox) Church. The person called ‘patriarch’ by the Jacobites fixed the financial burden that all the convents of monks and nuns should contribute each year towards the payment in gold and he did the same with all the adherents of his faith. He bequeathed his estate to Mu'awiya,¹³⁹ so that out of fear of that man all the Jacobites would be obedient to him.

On the ninth of the same month in which the disputation with the Jacobites took place, on a Sunday at the eighth hour, there was an earthquake.¹⁴⁰

In the same year King Constans ordered his brother Theodosius to be put to death - quite unjustly and without any fault on his part, according to what many people said. Many were grieved at his violent end and they say that the citizens chanted slogans {Gr. phonas} against the King, calling him a second Cain, murderer of his brother. In great anger he left his son Constantine on /p. 71/ his throne and himself set out for the north, taking the queen and the whole Roman fighting force with him, against foreign peoples.

In AG 971, Constans’s 18th year, many Arabs gathered at Jerusalem and made Mu'awiya king¹⁴¹ and he went up and sat down on Golgotha; he prayed there, and went to Gethsemane and went down to the tomb of the blessed Mary to pray in it. In those days, when the Arabs were assembled there with Mu'awiya, there was an earthquake and a violent tremor and the greater part of Jericho fell, including all its churches, and of the House of Lord John at the site of our Saviour’s baptism in the Jordan every stone above the ground was overthrown, together with the entire monastery. The monastery of Abba Euthymius as well as many convents of monks and solitaries and many other places also collapsed in this (earthquake).

In July of the same year the emirs and many Arabs gathered and proffered their right hand to Mu'awiya. Then an order went out that he should be proclaimed king in all the villages and cities of his dominion and that they should make acclamations and invocations {Gr. phonas, kleseis} to him. He also minted gold and silver, but it was not accepted, because it had no cross on it. Furthermore, Mu'awiya did not wear a crown like other kings in the world. He placed his throne in Damascus and refused to go to Muhammad’s throne.

The following year there was frost in the early morning of Wednesday, 13 April, and the white grapevines were withered by it.¹⁴²

When Mu'awiya had acquired the power which he had aimed at and was at rest from the (civil) wars of his people, he broke the peace settlement with the Romans and refused to accept peace from them any longer. Rather he said, ‘If the Romans want /p. 72/ peace, let them surrender their weapons, and pay the tax {Ar. jizya}.’

[one folio missing] this section starts by describing a battle

• from Penn (2015:57-59)

. . . and Muʻāwiya, his nephew H̱udaifa. Muʻāwiya issued a command concerning him and he was killed. Then ʻAlī also threatened to rise up against Muʻāwiya again. They struck him while he was praying at Hira and killed him. Muʻāwiya went down to Hira, the entire Arab army there gave him allegiance, and he went back to Damascus.

In the year 970 [659 c.e.], the seventeenth year of Constans, at the second hour on a Friday in the month of June, there was a devastating earthquake in the land of Palestine, in which many places collapsed.

In the same month, the Jacobite bishops Theodore and Sabuk came to Damascus, and before Muʻāwiya they debated the faith with those of Mār Maron [i.e., the Maronites]. When the Jacobites were defeated, Muʻāwiya commanded them to give up twenty thousand denarii and be silent. And it became customary for the Jacobite bishops to give Muʻāwiya that [much] gold annually lest [his] protection of them slacken and they be punished by the [Maronite] clergy. He who was called patriarch by the Jacobites annually established what share of that gold the inhabitants of all the monasteries and convents would pay. Likewise, he established [the share] for the [other] followers of his faith. And he made Muʻāwiya heir [to his estate] so that out of fear of [Muʻāwiya] all the Jacobites would submit to him. On the ninth of the month during which the disputation with the Jacobites took place, at the eighth hour on a Sunday, [there was] an earthquake.

In the same year, the emperor Constans issued a command and his brother Theodosius was killed—wrongly, for he was innocent, as many say. Many were distressed by his murder. It is said that the citizens [of Constantinople] made public denunciations against the emperor and called him a second Cain, a committer of fratricide. Greatly angered, [Constans] left his son Constantine on the throne, took his queen and all the Romans’ war-waging troops, and departed to the north against foreign peoples.

In the year 971 [660/61 c.e.], the eighteenth of Constans, many Arabs assembled in Jerusalem and made Muʻāwiya king. He ascended and sat at Golgotha. He prayed there, went to Gethsemane, descended to the tomb of the blessed Mary, and prayed there. In those days, while the Arabs were assembling there with Muʻāwiya, there was a tremor and a devastating earthquake. Most of Jericho collapsed, as did all of its churches. Mār John’s house by the Jordon, where our savior was baptized, was uprooted from its foundations. So too the monastery of Abba Euthymius, along with the dwellings of many monks and solitaries, as well as many [other] places, collapsed during [the earthquake].

In the same year, in the month of July, the emirs and many [other] Arabs assembled and gave allegiance to Muʻāwiya. A command went out that he should be proclaimed king in all the villages and cities under his control and that they should make invocations and acclamations to him. He struck both gold and silver [coinage], but it was not accepted because it did not have a cross on it. Muʻāwiya also did not wear a crown like other kings in the world. He established his throne in Damascus but did not want to go to Muh. ammad’s throne.

The next year, on Wednesday morning, the thirteenth of April, ice fell and the white vines withered in it.

When Muʻāwiya became king, as he wanted, and had a respite from civil wars, he broke the truce with the Romans and no longer accepted a truce from them. Rather, he said, “If the Romans seek a truce, let them give up their weapons and pay the tax.”

[folio missing in the manuscript]

• from Nau (1899:322-324)

Folio 12

Mu'awiyah I had him killed. Ali threatened to attack Mu'awiyah I again, he was beaten in Hirta [or nearby Kufa ?] during his prayer and he was killed. Mu'awiyah I went down to Hirta and all the Arab troops there submitted to him after which he returned to Damascus.

In the year 970, in the 17th year of Constans II, on a Friday in the month of Khaziran (June) at the second hour, there was a violent earthquake in Palestine and many villages were destroyed.

IN THE SAME MONTH THE JACOBITE BISHOPS THEODORE (2) AND SUBUKHT (3) WENT TO DAMASCUS, BEFORE MOAWIAU (ie Mu'awiyah I), AND HELD A DISPUTE ABOUT THE FAITH WITH THE MARONITES.

The Jacobites were defeated and Mu'awiyah I condemned them to pay twenty thousand dinars; then he ordered them to be quiet, and the Jacobite bishops continued to pay the same amount of money every year to Mu'awiyah I so that he would not stop protecting them and so that the sons of the Church were not persecuted. The Patriarch decided which contribution for this sum of money all convents of monks and nuns should make to him each year as well as all the faithful, then he undertook to make a present of this sum to Mu'awiyah I, so that for fear of him, all the Jacobites would obey him.

On the ninth of the month in which the dispute with the Jacobites took place, a Sunday (4), there was an earthquake.

In the same year, the Emperor Constant had his brother Theodosius killed unjustly, because he was innocent, as many have reported (5). This murder caused great emotion and it is said that the inhabitants of the (imperial) city complained the emperor. calling him a second Cain and [guilty of] fratricide (6). He was very irritated, left the empire to his son Constantine, and left, with the empress and the elite of the army, for the countries of the North among unknown peoples (7).

In the year 971, which is Constant's eighteenth, the Arabs gathered in great numbers in Jerusalem, and appointed Mu'awiyah I king there. He went up to Golgotha ​​and prayed there. He also went to Gethsemane, went down at the tomb of Blessed Mary and prayed there. At this time, while the Arabs were gathered around Mu'awiyah I there was a violent earthquake which overturned most (of Jericho) with all its churches. And near the Jordan the church of John who baptized the Savior was destroyed as well as the entire monastery. This earthquake also overthrew the monastery of Father Euthymius with many dwellings of monks or cenobites and many villages.

That same year, in the month of Thamouz (8), the emirs and many Arabs met and took an oath to Mu'awiyah I, and it was ordered that all the villages and towns in its empire should proclaim him king and prepare for him a throne and ovations. He also minted gold and silver coins but they did not accept them because there was no cross on it. Moreover Mu'awiyah I did not take a crown like other kings of the world. He placed the seat (of his empire) in Damascus, and would not go to that of Mahomet [i.e. Mecca].

The following year, ice arrived on the 13th of Nisan (9), so that the green vines were burnt. [Note by JW: in Palmer et al (1993)'s translation this date is specified as Wednesday 13 April. They note that 13 April fell on a Wednesday in 662 CE - verified via CHRONOS]

When Mu'awiyah I reigned as he wanted and had appeased the war that existed among his people, he broke the peace with the Romans and no longer made any treaty with them saying: "If the Romans want peace, they should give me their weapons and pay tribute."

Hoyland, R. (2019). Seeing Islam as others saw it, Gorgias Press.

Marsham (2013) The Architecture of Allegiance in Early Islamic Late Antiquity: The Accession of Mu‘awiya in Jerusalem, ca. 661 CE in Beihammer, A., et al. (2013). Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean: Comparative Perspectives, Brill.

Nau, F. (1899). "Opuscules maronites." Revue de l'Orient chrétien 4.

Palmer, A., et al. (1993). The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles, Liverpool University Press.

Penn, M. P. (2015). When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam, University of California Press.

Theophanes (c. 758/60-817/8) wrote the Chronicle in Greek during the years 810-815 CE as a continuation of George Syncellus' Chronicle. Theophanes' Chronicle covers the period from 284 CE, where the Chronicle of George Synkellos ends, until 813 CE (Neville, 2018:61). Neville (2018:61) notes that Theophanes explains that George had asked him to complete the task of compiling the history and had given Theophanes the materials he had gathered. Neville (2018:61) describes Theophanes' Chronicle as follows:

It is one of few Byzantine texts that is a true chronicle, in that it enumerates every year, and lists events for each year. The entry for each year begins with a listing of the year of the world, the year since the Incarnation, the regnal year of the Roman Emperor, the Persian Emperor, and the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch. After the conquest of the Persian Empire, it uses years of the rulers of the Arabs in place of the Persian Emperors. Despite the impression of chronological accuracy, many of these dates are mistaken. Scholars also debate whether these dates were integral to Theophanes’ original Chronicle or were added by a later copyist.

Mango and Scott (1997:xci) characterize Theophanes' Chronicle as a "file" of sources and list at least 17 sources which informed his Chronicle (Mango and Scott, 1997:lxxiv-lxxxii). Hoyland (2011:10) noted that Theophanes made extensive use of an "eastern source" for events in Muslim-ruled lands during the the time period of the 630s-740s and continued to narrate events occurring in Muslim-ruled lands, until ca. 780 either making use of another chronicle for these three decades or, more likely, [] had at his disposal a continuation of the ‘eastern source’. Theophanes' ‘eastern source’ has been the source of much scholarly investigation and debate.

• from Turtledove (1982) with some additions from Mango and Scott (1997)

ANNUS MUNDI 6150 (SEPTEMBER 1, 658 — AUGUST 31, 659)
Constans II, 17th year
Muawiyah I, 3rd year
Peter, 6th year

In this year an arrangement was made between the Romans and Arabs. Because of disorder, Muawiyah I sent an embassy so the Arabs could pay the Romans 1,000 nomismata, a horse, and a slave per day.

Also in this year — the second indiction — there was a great earthquake and collapse in Palestine and Syria in the month of Daisios.

In the same year the holy pope of Rome, Martin, was exiled. He had struggled nobly for the truth and became a confessor, dying in eastern regions.

Theophanes' source for the earthquakes and other natural phenomenon during this time period may have been "The World Chronicle written in the eastern provinces of the [Byzantine] empire" authored by Jesudenah of Basra (Proudfoot, 1965:167). Elias of Nisibis specifically listed Jesudenah of Basra as his source.

Brooks, E. W. (1906). "The sources of Theophanes and the Syriac chroniclers." Byzantinische Zeitschrift 15(2): 578-587.

Conterno, M. (2014). La “descrizione dei tempi” all’alba dell’espansione islamica Un’indagine sulla storiografia greca, siriaca e araba fra VII e VIII secolo, De Gruyter.

Grumel, V. (1958). La chronologie, Presses Universitaires de France.

Hoyland, R. G. (2011). Theophilus of Edessa's Chronicle and the Circulation of Historical Knowledge in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, Liverpool University Press.

Mango, C., et al. (1997). The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern history, AD 284-813, Clarendon Press.

Proudfoot, A. S. (1974). "THE SOURCES OF THEOPHANES FOR THE HERACLIAN DYNASTY." Byzantion 44(2): 367-439.

Turtledove, H. (1982). "The Chronicle Of Theophanes, Trans. By Harry Turtledove ( 1982)."

Author	Inconsistencies
Theophanes	Theophanes used the Alexandrian version of the Anno Mundi calendar even though it was out of favor at the time and would be obsolete by the 9th century CE. He did so because his Chronicle was a continuation of George Syncellus Chronicle which itself used the Alexandrian version of the Anno Mundi calendar. Proudfoot (1974:374) noted that the problem of whether Theophanes regarded the year as commencing on March 25 according to the Alexandrian world-year or on September 1 according to the Byzantine indiction cycle has not been resolved with [] clarity.
Theophanes	Grumel (1934:407), Proudfoot (1974:373-374), and others have pointed out that Theophanes A.M.a in the years A.M.a 6102-6206 and A.M.a 6218-6265 are frequently a year too low. The indictions, however, are thought by many more likely to be correct. Grumel's (1934:398-402) synchronisms Synchronism Explanation MA Theophanes’s indictions begin in March - the start date for A.M.a MB Theophanes’s indictions begin in September after the March starting date for A.M.a Note: Outside of Egypt, Indictions began on 1 September Grumel's (1934:398-402) synchronisms by time period Synchronism Years A.M.a (approx.) Date Range CE Historical Markers MA ? - 6102 ? - 5 Oct. 610 until the end of the reign of Phocas (ruled 23 Nov. 602 – 5 Oct. 610 CE) MB 6102 - 6206 5 Oct. 610 - 3 June 713 starting with the reign of Heraclius (ruled 5 Oct. 610 – 11 Feb. 641 CE) and ending right before the start of the reign of Anastasios II (aka Artemios) (ruled from 4 June 713 – 4 June 715 CE) MA 6206 - 6220 4 June 713 CE - 24 March 728 starting with the reign of Anastasios II (aka Artemios) (ruled from 4 June 713 – 4 June 715 CE) until A.M.a 6220 MB 6221 - 6266 1 Sept. 728 - 31 Aug. 774 A.M.a6221 - 6266 MA 6267 - ? 25 March 774 - ? A.M.a6267 - ? Martin (1930:12-13) states the following: The indiction runs from Sept. 1st, the Alexandrian A.M. from March 25th, but Theophanes probably dates the latter for calendar purposes from Sept. 1st2, to correspond with the Indiction. ... In two periods (607-714 and 726-774) the A.M. and the indictions do not correspond 3. It was formerly supposed that the Indictions were most likely to be correct, and therefore they must be made the foundation for a true chronology. But a suggestion was made by Bury (Later Roman Empire, II, p. 425). and worked out by Hubert (Byzant. Zeitschrift, VI, pp. 491 sqq.), that in 726 Leo III raised double taxes and put two indictions in one year, while in 774 or 775, Constantine remitted a year's taxation and spread one indiction over two years. This suggestion has been generally accepted. On the other hand, it is purely conjectural. Ginis (Das Promulgationsjahr d. Isuar. Ecloge. Byz. Zeitsch., XXIV, pp. 346 sqq.) would trace the error to Theophanes having confused the April of Indiction 10 (Sept. 1st, 726, to Aug. 31st, 727), with April of the 10th regnal year of Leo (March 25th, 725, to March 24th, 726). E.W. Brooks (Byz. Zeitsch., VIII, pp. 82 sqq.) explains the error by differences in the chronological systems of the sources used by Theophanes.

Elias of Nisibis was a cleric of the Church of the East, who served as bishop of Beth Nuhadra (1002–1008) and archbishop of Nisibis (1008–1046) (wikipedia). He wrote a number of texts but is best known for Chronography (Arabic: Kitāb al-Azmina; Latin: Opus Chronologicum) which he composed in the early 11th century CE. Enclclopedia Iranica describes Chronography as follows:

His renowned Chronography on history is preserved in a single manuscript with only a few major lacunae. It is divided into two parts, in Syriac with Arabic translation following each paragraph for most of the first part. The first part, modeled on the Chronicle of Eusebius, treats universal and ecclesiastical history up to 1018 C.E. in the form of tables, usually with accurate references given to the sources. The second part is a manual of the different calendars used in the Orient.

• from Delaporte (1910)

Year 39. — Starting on Wednesday 29 Iyar of the year 970 of the Greeks.

In the month of Haziran there was an earthquake. A great part of Palestine and many other places were ruined [1] (Jesudenah, city of Basra).

Footnotes

1. Compare with the text of the Syrian author written by Noldeke. (ZDMG, xxix, pp. 89-90) [?]

• not bookmarked

Elias documented his sources, many of which have been lost. Elias cited his source for the earthquake report as Jesudenah of Basra who is hypothesized to be the same source used by Theophanes for his earthquake account.

Chronography in Syriac

John Phokas may have been the author of Ekphrasis (or Concise Description) of the Holy Places which Ambraseys (2009) refers to as Descriptio Terrae Sanctae. This text was reproduced in an English translation as "The Pilgrimage of Johannes Phocas in the Holy Land (in the year 1185 AD)" by the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society.

• from Stewart (1889:27)

XXII.

On the banks of the Jordan are built three monasteries, namely, that of the Forerunner, of Chrysostom . . . the monastery of the Forerunner having been levelled with the ground by an earthquake, now by the munificent hand of our Emperor, Manuel Comnenus Porphyrogenitus, crowned by God,* has been entirely rebuilt, the prior being entrusted with the superintendence of the restoration. At a distance of about two bowshots from hence flows Jordan, the most holy of rivers, wherein my Lord Jesus, having embraced poverty, wrought out by baptism the great mystery of my redemption ; and on its bank, about a stone's-throw distant, is a square vaulted building, wherein Jordan, bending back its stream, embraced the naked body of Him who covereth the heavens with clouds, and the right hand of the Forerunner tremblingly touched His head, and the Spirit in the likeness of a dove descended upon its kindred Word, and the voice of the Father bore witness to the Redeemer's being His own Son.

• from Stewart (1889:30-31)

The city of Bethlehem is about six miles distant from the Holy City. Halfway between it and the Holy City stands the monastery of the holy prophet Elias, which was built by godly men in very ancient times, but has been entirely thrown down by an earthquake. This, however, that universal benefactor, my master and Emperor,"has raised from its foundations, at the prayer of a Syrian, who is the chief of the community.

Stewart, A. (1889). The Pilgrimage of Joannes Phocas in the Holy Land: In the Year 1185 A.D, Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund at archive.org

Stewart, A. (1889). The Pilgrimage of Joannes Phocas in the Holy Land: In the Year 1185 A.D, Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund at Google Play

Elad (1995:150) notes

Goitein cites a number of traditions in which the Holy Land (al-Arcl al-Muqaddasa) is mentioned, testifying, in his opinion, to the religious status of Palestine:

2. A tradition in the name of Ibn Hawala: "The Messenger of God put his hand on my head and said: when the [caliphate] will fix its place in the Holy Land, earthquakes and other tribulations will occur and the Hour [of the Last Judgement] will be nearer than my hand is now to your head."¹⁵

It seems that this hadith was created in the context of one of the struggles between the Umayyads and their opponents, and was introduced in the Fitan literature, that deals with the Last Days and their turmoils.

footnotes

15 Goitein, S. D. (2010). VII. The Sanctity Of Jerusalem And Palestine In Early Islam. in Studies in Islamic History and Institutions. S. D. Goitein, Brill: 135-148. p. 143 (quoting Abu- Dawad's Sunan).

Goitein (2010:143) states

A Jewish religious scholar predicted to the caliph `Omar that "the governor of the Holy Land," that is to say Mu'awiya, would at one point take his place as ruler of Islam.⁵ A canonical collection of traditions about the Prophet reports the following story in the name of Ibn Hawala one of his younger companions:

The Messenger of God put his hand on my head and said: when the (caliphate) will fix its place in the Holy Land, earthquakes and other tribulations will occur and the Hour (of the Last Judgment) will be nearer than my hand is now to your head.⁶

Footnotes

5 Tabari, part I, pp. 3252-2.
6 Sunan Abfi Da'fid, book 15, par. 33.

Marsham (2013:90-91) provides background

Muʿāwiya’s accession took place in the context of the civil war, or fitna, of AH 36–41/656–661 CE. This was the first time that extensive violent conflict had taken place within the Ḥijāzī (West Arabian) ruling elite of the new monotheist polity. In the Islamic historical tradition the war is said to have been triggered by the murder of the third caliph, ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (r. 644–656). Following ʿUthmān’s death, the Prophet’s cousin, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, was proclaimed caliph at Medina in Arabia, before moving the caliphal capital from there to Kufa, in Iraq. ʿAlī was not universally recognized as caliph—not least because ʿUthmān’s assassins were among his supporters. Muʿāwiya, who was at that time the long-standing governor of the province of Syria, was among those who did not declare his allegiance, but neither did he participate in an alliance against ʿAlī. ʿAlī defeated this alliance at the “battle of the Camel” in Jumāda II 36/December 656. At this juncture Muʿāwiya took up arms against ʿAlī, demanding that he hand over ʿUthmān’s assassins. A battle at Ṣiffīn, on the northern Euphrates, was inconclusive, and the two parties agreed to a truce and negotiations. Some of ʿAlī’s followers rebelled at this decision, and ʿAlī was forced to fight them. ʿAlī won, only to be assassinated by one of the rebels in the congregational mosque at Kufa — an event usually dated to mid-to-late Ramaḍān 40/late January 661. ʿAlī’s son, al-Ḥasan, was proclaimed caliph in Iraq, but surrendered shortly thereafter to Muʿāwiya and his Syrian army.

These events remained central to some of the fiercest doctrinal disputes in early Islam. In part because of the importance of the civil war for on-going doctrinal debates, a vast amount of literature about it was generated in the first centuries of Islam, much of it contradictory and confused. That Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān (r. 661–680) emerged as the victor is of course beyond doubt, but the chronology and sequence of events is not at all clear.