Sword in the Sky Quake

• Part 4
• from Harrak (1999:141-143)
• Harrak (1999:32-33) noted that the annalistic divisions in the Chronicle have been retained in our translation, and each entry has been introduced with an A.D. (Gregorian) date (in bold), converted from the Seleucid date given in the Chronicle.

• not bookmarked
• from archive.org

Annals by Dionysius of Tell-Mahre and Annals by Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre are not the same work nor were they composed by the same author. Annals by Dionysius of Tell-Mahre is largely lost. It only exists in fragments. Annals by Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre is extant. Annals by Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre is also known as the Chronicle of Zuqnin as it is thought to have been composed by a monk at the monastery of Zuqnin before it was falsley attributed to Dionysius of Tell-Mahre - hence the reason why the author is referred to as Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre. To complicate matters further, Chabot (1895) published a French translation of Annals by Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre which he mistakenly titled Annals by Dionysius of Tell-Mahre. Well, it was actually titled Annals by Denys of Tell-Mahre which is another name for Dionysius of Tell-Mahre.

The sole surviving manuscript at the Vatican (Cod. Vat. 162) - This manuscript is claimed by some to be the autograph - the first draft of the manuscript. No further recension, or copy, is known.

Annals Part by Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre in Syriac at archive.org

Harrak (2017:xvi) notes major sources identified in Parts I and II of the Zugnin Chronicle had been discussed in great detail by Witakowski.

Witakowski, Study, p. 124-135

Witakowski, "The Sources of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre for the Second Part of his Chronicle," in J.O. Rosenqvist (ed.), AEIMΩN Studies Presented to Lennart Ryden on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Uppsala, 1996), pp. 181-210

Witakowski, "Sources of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre for the Christian Epoch of the First Part of his Chronicle," in G.J. Reinink and A.C. Klugkist (eds.), After Bardaisan: Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honour of Professor Han J.W. Drijvers (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Department Oosterse Studies, 1999), pp. 329-366.

Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre at syri.ac

Wikipedia page for the Zunqin Chronicle - many links and references

Harrak (1999:20-21) notes the following about parallels between the Chronicle of Zuqnin and al-Azdi

At least one scholar has compared the contents of Part IV of the Chronicle of Zuqnin with that of Tarikh al-Mawsil, written by the Arab historian al-Azdi (died in 945). Dr. F. `Umar<sup>1</sup> has called attention to the fact that both histories deal with the political, social, and economic conditions of the same region, Mosul and the Jazira. He further noted that both authors were opposed to the `Abbasid central authority, as were the authors of other local histories, such as the History of Tabaristan, History of Sijistan, History of Bukhara, etc. Both authors moreover agreed that overtaxation and extortion of the 'Abbasid agents were responsible for the migration of the peasantry into the cities, a fact which led to the disintegration of the Jazira, which had an economy based on agriculture. Dr. `Umar also noted that, while the Chronicle of ZucinIn concentrated on the economy of the Jazira, al-Azdi stressed the political history of that region, and sometimes of other regions as well.

There can be no doubt that the Chronicler of Zuqnin and al-Azdi have certain characteristics in common. In addition to the fact that both wrote local histories, their histories are of an annalistic type, the only difference being that al-Azdi used a lunar calendar, whereas the Chronicler of Zuqnin used the Seleucid calendar, which is solar. Accordingly, both authors divided the narrations of the events, when these lasted more than one year, into separate entries. In addition to arranging the material in this manner (e.g. "in year such and such, so and so died / or did this and that"), both authors sub-divided the information for a single year, if it proved to be rather long, into sections with titles. Sometimes such short annalistic entries are strikingly similar, even in wording. An example is the parallel event of the shooting of the stars, which are not only dated to the same year (Seleucid 1076 = H. 147 = A.D. 764-765), but also share very similar (in part cognate) wording: [Arabic text] = {Syriac text] "the stars were `dropping' ".²

Furthermore, both authors were compilers of existing sources, oral as well as written, but al-Azdi normally identified his sources, whereas the Chronicler typically did not. But they certainly agreed that the people of the Jazira and Mosul suffered oppression at the hands of the `Abbasids. Thus, the violence of Haran al-Rashid directed at Mosul as described by al-Azdi<sup>3</sup> echoes the same behavior of Abu 'Awn, an `Abbasid agent appointed by al-Mansur, toward the people of the Jazira, which our Chronicler describes.¹ Al-Azdi's negative assessment of Yihyah son of Said al-Harshi,² a governor of Mosul appointed by al-Rashid, is reminiscent of the generally negative opinion the Chronicler had about Musa son of Musab, whom al-Mansur appointed governor of Mosul and the Jazira.

Nonetheless, the two authors differ in their aim and manner of writing. Al-Azdi is a writer who made a serious attempt at transmitting historical information he received from his oral sources.³ He seldom let his own bitterness toward people or individuals interfere. The worst of what is reported about the `Abbasids came not from his pen, but from the lips of an Arab: "By God, a liar is he who claims that these (Abbasids) are Muslims."<sup>4</sup> The Chronicler, on the other hand, was an ardent moralist for whom the purpose of history writing was not to furnish information about events, but to have his readers participate in them, in all their dramatic details. He criticised, not to say vilified, everyone who, in his estimation, had committed wrong, whether Umayyad, `Abbasid or a cleric from his own church. What mattered to him was not the religious affiliation of the wrongdoer but the wickedness of his actions. Our Chronicler tended to paint in deep black and pure white, with very little in between. Thus, he called al-Mansur "a tyrannic ruler" and other choice epithets, as seen above, but he described his brother `Abbas as a "merciful and peace-loving man",⁵ though both were Arabs and Muslims.

Footnotes

1 'Umar, al-Da'wah, 45.
2 al-Azdi 200, Chabot, Chronicon II, 222:26.
3 al-Azdi 284.

1 See below p. 318f.
2 al-Azdi 286-287.
3 See al-Azdi 250:5-6.
4 al-Azdi 151:13-14.
5 See below p. 232.

Neuhauser et al (2021:8) provided the following on the nomenclature of celectial objects in the Chronicle of Zuqnin:

2.5. Nomenclature of transient celestial objects

The Chronicle of Zugnin describes the object of AD 760 as "white sign" and as kawwbo ("star") with or in the shape of a "broom" (for kawkbo, see Section 2.2), but it did not use the Syriac term nayzko — usually translated with "comet", literally meaning "short spear" or "lance"; maybe, the term used here by our Chronicler is motivated by the real form of the phenomenon on sky resembling more a broom than a lance.

Our Chronicler also called an object reported for AD 768/9 (probably 770 May) "sign in the likeness of a broom", also a comet in today's sense (Harrak, 1999, pp. 226/7). For the 6th century, the Chronicle of Zuqnin describes three objects as both kawkbO and nayzko (Harrak, 1999, p. 136, n. 5), for the first two it is explicitly mentioned that they are called "kometes" by the Greek (e.g. Harrak, 1999, p. 93) — the term "kometes" is taken from its source, the otherwise mostly lost Chronicle of John of Ephesus (based on John Malalas).

The author of the Chronicle of Zuqnin should have noticed that all these objects are of the same class (comet in our sense) given similar drawings. Greek terms like "kometes" may have been outmoded in the `Abbasid caliphate, but acceptable when used in quotation. The terms nayzko in Syriac, nayzak in Arabic, and "kometes" in Greek formerly all meant the same — not only a comet in today's sense, but more generally a transient, extended celestial object; bright supernovae were sometimes also called "kometes" or nayzak, as they appeared to be extended due to strong scintilation, see R. Neuhauser et al. (2016).

• from Hoyland (2011:94-95)
• Hoyland, 2011:94-95 quotes what he believes may be Theophilus' dependents on the topic of the earthquake and the comet below while noting earlier that such an event could have been widely reported orally and textually and thus derived from a variety of sources.

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

Hoyland (2011:19) discusses issues of chronology in Theophilus' Lost Chronicle

THEOPHILUS’ CHRONICLE

From a comparison of Theophanes, Dionysius and Agapius it becomes immediately apparent that their notices for the seventh and eighth century follow a chronological order. A few are misplaced, but the intention was clearly to progress through history from some point in the past up until the author’s own day. Yet it is also evident from the frequency with which Dionysius and Agapius either begin a notice with ‘at this time’ or else disagree with each other on dating that Theophilus’ work was not annalistic and was indeed rather sparing with dates.⁶³ This is an important point, for modern scholars often rely upon Theophanes for ascertaining the date of an event. But it is because he is writing an annalistic work that he puts notices under specific years, not necessarily because these notices were dated in the sources he is using. And in the case of the notices on eastern affairs, Theophanes often had to place them just where he thought best.

What the start and end point were for Theophilus is a difficult question. Since he is quoted as saying that there were 5197 years separating Adam from Seleucus, Theophilus is usually thought to have made Creation his starting point. But this is hardly cogent, for as an astrologer he would often have been obliged to make chronological calculations, or it could well be that he prefaced his chronography with some such computation.⁶⁴ Theophanes, Dionysius and Agapius are clearly dependent on a common source from the notice on Abu Bakr’s despatch of four generals in 634 onwards.

Footnotes

63 Theophilus may have proceeded by simply narrating events, arranging his entries in chronological order as far as possible and occasionally giving synchronisms after the fashion of Eusebius; e.g. ‘In the year 34/35/37 of the Arabs, 10/13 of Constans and 9 of ‘Uthman. Mu'awiya prepared a naval expedition against Constantinople’ (Theophanes. 345; Agapius. 483; Msyr 1 l.XI, 430/445; Chmn 1234, 274).

64 Agapius. 455. gives a calculation of the years from Adam before proceeding to relate amr al- ‘arab/'the affairs of the Arabs’, but it seems somewhat corrupt. Conrad, ‘The Mawâli, 388, is perhaps the most recent to state, without explanation, that Theophilus' chronicle began with Creation.

The Chronography of Gregory Abu '1-Faraj. . . known as Bar Hebraeus, trans. E. A. W. Budge, i (London, 1932,1, 116. Cf. A. Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Liteiatur (Bonn, 1922), 341-2. Note that Theophilos appears to have used the Byzantine era, since he calculated AG as starting in 5197 from Adam: Budge, 40 [39]; F. Nau, ROC 4 (1899), 327.

• Budge, E. (1932) The Chronography of Gregory Abu '1-Faraj. . . known as Bar Hebraeus, trans. E. A. W. Budge, i (London, 1932,1, 116
• Nau, F (1899) Opuscules Maronites Revue de l’Orient Chretien 4, 318-342 - discussion starts at the bottom of 326

And SELEUCUS reigned alone over SYRIA, and over all GREATER ASIA, and BABYLON as far as INDIA, for twenty-one years. And with him began the reckoning by the years of the GREEKS (i.e. the Era of the Greeks) which we SYRIANS use, even though it be called after ALEXANDER. SELEUCUS built ANTIOCH, and SELEUCIA, and LATAKIA, and APAMEA, and URHAI (EDESSA), and BEROEA, and PILAS, and GERMANIKI, which iS MAR'ASH.

From ADAM to SELEUCUS, according to EUSEBIUS, iS 4,889 years
From ADAM to SELEUCUS, according to ANDRONICUS, is 5,083 years
From ADAM to SELEUCUS, according to GIWARGI (GEORGE) the most ex-cellent Elder, is 5,085 years
From ADAM to SELEUCUS, according to AFRICANUS, is 5,083 years
From ADAM to SELEUCUS, according to THEOPHILUS of EDESSA, is 5,197 years
From ADAM to SELEUCUS, according to JACOB of EDESSA, is 5,149 years
From ADAM to SELEUCUS, according to GEORGE, bishop of the Arab peoples, is 4,929 years
From ADAM to SELEUCUS, according to ANIANUS, is 5,180 years and 10 months.

And with this last the Greek Septuagint agreeth. The reckoning which the Greeks use in our time agreeth with that of THEOPHILUS of EDESSA. Now if we add to 5,197 years the complete years of SELEUCUS, and one month to the complete months of the incomplete year, which beginneth with the FIRST TESHRIN (OCTOBER), there are gathered together for US the complete solar years from ADAM, and the months from the incomplete year which beginneth with 'ILUL (SEPTEMBER). What then in respect of the day which remaineth (?), the tenth of 'ILUL [of the] year of the GREEKS 1587 ? Let us add five thousand one hundred and ninety-seven to one thousand five hundred and eighty-six, and their total is six thousand seven hundred and eighty-three ; then add to the eleven months one month and they become twelve months. Let us add then one year to the complete years, and they become six thousand seven hundred and eighty-four. And we say that the tenth of 'ILUL belongeth to the incomplete year, that is to say, the year six thousand seven hundred and eighty-five.

In another place (Hist. Dyn., p. G3 of Pococke's translation) Bar-Hebreus tells us that Theophilus of Edessa placed the beginning of the Era of the Seleucids in the year 5197 of the world. The same author (Book of the Ascension of the Spirit, p. 199) tells us again: "Nowadays, the people around us use six chronologies. One, which the Greeks use, starts from Adam. There are various opinions to his knowledge,the most famous,in our time, reproduces that of Theophilus of Edessa. The chronology of Theophilus, who thus placed the birth of N.-S. the year 5508 5197 H-- 311), is based on the text of the Septuagint.

JW: Nau's years of 5508 and 311 may be a year off. The starting date for the Byzantine reckoning of the Anno Mundi Calendar is 1 Sept. 5509 BCE. The starting date for Macedonian reckoning of the A.G. calendar is 1 Oct. 312 BCE. Add 5197 to 312 and you arrive at 5509 BCE. This suggests that Theophilius of Edessa made use of Byzantine reckoning of the A.M. calendar ( which was the standard of the time and Macedonian reckoning of the A.G. calendar (which was standard among Syriac writers of the time - Sebastian Brok, personal communication, 2021)

• In his translation of the Chronicle of Zuqnin, Harrak (1999:142 n. 4) compared Syriac text stating that the stars of the sky fell in such a way that they all shot like arrows toward the north to Arabic text in al-Azdi. I was unable to find the corresponding section in al-Azdi from an English translation by Lees (1854)
• Part 4
• from Harrak (1999:141-143)
• Harrak (1999:32-33) noted that the annalistic divisions in the Chronicle have been retained in our translation, and each entry has been introduced with an A.D. (Gregorian) date (in bold), converted from the Seleucid date given in the Chronicle.

Hassanein, H. (2019). The Early Muslim Conquest of Syria: An English Translation of al-Azdī’s Futūḥ al-Shām, Taylor & Francis. - this book has a complete translation of Futuh al-Sham by al-Azdi in English

W. N. Lees (1854). Futūḥ al-Shām, al-Maṭbaʻ Babtast.

Habibah, A. ed., Yazid ibn Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Azdi: Tnrikh al- Mawsil, Cairo, 1967.

Robinson, C. F. (2006). "A Local Historian's Debt to al-Ṭabarī: The Case of al-Azdī's "Ta'rīkh al-Mawṣil". Journal of the American Oriental Society 126(4): 521-535.

Mourad, S. A. (2000). "On Early Islamic Historiography: Abū Ismāʿīl Al-Azdī and His Futūḥ Al-Shām." Journal of the American Oriental Society 120(4): 577-593.

Lawrence I. Conrad, "Al-Azdi's History of the Arab Conquests in Bilad al-Sham: Some Historiographical Observations," in Proceedings of the Second Symposium on the History of Bilad al-Sham During the Early Islamic Period up to 40 AH/640 AD, ed. Muhammad 'Adnan Bakhit (Amman, 1987), I: 28-62.

Mourad (2000:578) discussed manuscripts and copies in print

The two surviving manuscripts of Azdi's Futuh al-sham are now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, nos. Arabe 1664 and 1665. They comprise 82 and 149 folios, respectively. The first manuscript was copied in Jerusalem on 22 Dhu al-Hijja 613 (21 April 1217) by a Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghassani.⁶ The second, which is clearer than the first, was copied on 1 Dhu al-Qa'da 764 (12 August 1363).⁷ Arabe 1664 refers to Azdi's text under the title Kitab mukhtasar futuh al-sham li-l-Waqidi (Synopsis of the Conquests of Syria by Waqidi) by Abu Isma'il Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah al-Azdi al-Basri. But this title does not appear in the other manuscript, and it seems that it was added later by one of the owners of that manuscript.

Azdi's Futuh al-sham also exists today in two editions. The first was published in Calcutta in 1854 by William N. Lees, who edited the work, with the title Kitab futuh al-Sham, on the basis of one slightly damaged manuscript found in India. A few pages at the beginning of that manuscript are missing or badly worm-eaten,⁸ as are another three pages in the body of the text, and few pages at the end of it.⁹ The second edition was published in Cairo in 1970 by 'Abd al-Mun'im 'Amir. 'Amir, not aware of the presence of the two manuscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale, claimed to have found another manuscript in Damascus in a private library and to have based his new edition, entitled Ta'rikh futuh al-sham, on it.¹⁰ 'Amir described the manuscript he found as complete, compared to the incomplete one Lees had published.¹¹ However, by comparing both editions, it is clear that 'Amir copied Lees' text, concocting a few additions to make it appear different and more complete.¹² Apparently, neither of the two manuscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale seems to have been the one used by Lees, because they both contain the folios that are missing from his edition. In this study, Lees' edition is used as a base, and the other two manuscripts are referred to only when necessary.

Footnotes

6 Azdi, Futuh al-sham (MS. Arabe 1664 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris), f. 83a(5-8). Henceforth, Azdi (M1).

7 Azdi, Futuh al-sham (MS. Arabe 1665 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris), f. 149a(5-8). Henceforth, Azdi (M2).

8 The worm-eaten part at the beginning of the text is reproduced by Lees at the end: see Kitab futuh al-sham, ed. William N. Lees (Calcutta, 1854), appendix, 1-3. Henceforth, Lees.

9 About the condition of the manuscript which Lees used, see Lees, preface, v-vii; and for the three missing pages in the body of the text, see Lees, 90 (n. 2), 120 (n. 2), 178 (n. 2).

10 Azdi, Ta'rikh futuh al-sham, ed. 'Abd al-Mun'im 'Amir (Cairo, 1970). Henceforth, 'Amir.

11 About the manuscript 'Amir claimed to have found, see his introduction, 1-m.

12 After comparing both edited texts, I found them nearly identical in almost every respect. Both begin and end in the same manner; and curiously, the worm-eaten parts are in most cases identical in both texts. 'Amir also borrowed the footnotes and comments of Lees without acknowledgment. The differences, however, are mainly verbal; in a few instances lines or chains of authorities either are dropped from or added to 'Amir's edition. 'Amir neglected to refer to the missing folios of Azdi's manuscript, and interestingly enough, by comparing the mysterious additions that he makes in lieu of these missing folios with the respective passages in the two manuscripts of the Bibliotheque Nationale, it is obvious that they do not match: compare 'Amir, 102(4)-103(12) to Azdi (M1), 28b(12)-29a(9) and Azdi (M2), 52a( 1)-53a(8); 'Amir, 137(2-8) to Azdi (M1), 38b(16)-39a(15) and Azdi (M2), 69b(l)-70a(10). Moreover, the addition in 'Amir, 257(13)-259(6), does not figure, on the one hand, in either of the two manuscripts and, on the other hand, is not even in accord with the preceding section in his edition. Thus it is clear that 'Amir copied the text of Lees. For general comments on 'Amir's edition, see Akram D. al-'Umari, Dirasat tarikhiyya (Medina, 1981), 70-71, 76-79; Conrad, 29-32.

• Niebuhr (1828:166-167)

• Niebuhr (1828:166-167)

• see bottom paragraph of page 166 starting with Anno imperii Heraclii 24
• Niebuhr (1828:166-167)
• from archive.org

Anastasius's work was compiled from the Greek writings of Theophanes, Nicephorus, and George Syncellus ( Neil, 1998:45). As discussed below by Neil (1998:46), Anastasius had access to an older copy of Theophanes Chronographia that we don't have.

Anastasius' Chronographia consisted of excerpts of the Chronographia of Theophanes⁵⁷ which extended up to the year 813, the Opuscula historica of Patriarch Nikephoros⁵⁸ and the Chronicle of George Synkellos⁵⁹. Anastasius' Chronographia Tripertita has been edited by de Boor,⁶⁰ who found that, while it is an often inconsistent rendition of the Greek, Anastasius' version of Theophanes' Chronographia was based on an early and more reliable version of the original than now survives.⁶¹ For this reason, it has been useful in some places for establishing the original text where the direct transmission offers a degenerate version, although Anastasius unfortunately does not provide a full translation of his original.⁶²

Footnotes

57 Ed. C. de Boor, Theophanis Chronographia, v. 1 (Leipzig, 1883); recently translated with commentary by C. Mango and R. Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History, AD 284-813 (Oxford, 1997).

58 Ed. C. de Boor, Nicephori Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani Opuscula Historica, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1880). It is also edited in the version of I. Bekker, Sancti Nicephori Patriarchae Constantinopolitani Breviarum Rerum post Mauricium gestarum (Bonn, 1837; repr. Ann Arbor, 1988). This covers the seventh and eighth centuries from the death of Emperor Maurice. Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople (806-815), was a continuator of Theophylact Simocatta.

59 George Synkellos' Chronicle covers the history of the world from creation up to the rule of Diocletian. It is edited by C. de Boor, Georgii monachi chronicon, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1904; 2nd ed. with corrections by P. Wirth, Stuttgart, 1978).

60 De Boor, v. 2 (Leipzig, 1885).

61 De Boor, v. 2, pp. 401-435. Mango and Scott, op. cit., pp. xcvi f. draw our attention to the existence of two late ninth-century manuscripts of Theophanes, one of which was wrongly dated to the late tenth century by de Boor, and the other not used by him at all. These also offer an inferior text to that consulted by Anastasius.

62 De Boor, v. 2, pp. 413-415.

Niebuhr, B. (1828). "Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae: Editio emendatior et copiosior. consilio B.G. Niebuhrii." In Latin

Neil, B. (1998), A critical edition of Anastasius Bibliothecarius' Latin translation of Greek documents pertaining to the life of Maximus the Confessor, with an analysis of Anastasius' translation methodology, and an English translation of the Latin text, PhD dissertation, Australian Catholic University

• Mango and Scott (1997:467)

• see ANNUS MUNDI 6124 on page 37
• Turtledove (1982:337)
• from archive.org

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)."

• from Hoyland (2011:94-95)

Wood, P. (2013). The Chronicle of Seert: Christian Historical Imagination in Late Antique Iraq, OUP Oxford. - online open access at Google Books

A. Alcock, Ed. (2014), The Chronicle of Séert. - online open access at archive.org

A. Scher, “Histoire Nestorienne Inédite (Chronique de Séert): all four fasciles in Patrologia Orientalis, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1908-1919 - French translation accompanied by Arabic - online open access for all four fasciles at archive.org

Chronicle of Seert at syri.ac (extensive)

Chronicle of Seert at roger-pearse.com

JW: I could not find the passage in Wood (2013), Alcock (2014), or Scher (1908-1919). Hoyland(2011:94-95) found the passage in section CIV about the death of Mohamed.

• from Vasilev (1909)

• from Hoyland (2011:94-95)

• see text starting with In this year there was a violent earthquake
• Vasilev (1909)
• from tertullian.org

Agapius of Menbij - Part 1

Agapius of Menbij - Part 2

Agapius of Menbij - Part 2 - Translator's introduction

Vasilev, A. (1909) Agapius, Universal History - online open access at tertullian.org

Hoyland (2011:35) states that these are machine translations from Vasilev's French translation.

• from Becker (1838: 745)

• from Becker (1838: 745)

• see p. 745 starting with Postquam Muchumetus ille dirus mortem obiit
• from Becker (1838: 745)
• from archive.org

Niebuhr, B. G. (1839). Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae, Impensis ed. Weberi.

Medieval (Byzantine) Greek Reading Group at the University of Melbourne where an English translation of Cedrenus is apparently close to completion - has lots of useful Cedrenus related links

• Ambraseys (2009)

'In the year 945 of the Greeks, there was a violent earthquake, in the month of ilul, and after the earthquake there was a sign in the sky; it appeared in the form of a sword stretching from south to north, and remained for thirty days. To many it seemed to signify the coming of the Taiyayz (Arabs)' (Mich. Syr. xi. 4/ii. 414).

`At this time [a.S. 946 (Arabs' defeat of Theodoric), before the fourth year of Omar] there was a great earthquake, and at the moment of the earthquake the sun was eclipsed. In this earthquake the church of the Resurrection and that of Golgotha fell, together with many other places. Modestus, the Chalcedonian bishop, rebuilt them. ’ (Mich. Syr. xi. 5/ii. 419)

• Book XI Chapter IV
• Chabot (1899-1910:413-414)

• Book XI Chapter V
• Chabot (1899-1910:419)

• Bedrosian (1870-1871)
• There is no earthquake in this version of Michael the Syrian but there is a discussion of early Islamic conquests where Byzantine General general Sargis is mentioned.

• Livre XI Chap. IV
• Chabot (1899-1910:413-414)

• Livre XI Chap. V
• Chabot (1899-1910:419)

• see section [124] in the middle of the right page starting with [ 124 ] In the meantime Heraclius
• Bedrosian (1870-1871)
• from archive.org

• Book XI Chapter IV
• starts with CHAPITRE IV on page 413
• Chabot (1899-1910:413-414)
• from archive.org

• Book XI Chapter V
• See [414] in the upper left of page 419 starting with [414] A cette époque
• Chabot (1899-1910:419)
• from archive.org

• Book XI Chapter IV
• assumed to be on pages 412-413
• hand copied manuscript which shows some of the original layout
• appears to be the manuscript which was written for Chabot between 1897 and 1899 CE in Edessa
• ordered right to left
• Chabot (1899-1910)
• from archive.org

• Book XI Chapter V
• assumed to be on page 414
• hand copied manuscript which shows some of the original layout
• appears to be the manuscript which was written for Chabot between 1897 and 1899 CE in Edessa
• ordered right to left
• Chabot (1899-1910)
• from archive.org

Hoyland, 1997:416-419 notes that Michael explicitly cites Dionysius of Tell-Mahre as a source who in turn cited Theophilus of Edessa as a source. Ambraseys (2009) suggests that Michael used Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre as a source and may have also used Elias of Nisibis as a source. Brooks (1906) wrote the following about Michael the Syrian's sources:

For the period 582—843 the work of Michael is mainly based on that of Dionysius the patriarch¹ [JW: the real Dionysius of Tell Mahre], whom he probably reproduces almost in full, and we find also mention of James of Edessa and John the Stylite of Litarba ².

To sum up, Michael used Dionysius (843—6), and Theophanes used a Palestinian Melchite author who wrote in Greek not long after 780, while both of these last used a chronicler who wrote not long after 746, whoin there is some reason to identify with John the son of Samuel, though we cannot positively assert that he was not Theophilus of Edessa.

text from the sole surviving Syriac manuscript

syri.ac website for Michael the Syrian

• Ambraseys (2009)

• Ambraseys (2009)

The Wikipedia entry on al-Makin states that Al-Makin made extensive use of Al-Tabari.

Latin translation titled Historia Saracenica by Thomas Erpenius (1625) - The section translated appears to start around 809 CE.

Manuscripts of the history of al-Makin at www.roger-pearse.com

al-Makin at Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia

Wikipedia page on al-Makin has details, citations, and references.

• from Budge (1932:93).

• see p. 93 starting with Heraclius transgressed the Law
• from Budge (1932:93)
• from archive.org

• The Library at Maraghah, which Bar Hebraeus used to write Chronicon, contained many Syriac, Arabic, and Persian manuscripts, and also, of course, contemporary documents dealing with the extraordinary events which took place in the thirteenth century (Budge, 1932:vii).

Budge, E. A. W. (1932). The chronography of Gregory Abu'l Faraj the son of Aaron the hebrew physician commonly known as Bar Hebraeus being the first part of his political history of the world. 1, 1. Piscataway, Gorgias Press.

• from Clarke (1995:58)

When the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, died, Makkah was shaken with an earthquake and Abu Quhafah heard that and said, ‘What is this?’ They said, ‘The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, has died.’ He said, ‘A momentous thing. Who has undertaken the command after him?’ They said, ‘Your son.’ He said, ‘Are Banu 'Abd Manaf and Banu al-Mughirah contented with that?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘No-one may put down what they raise up and no-one may raise up what they put down.’

• from Clarke (1995:75)

• see page 58 half way down the page starting with Al-Hakim narrated in his Mustadrak that Abu Hurayrah
• from Clarke (1995:58)
• from archive.org

• see page 75 halfway down the page starting with Ibn Sa'd narrated that Said ibn al-Musayyab said
• from Clarke (1995:75)
• from archive.org

• Chapter 18b (part 2) and Chapter 18c (part 1)
• from Pirone (1987) - translated from Italian to English by Google and Roger Pearse
• from roger-pearse.com and roger-pearse.com

• Chapter 18b (part 2)
• from Pirone (1987) - translated from Italian to English by Google and Roger Pearse
• from roger-pearse.com

• Chapter 18c (part 1)
• from Pirone (1987) - translated from Italian to English by Google and Roger Pearse
• from roger-pearse.com

Eutychius of Alexandria at Encyclopedia Iranica

B. Pirone (1987), Eutichio, Patriarcha di Alessandria: Gli Annali, Studia Orientalia Christiana Monographiae 1, Cairo and Jerusalem, 1987. - this Italian translation without Arabic text was translated by Google and Roger Pearse - Online open access at roger-pearse.com

These need sorting

Eutychius Annals in Latin and Arabic ? at Hathi trust

Eutychius Annals in Latin and Arabic ? at archive.org

Annals by Eutychius (1906 Arabic)

Annals by Eutychius (Chieko trans. Arabic only?)

Annals by Eutychius Arabic

• from Penn (2015:199)

• Three months before Muhammad came.
• And Muhammad lived ten [more] years.
• Abū Bakr, son of Abū Quh.āfa: two years and six months.
• ʻUmar, son of al-Khattab: ten years and three months.
• ʻUthmān, son of ʻAffān: twelve years.
• After ʻUthmān, dissension: fi e years and four months.
• Muʻāwiya, son of Abū Sufyān: nineteen years and two months.
• Yazīd, son of Muʻāwiya: three years and eight months.
• After Yazīd, dissension: nine months.
• Marwān, son of al-Hakam: nine months.
• ʻAbd al-Malik, son of Marwān: twenty-one years and one month.
• Walīd, son of ʻAbd al-Malik: nine years and eight months.
• Sulaymān, son of ʻAbd al-Malik: two years and nine months.
• ʻUmar, son of ʻAbd al-Azīz: two years and five months.
• Yazīd, son of ʻAbd al-Malik: four years, one month, and two days.
• All the years come to one hundred and four, five months, and two days.

Penn (2015:196-197) explains why it is likely that the list of Caliphs follows an Islamic exemplar.

First, as Robert Hoyland points out, an unusual phrase that describes the first year of Muhammad’s reign (“his first year, after he had entered his city and three months before he entered [it]”) betrays a strong knowledge of Islamic tradition. Later Muslim writers, such as Muhammad ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī, state that Muhammad’s entry into Medina took place in the third month of the year. This would require A.H. 1 to start three months prior to Muhammad’s emigration, just as it appears in the Chronicle’s introduction. Second, as both Hoyland and Andrew Palmer have noted, the Chronicle’s dates correspond with traditional regnal dates only if one uses a lunar calendar, as did early Muslims. The solar calendar that Christians used would make the Chronicle’s reigns of individual caliphs, as well as the grand sum appearing in the Chronicle’s final line, too long. Finally, the Chronicle ad 724 contains two Arabic loan words, rasul (messenger) and fitna (dissension). If it had been originally composed in Syriac, the author most likely would have used Syriac words for these concepts rather than Syriac transliterations of Arabic.

Chronicon anonymum ad annum 724 can be found on pp. 139, 145-8, 155 in E. W. Brooks ed., Chronica minora, II, CSCO, Scr. Syri 3, 199-200 [Louvain, 1904]

E. W. Brooks ed., Chronica minora, II, CSCO, Scr. Syri 3, 199-200 [Louvain, 1904]

Latin Translation in J. B. Chabot, Chronica Minora, II {CSCO Scr.Syri 4 [Louvain, 1904]), pp. 108,112-14, 119

Brock, S. P. (1976). "Syriac Sources for Seventh-Century History." Byzantine and modern Greek studies 2: 17-36.

S.P. Brock, ''Syriac Historical Writing: A Survey of the Main Sources'', Journal of the Iraq Academy, Syriac Corporation 5 (1979-1980): 1-30.

Penn, M. P. (2015). Chronicle ad 724 in When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam, University of California Press.

References and Links for CHRONICON AD ANNUM 724 at syri.ac

• from Gordon et al (2018:763 vol. 3)

• see bottom of page 763 starting with Abū Bakr’s death took place on Tuesday
• from Gordon et al (2018:763 vol. 3)
• from archive.org

Gordon, M. S., Robinson, C.F., Rowson, E.K., Fishbein, M. (2018). The Works of Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʿqūbī (Volume 3): An English Translation, Brill. - online open access at archive.org

• Volume 11
• from Rosenthal (1989:129-131 Vol. 11)

• al-Hirith⁶⁸⁷
• Ibn Sa`d<sup>688</sup>
• Muhammad b. 'Umar
• Usamah b. Zayd al-Laythi<sup>689</sup>
• Muhammad b. Hamzah <sup>690</sup>
• `Amr ⁶⁹¹ his father⁶⁹²
• Muhammad b. `Abdallih <sup>693</sup>
• al-Zuhr1<sup>694</sup>
• `Urwah 'A'ishah⁶⁹⁵and Umar b.`Imran b.<sup>696</sup> `Abdallah b. `Abd al-Rahman b. Abi Bakr al-Siddiq<sup>697</sup>
• `Umar b. al-Husayn, the mawla of the family of Mazun⁶⁹⁸
• Talhah b. `Abdallah b. `Abd al-Rahmin b. Abi Bakr⁶⁹⁹

Rosenthal, F. (1988). The History of al-Tabari, State University of New York Press.

• Book XI Chapter V
• Chabot (1899-1910:419)

• from Vasilev (1909)

Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak and Chris O'Byrne (NASA's GSFC).

Javascript Solar eclipse Explorer

The Islamic Army of this time was known as the Rashudin Army; part of the Rashudin Caliphate. The Rashudin Caliphate ruled from the death of Muhammad in 632 CE until it was supplanted by the Umayyad Caliphate in 661 CE. The first Rashudin Caliph was Abu Bakr. He ruled for ~27 months from after Muhammad's death (8 June 632 CE) until his own death (23 August 634 CE).

From 632-633 CE, the Rashudin Caliphate fought and won the Ridda Wars, squashing internal opposition from rebellious Arabian tribes. In 633 and/or 634 CE, Abu Bakr sent four armies into Byzantine controlled Syria and Palestine. Each army had a different commander. Theophanes notes this when he states that the earthquake happened in the same year that "Abu Bakr sent out four generals". The battle in which Sergios died fighting the Rashudin Army was the Battle of Dathin.

Donner (1981:111-112) provides a summary of the early Islamic conquests.

THE COURSE OF CONQUEST IN SYRIA

Well over a dozen discrete sets of accounts about the dispatch of the Islamic armies to Syria are preserved in the Arabic sources. The separate accounts communicate much contradictory information and are consequently impossible to reconcile in many respects. The contradictions are most evident in matters of relative chronology, reflecting the fact that the authorities who transmitted these traditional accounts were themselves relying on extremely fragmentary bits of information, coming from diverse sources, which each of them attempted to piece together to form a more or less coherent narrative.¹⁰⁰ It is therefore hardly surprising to find that different authorities will sometimes describe the same episodes but in different sequences, or that at other times, when different sources of information have been consulted, there is considerable variety in the events mentioned by individual authorities.

It is, nevertheless, possible to reconstruct the broad outlines of the conquest of Syria by the Muslims, even if many details remain obscure. The conquest can be divided into three main phases. The first phase embraced all the early military campaigning in southern Syria from the departure of the first troops in A.H. 12/A.D. 633 until the arrival of a group of reinforcements from Iraq, commanded by one of the tactical geniuses of the early Islamic period, Khalid b. al-Walid of the B. Makhziim (Quraysh) . During this phase a few minor engagements occurred in southern Syria, mainly with local garrison forces, and reinforcements appear to have been sent north continually from Arabia to the Islamic armies, but no major confrontations with the Byzantines developed. It was a phase in which the Muslims came to dominate the open countryside of southern Syria, but in which the towns remained outside their control.

The second phase began with Khalid b. al-Walid's arrival in Syria in A. H. 13/A D. 634 and was one of concerted Byzantine resistance. During this phase, the Muslims began to extend their control in southern Syria from the tribal countryside to the important towns;¹⁰¹ selected towns were put to siege and occupied: Bostra (Busra), Gaza, Fahl (Pella), Baysan (Scythopolis), Damascus, and, briefly, Hims (Emesa) and Ba'labakk (Heliopolis). This process naturally elicited an increasingly strong reaction from the Byzantine authorities; the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, realizing that local Byzantine city garrisons were inadequate to repel the attacks, dispatched successive portions of the imperial army to combat the invaders. This in turn resulted in the main encounters between the Byzantine and Islamic armies, at Ajnadayn, Fahl, Marj al-Suffar, and the Yarmuk. These battles (about A. H. 13-15/A.D. 634-636) saw the decisive defeat of the Byzantine army in Syria, and, although many towns in southern Syria and all of northern Syria still remained outside the Muslims' control, the defeats suffered broke the ability of the Byzantines to offer organized resistance to the Muslims' advance.

The third phase of the conquest of Syria, extending from roughly A.H. 16/A.D. 637 until roughly A.H. 27/A.D. 647-648, was one of consolidation in the aftermath of the victories at the Yarmuk, Ajnadayn, and so forth. It involved the rapid conquest of the remaining countryside not under the Muslims' control, especially in northern Syria, and the piecemeal reduction of individual Syrian towns, which had been left alone to resist the advancing Muslims by the collapse of the Byzantine military presence in Syria. Among these towns were some in central Syria that may have been conquered once but had slipped out of the Muslims' control or been abandoned by them during the final Byzantine offensives of the second phase: Damascus (again?), Hims (again?), Ba'labakk (again?), Hama, Qinnasrin, Aleppo (Beroe), Jerusalem, Caesarea, Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, Antioch, and others. It was marked by the return to Iraq of at least some of the Iraqi reinforcements that had come to Syria after the first phase, accompanied perhaps by some who had never been to the Iraqi front, and also by the opening of offensives into Egypt and into the Jazira region lying between the upper reaches of the Euphrates and the Tigris. These are the general outlines of the Islamic conquest of Syria.

Footnotes

100. For a more detailed treatment of this problem, see Fred McGraw Donner, "The Arabic Sources for the Rise of Islam."

101. We can assume, of course, that many smaller communities in the Syrian deep south-Ayla, Ma'an, etc. were already under Islamic control.

Donner (1981:112-130) provides more details of the early Islamic conquests.

PHASE 1: THE INVASION OF SYRIA

The great military campaigns into Syria that resulted in the definitive conquest of this much-desired area were initiated by Abu Bakr upon the completion of the Islamic conquest of Arabia.
...
the invasion itself begins with the dispatch of several sizable armies by Abu Bakr. This event is traditionally dated to the beginning of A. H. 13, but there is good reason to believe that it actually occurred in the autumn of A.D. 633/Rajab, A.H. 12.¹⁰²
...
we must view with skepticism the too precise details of "eyewitnesses" who provide for us verbatim the supposed words of advice delivered to Abu Bakr by various individuals.¹⁰³
...
Most sources agree that four commanders took a leading part in the initial invasion and in the campaigning of the first phase-'Amr b. al-'As, Yazid b. Abi Sufyan (replacing Khalid b. Sa'id), Shurahbil b. Hasana, and Abu 'Ubayda b. al-Jarrah. What cannot be determined from the traditional accounts is which of these commanders was dispatched first, and which ones went later as independent commanders or as reinforcements for one of the forces sent out earlier. On such questions of timing and interrelationship, the early authorities are in sharp conflict: thus al-Mada'ini states that Yazid's army was the first to depart, followed after a few days by Shurahbil and then by Abu 'Ubayda, and that 'Amr b. al-'As was sent last as a reinforcement to the other three;¹¹⁵ al-Waqidi, on the other hand, states that 'Amr b. al-'As was the first to depart, followed by Shurahbil and Yazid,¹¹⁶ and makes no mention whatsoever of a force under Abu 'Ubayda at this time.¹¹⁷ Other sources give even less consistent information.¹¹⁸ As the divergent accounts of various authorities cannot be harmonized, and as there is no particular reason to favor the relative chronology of any one authority over those of others,¹¹⁹ it is necessary to conclude simply that the four commanders were sent out, probably at roughly the same time, but in an order that cannot be determined
...
There is considerably more agreement among the sources, however, over the general direction in which the four commanders marched. 'Amr b. al-'As, according to most accounts, was directed toward Palestine. This was an area with which he was familiar from his commercial travels before the rise of Islam.¹²³ He seems to have proceeded from Medina along the coastal caravan route known as the Mu'riqa road as far as Ayla, at the head of the Gulf of 'Aqaba.¹²⁴ Ultimately he passed across the Negev (or perhaps even into the Sinai)¹²⁵ and reached the villages of Dathin and Badan in the vicinity of Gaza, where he held negotiations with the military commander (bitriq, patricius) of Gaza. When the negotiations broke down, the Muslims became engaged in a skirmish with local forces in which the Muslims were victorious.¹²⁶ 'Amr's forces camped at a place called Ghamr al-'Arabat during this early campaigning;¹²⁷ it was located in the middle of the Wadi 'Araba, between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of 'Aqaba.

The other commanders were dispatched to Syria, that is, to areas east of the Wadi 'Araba and the Jordan valley. Ibn Ishaq states that Yazid b. Abi Sufyan, Shurahbil b. Hasana, and Abu 'Ubayda marched via the Tabuk road toward the Balqa' district.¹²⁸ Shurahbil had been in al-Yamama, in eastern Arabia, with Khalid b. al-Walid during the ridda wars and upon his return to Medina was sent out toward Syria by Abu Bakr;¹²⁹ al-Mada'ini and al-Waqidi claim that he was sent to Jordan (that is, to the region south of the Balqa' and east of Wadi 'Araba).¹³⁰ Sayfs authorities, on the other hand, state that he was appointed to al-Walid b. 'Uqba's former governorship over the outlying Quda'a tribes.¹³¹ This may be consistent with the opinion of al-Mada'ini and al-Waqidi if we assume that the tribes al-Walid b. 'Uqba had governed/resided in southern Jordan. Nothing more is heard of Shurahbil's activities during the first phase of the conquests, however, so it is impossible to verify his whereabouts.

Yazid b. Abi Sufyan appears to have been sent to the region of the Balqa', east and northeast of the Dead Sea.¹³² His route thither is not specified. At some point - whether on the way to the Balqa' or after he had reached it - he is reported to have sent a column of Muslims, commanded by Abu Umama al-Sudayya b. 'Ajlan al-Bahili, to a place called 'Araba in Palestine in order to break up a force of 5,000 Byzantine troops commanded by a certain Sergius, who appears to have come from Caesarea. In the resulting skirmish, Abii Umama's detachment was victorious and, according to Abu Mikhnaf, Abu Umama pursued the Byzantines to a place called al-Dabiya or al-Dubbiya where he again defeated them.¹³³ The episode is rather obscure and seems to have been of minor importance.

As for Abu 'Ubayda, he was active in the Golan region to the east of Lake Tiberias and south of Damascus.¹³⁴ It may have been during this first phase of campaigning that Abu 'Ubayda fought the inhabitants of a place in the Balqa' called Ma'ab, which then capitulated in return for a treaty with the Muslims.¹³⁵

In sum, the great mass of textual material dealing with the first phase of the conquest in Syria reduces itself to a few very general facts. The activities of Khalid b. Sa'id cannot be ascertained, but we can feel certain that after Khalid b. Sa'id's appointment and dismissal as commander, four main commanders were active in Syria: 'Amr b. al-'As in southern Palestine, Shurahbil b. Hasana in Jordan, Yazid b. Abi Sufyan in the Balqa', and Abu 'Ubayda in the Golan. Which of them was in overall command, if any was at this stage, cannot be determined. 'Amr became engaged in some small skirmishes around Gaza, Yazid's forces, in some around 'Araba in Palestine, and Abu 'Ubayda, in some around Ma'ab in the Balqa'. At some point, furthermore, 'Amr b. al-'As took up a position at Ghamr al-'Arabat. But the relative chronology of the departure and campaigning of these commanders remains completely outside our grasp, and the general picture of the campaigning in the first phase of the conquests is a very spare one indeed.
...
there is a general consensus among the various authorities that the Islamic armies in Syria were dispatched from Medina in the first months of the year A.H. 13/early spring of A.D. 634.¹⁷⁷
...
a passage in an anonymous Syriac chronicle of A.D. 724 that dates the first clash of the Muslims' armies with the Byzantines near Gaza to February of the year 945 of the Seleucid era,¹⁸¹ that is to February, A. D. 634/Dhu l-Qa'da, A.H. 12. This, too, at once requires that the departure of Islamic armies for Syria be set back several months. It is therefore plausible to conclude that these forces left Medina for Syria in the autumn of A.D. 633, first clashed with the Byzantines near Gaza in February of 634, demanded reinforcements from Abu Bakr shortly thereafter, and were reinforced by Khalid, who left Iraq in early April and reached the environs of Damascus at Easter, April 24, A.D. 634.¹⁸²
...
After completing the conquest of Bostra, the commanders marched together toward Palestine, where they joined 'Amr b. al-'As, who was facing a large concentration of Byzantine troops commanded by "alQubuqlar" (cubicularius, chamberlain) at a place called Ajnadayn, described as lying between Ramla and Bayt Jibrin. The location has been identified by modern researchers with the ancient Yarmuth near Wadi al-Simt, twenty-five kilometers west-southwest of Jerusalem.¹⁸⁹ The Byzantines reportedly sent out a bedouin of the B. Quda'a, probably a Christian, to serve as a spy on the Muslims - a perfectly plausible happening, even if the tale of his findings and his report to the Byzantine commanders is filled with legendary or imaginative devices designed to make it a better story. The battle at Ajnadayn - according to this reconstruction the first major one between the Muslims and a Byzantine army - was bitterly fought, and although the Byzantines were apparently routed and the Byzantine cubicularius himself reportedly killed, the Muslims' victory did not come easily, for several sources list the names of prominent early Muslims who fell as martyrs on the field of battle.¹⁹⁰ The Muslims, who numbered about twenty thousand according to one source, were commanded by 'Amr b. al-' As, whereas the other generals active in Syria (Yazid b. Abi Sufyan, Shurahbil b Hasana, and Khalid b. al-Walid) were evidently present as subordinates.¹⁹¹ The battle took place, according to most accounts, on the 27th or 28th of Jumada I, A.H. 13/29 or 30 July, A.D. 634, according to others around 18 Jumada I, in Jumada II, or even in Dhu 'l-Qa'da of A.H. 13/January, A.D. 635. In any case but the last, it is generally supposed to have occurred during the last months of Abu Bakr's caliphate, and the news of the Muslims' victory is supposed to have reached him on his deathbed, in Jumada II, 13/ August 634.¹⁹²

Footnotes

102. See Section 6 of this chapter on the chronology of the early campaigns.

103. E.g., Kufi I, 98; Ya'qubi II, 133; TMD I, 443ff. (I.I.).

115. Tab. i/2107-2108.

116. TMD I, 446. Other accounts of al-Waqidi simply list the three commanders without any indication of who proceeded first.

117. In this he is supported by one of WbM's accounts (TMD I, 453-454), by Bal. Put. 107-108, and by TMD I, 460 (Ya'qub b. Sufyan-h-Abu l-Yaman al-Hakam b. Nafi'-h-Safwan b. 'Amr 'Abd al-Rahman b. Jubayr).

118. Especially Kufi I, 98 and 103, who gives the four commanders as Abu 'Ubayda, Shurahbil b . Hasana, Yazid b. Abi' Sufyan, and Mu'adh b. Jabal. No early source mentions Mu'adh as a commander, but there is mention of him as a subordinate in Abu 'Ubayda's force some time later, after the conquest of Jerusalem (i.e., already in the third phase): TMD (Zah.) VII, fol. 381a (Abu Bakr b. 'Abdullah b. Miryam Salih. b. Abi Mukhariq). It therefore seems likely that he went to Syria, not as a commander, but as part of Abu 'Ubayda's army. Kufi 's omission of 'Amr b. al-'As may stem from the fact that 'Amr was sent to Palestine, whereas the other commanders were sent to areas east of the Jordan. Kufi mentions 'Amr's force later, considering it to have been a reinforcement for the armies sent out earlier - thus agreeing with al-Mada'ini. It is interesting that another later source, Abu Isma'il al-Azdi al-Basri's Futuh al-Sham, pp. 6-7, gives the same list of commanders as Kufi.

119. Most authorities, evidently themselves feeling unable to draw up a firm chronology from the data on the dispatch of the armies, simply state that Abu Bakr sent the four (or three) commanders to Syria, with no hint as to the sequence in which they marched: thus Ya'qubi II, 133; TMD I, 447 and 450 (Waq.); Bal. Fut. 107-108; Tab. i/2083-2084 (Sayf LT Sahl b. Yusuf LT al-Qasim b. Muhammad); Eutychius, Annales, 2, p. 9.

123. Ventures that took him to Egypt: Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, Futuh Misr. p. 53; TMD (Zah.) XIII, fol. 246b ('Abd al-Wahhab b. al-Hasan-ak-Abu Hawsa' ­ s - Abu l-Qasim b. Sami').

124. Tab. i/2078 and TMD I, 449, 449-450 (I.I); Tab. i/2085-2086 (Sayf LT Hisham b. 'Urwa); TMD I, 446 (Waq.); cf. Yaqut, s.v. "al-Mu'riqa"; Bal. Fut. 108.

125. Philip Mayerson, "The First Muslim Attacks on Southern Palestine (A.D. 633-634)."

126. Bal. Fut. 108; TMD I, 461-462 (WbM); TMD (Zah.) XIII, fol. 257b (Waq.). Cf. Eutychius, Annales, 2, pp. 10-11; he calls the village Tadun and places the negotiations after the arrival of a large Byzantine army there. See also the anonymous Chronicum Miscellaneum ad Annum Domini 724 Pertinens, in Ernest Walter Brooks, Chronica Minora, 2, p. 1 48, which describes an engagement between the Byzantines and tayyaye east of Gaza.

127. Tab. i/2107 (I.I); Tab. i/2107-2108 (Mad.); cf. De Goeje, Memoire, pp. 22-24.

128. Tab. i/2078; TMD I, 449; TMD I, 449-450; Khalifa I, 86. Cf. Tab. i/2107; TMD I, 457 (mentions Yazid only); Bal. Fut. 108 (I.I. ?).

129. Tab. i/2110-2113 (Sayf LT MTMA).

130. Tab. i/2107-2108 (Mad.); Bal. Fut. 108 (Waq.). The comment in Tab. that Abii Bakr assigned a district (kura) to each commander-Palestine to 'Amr and 'Alqama b. Mujazziz, Jordan to Shurahbil, Damascus to Yazid, and Hims to Abu 'Ubayda - seems to come from Sayf b. 'Umar (cf. TMD I, 545) and reflects the situation in Syria somewhat later, after the battle of the Yarmuk. Mad. adds that some authorities think Shurahbil was sent to Bostra.

131. Dahiya Quda'a, i.e., presumably the more southerly tribes of Quda'a? Tab. i/2084-2085 (Sayf LT Sahl, Mubashshir and AU LT KU).

132. Cf. note 128 for I.I.; Tab. i/2107-2108 (Mad.); Bal. Fut. 108 (Waq.) has him going to Damascus.

133. The locations of 'Araba and al-Dabiya have never been ascertained. Caetani, Annali 11/2, pp. 1161-1171, tallies up an assumed identification of al-Dabiya with al-Dathina near Gaza (following Noldeke), and an account stating that 'Amr b. al-'As reinforced Yazid, to conclude that Yazid, like 'Amr, was active in southern Palestine rather than in the Balqa' district. Though this reconstruction is plausible, it is far from certain. We cannot be sure that 'Araba was the Wadi 'Araba and not some other place in Palestine, nor that al-Dabiya was in fact al-Dathina. Even if the latter identification is correct, the account may be a fragment describing the battle near Gaza that AM or his sources erroneously included in his synthesis of the events of Yazid's campaign. Finally, there is nothing to suggest that the battle took place before Yazid's forces reached the Balqa'; the statement that 'Amr reinforced Yazld could very well have originated in the later joint operations at Ajnadayn, and it is in any case contradicted by another account claiming that in cases of joint operations, 'Amr was to be in charge of prayer for the whole army, i.e. he was to command: TMD I, 447 (Waq.). Our object is not to dispose of Caetani's reconstruction as false, but to show that, though plausible, it is no more plausible than many other possible reconstructions one might create with the available data. Sources for this episode: Bal. Fut. 109 (AM and others); Tab. i/2108 (qalu); Theophanes, Chronographia, 1, p. 336. Cf. De Goeje, Memoire, p. 34; Mayerson, "The First Muslim Attacks," pp. 161-166. Theophanes is the source of the statement that the four armies were guided into Syria by Christian Arabs disgruntled with the Byzantine authorities for cutting off their stipend payments.

134. I.I. has all forces going to the Balqa'; Waq. does not mention Abu 'Ubayda going out at all; Mad. (in Tab. i/2107-2108) has him in al-Jabiya, the old Ghassanid capital, as does Kufi I, 132; Kufi I, 125 has him near Damascus. Note that he is later reported to have gone from al-Jabiya to Jerusalem to pray: TMD (Zah.) VII, fol. 381a. Caetani, Annali 11/2, pp. 1171 -1173, argues that Abu 'Ubayda was not present at all during the first phase of the conquests in Syria, and only arrived with the battles of Ajnadayn and Yarmuk; in his opinion, his presence was extrapolated back by eighth-century chroniclers wishing to diminish the apparent role of 'Amr b. al-'As and Yazld b. Abi Sufyan in the conquests because of their close ties to Mu'awiya, the first Umayyad caliph. Anti-Umayyad propaganda did circulate, but this seems farfetched.

135. Bal. Fut. 113 places it after the conquest of Bostra, i.e., in Phase II; cf. Yaqut, s.v. "Ma'ab"; Tab. i/2108 (Mad.?) makes it the first treaty in Syria and states explicitly that "it was a camp (fustat), not a city (madina)."

177. Mad. places the actual departure of troops in the beginning of A.H. 13 (Tab. i/2079); Bal. Fut. 107-108 puts it at Safar, A.H. 13; I.I. states that Abu Bakr first sent out his call for troops upon his return from the pilgrimage of A.H. 12, i.e., during the last days of that year, so the departure of troops would have been some time into A.H. 13 (Tab. i/2079; Khalifa, I, 86; TMD I, 441, 449, 449-450).

181. In Brooks, Chronica Minora II, 148.

182. This chronology is developed with variations by Caetani, Annali 11/2, pp. 1213-1220; De Goeje, Memoire, pp. 39-41; and Musil, Arabia Deserta, p. 563. Musil and Caetani refine it by attempting to resolve some of the apparent contradictions: Musil by contending that Rabi' and Safar in the accounts refer not to the months so named in the lunar year, but to the seasons spring and autumn, and Caetani by contending that notices of Abu Bakr's pilgrimage refer not to the hajj, but to the 'umra or lesser pilgrimage, which he made in Rajah, A.H. 12/ September-October, A.D. 633.

189. De Goeje, Memoire, pp. 50-61; Caetani, Annali III, pp. 22-24; Taha al-Hashimi, "Ma'rakat Ajnadayn: mata waqa'at, wa ayna waqa'at?"

190. These are collected by Caetani, Annali III, pp. 74-81. Cf. also Appendix A below.

191. Abu 'Ubayda, however, is not mentioned at the battle. This reflects Waq.'s conviction that he was only appointed upon the accession of 'Umar, which Waq. places after Ajnadayn.

192. Ajnadayn: Tab. i/2125-2126 (I.I.); Khalifa I, 87 (I.I.); TMD, 447, I, 482- 483 (Waq.); TMD I, 483 (SbA and Ibn Jabir); Ya'qubi II, 134. Cf. Bal. Fut. 113- 114; TMD I, 481 (Abu l-Hasan b. al-Fadl-ak-'Abdullah b.Ja'far-ak-Ya'qub); TMD I, 497 (WbM-h-al-Shaykh al-Umawi); TMD I, 484 (IL LT Abii l-Aswad LT 'Urwa); Tab. i/2126. TMD I, 480 dates both Ajnadayn and Fahl to Dhu l-Qa'da A.H. 13. Kufi I, 142-145 gives a different account.

Donner, F. M. (1981). The Early Islamic Conquests, Princeton University Press.

Kennedy, H. (2007). The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In, Da Capo Press.

Shoemaker, S. J. (2011). The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam, University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated.

Shoemaker, S. J. (2021). A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam through Christian and Jewish Eyes, A Sourcebook, University of California Press.

In discussing sources for Theophanes, Michael the Syrian, and Agapius of Menbij (all thought to have been informed by Theophilius of Edessa), Conterno (2014:147) contributes:

One might be tempted to see in this common additional detail the proof of the derivation of information from the same written source, but we find the same comment associated with a very similar astronomical phenomenon in the Chronicle of Zuqnin, which is not supposed to be linked to the "circuit of Theophilus of Edessa“.

In the year 937 the stars of the sky fell and threw like arrows to the north, giving a terrible omen of the defeat of the Romans and the invasion of their lands by the Arabs, which actually happened to them after a short while, without delay.

As already mentioned, Hoyland observes that this type of news could easily migrate from one report to another. And as we have seen in the previous chapter, events of this type were recorded in the chronological lists linked to the city or ecclesiastical archives, lists that circulated in different versions and were used by chroniclers as a basis in compiling their chronicles. Furthermore, as in the case of Phocas' commentary on bloody politics, it may well be that multiple sources independently described an event that had been widely commented on and discussed by the people, and transformed, in collective memory, into a prophecy ex eventu.

Mango and Scott (1997:lxxiv-xcviii) state the following about Theophanes' sources

SOURCES

Except for an indeterminate part of its final section the Chronicle of Theophanes can best be viewed as a file of extracts borrowed from earlier sources. These have been subjected in varying degrees to a process of abbreviation and paraphrase (see below, p. xciff.), but no attempt has been made to impose a stylistic uniformity to the resultant text. On the contrary, peculiarities of diction and style, from the archaic to the vernacular, that were present in the sources have, more often than not, been left untouched. An extreme case is provided by the borrowings from the iambic poems by George of Pisidia, many of which retain their metrical form. Unfortunately, this telltale diversity cannot be fully conveyed in translation and can only be sensed in the original.
...
It should be noted that, unlike the Syriac chroniclers, who are often scrupulous in naming their authorities, Theophanes hardly ever does so.
...
2. An eastern (Syriac) chronicle. Theophanes is unique among Byzantine chroniclers in his direct use of a foreign source, which makes up a major part of his narrative for the seventh and eighth centuries. The credit for proving this fact is due to E. W. Brooks,¹⁰¹ whose acute remarks admit of further elaboration thanks to the subsequent publication to texts not available to him, in particular the Chronicle of 1234 and Agapios of Membidj.

There can be little doubt that the source used by Theophanes (for the sake of simplicity we shall speak of a single source, although there may have been more than one) was a Greek translation of a chronicle written in Syriac. That this translation was made in the East is indicated, amongst other clues, by the use of Macedonian months, which was traditional in Syria—Palestine: these occur between 6126 and 6242. It is also evident that this source in its final form was a product of Melkite circles. It is difficult to determine its place of origin, since there are divergent pointers to Edessa, Antioch, Emesa, and Palestine. But even if the final redaction was Melkite, the source incorporated a good deal of material common to the Syrian Jacobite tradition, as represented notably by Michael the Syrian and the Chronicle of 1234.

The identification of the eastern passages (which, for the reader's convenience, we have distinguished by a different font) is not always beyond dispute. Setting aside some cases of overlap as early as the fourth century (discussed below), the passages in question start with the Persian invasion in the reign of Phokas (Am 6099), become more or less continuous from AD 630 onwards, and extend at least to AD 780.

If we wish to go further and try to identify Theophanes' eastern source, we find ourselves in deep waters. It is known that Michael's Chronicle (completed in 1195) was chiefly based for the period 582-842 (i.e. books x. 2I-xii) on that of Dionysios of Tel-Mahre, who is also acknowledged to have been the source of the Chronicle of 1234, the latter being independent of Michael. But Dionysios died in 845 and his Chronicle, which is lost except for a few fragments,¹⁰² could not, therefore, have been the source of Theophanes. The latter must have been already incorporated in Dionysios.

The next point to notice is that whereas Theophanes' eastern source extended to at least 780, his correspondence with Michael (as with Chr. 1234) stops in about 750, as already stressed by Brooks. The relationship of the various texts we have been discussing, setting aside Agapios, can, therefore, be expressed by the following schema:

Schema for the 'eastern source'

Mango and Scott (1997:lxxxiii)

With regard to the postulated Chronicle of 750, it ought to correspond to the work of one of the six authors cited by Dionysios in his Preface, which is reproduced by Michael (ii. 358). Their respective claims have been examined by Brooks, who, after eliminating four of them as being too early, too late, or otherwise unsuitable, was left with two candidates, namely a certain John son of Samuel and Theophilos of Edessa, expressing a preference for the former. Since nothing whatever is known concerning John son of Samuel, we shall be none the wiser if we ascribe to him the Chronicle of 750. Theophilos of Edessa, who is specifically mentioned as a source by Agapios of Membidj (whose work belongs to the same nexus of sources),¹⁰³ is a more attractive candidate. He was a Melkite, an 'astrologer', and a favourite of the Caliph al-Mahdi. In addition to his historical interests, he also translated the Iliad and the Odyssey into Syriac. He died in 785.¹⁰⁴ Recently a detailed case has been made for Theophilos' authorship of the 'Chronicle of 75O,¹⁰⁵ which may be accepted as a working hypothesis. That, however, still leaves open the identity of the eastern source for the period 750-80, which does not appear to offer any close parallels either with the Syriac tradition or with Agapios, whose published text breaks off in the second year of al-Mahdi (AD 776/7). One possible solution would be to suppose that whoever translated Theophilos into Greek wrote the post-750 narrative in addition to being responsible for a number of other entries in the pre-750 section, which, although of eastern derivation, are unique to Theophanes.
...
the Latin translation of Anastasius (also edited by de Boor)¹²⁷ assumes considerable importance. This was made in Rome between 871 and 874 in the interests of John Immonides, who was then compiling his historico-ecclesiastical encyclopaedia.¹²⁸ The Greek manuscript Anastasius had before him may have been acquired in the course of his mission to Constantinople in 869-70 and was probably similar in content to some of the extant Greek manuscripts, since it also included part of Synkellos and the Chron. syntomon of Nikephoros (like f and o). It was, however, of much better quality than the entire Greek tradition, except a and b. Unfortunately, Anastasius did not translate it in full: he made only short excerpts down to the death of Theodosios II, fuller ones to the death of Justinian I, but from the accession of Justin II (and even more closely from that of Maurice) he provided a full translation.

As long as it was believed that the oldest manuscript of Theophanes was not earlier than the late tenth century it was possible to speculate, in view of the undoubted superiority of Anastasius, that the chronicler's text underwent considerable deterioration between c.850 and 950. The view that de Boor's Theophanes was not the 'real' Theophanes was argued at length by a Russian clergyman, P. G. Preobranskij,¹²⁹ who thought that the authentic text had to be reconstructed with the help of A[nastasius] as well as d = Paris. gr. 1710 (of which he had a much higher opinion than did de Boor) and later compilers, notably Kedrenos¹³⁰ and pseudo-Symeon,¹³¹ who allegedly had access to a better tradition than we do. It was further suggested that the preserved Theophanes represented an inferior edition made at the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who, undoubtedly, had a keen interest in the Confessor, as shown by the lengthy extracts he included in his De administrando imperio.¹³² Besides, Constantine believed that Theophanes was related to him through his mother Zoe.
...
The deterioration of the Greek text by comparison with Anastasius must, therefore, have taken place much earlier, towards the middle of the ninth century, that is as soon as it was published, and can best be explained on the assumption that the Chronicle enjoyed a wide diffusion from the start. The fact that the same scribe (or, at any rate, the same scriptorium) made two copies, c and o, seems to indicate something like mass production, which one may be tempted to localize in the monastery of Megas Agros. Palaeographically these two manuscripts belong to a much discussed group, which has been christened 'tipo Anastasio'.¹³³ It may be worth noting that another important member of the group (Paris. gr. 1470 + 1476) has been attributed to Bithynia on the basis of its ornament,¹³⁴ a conclusion that has been tentatively endorsed in a recent study.¹³⁵ The chronicler George the Monk, who was probably active in the second half of the ninth century,¹³⁶ used Theophanes in a version that appears to have been rather distinctive. At about the same time the Chronicle, including its Preface, was extensively plagiarized by the author of the Life of the probably imaginary St Theodore of Chora,¹³⁷ a monastery which, incidentally, had close links with Palestine. Further research in this direction may prove fruitful.

In sum, we do not wish to claim that the text we have translated is the 'definitive' Theophanes. There may be room for further improvement of the text, but that can only be done in the context of a new edition, an undertaking that will require many years of labour.

Footnotes

101 BZ 15 (1906), 578-87. Cf. N. Pigulevskaja, JOBG 16 (1967), 55-60, for Theophanes' relation to Ps.-Dionysios. A useful survey of Syriac historical sources for the 7th cent. is given by S. P. Brock, BMGS 2 (1976), 17-36. See now also L. I. Conrad, ByzF 15 (1990), 1-44; R. Hoyland, 'Arabic, Syriac and Greek Historiography in the First Abbasid Century', Aram, 3 (1991), 217-39; Palmer, Seventh Century, esp. 96 ff. (by R. Hoyland).

102 An attempt to reconstruct it is made by Palmer, Seventh Century, III ff.

103 PO viii. 525

104 The Chronography of Gregory Abu 'l-Faraf . known as Bar Hebraeus, trans. E. A. W. Budge, i (London, 1932), 116. Cf. A. Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur (Bonn, 192.2), 341-2. Note that Theophilos appears to have used the Byzantine era, since he calculated AG as starting in 5197 from Adam: Budge, 40 [39]; F. Nau, ROC 4 [1899], 327.

105 L.I. Conrad, The Conquest of Arwad' in A. Cameron and L.I. Conrad, eds., The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, i (Princeton, 1992), 317-401.

127 Along with Theophanes, ii. 31 ff.

128 See G. Arnaldi, 'Anastasio Bibliotecario', Dizionario biogr. degli Italiani, iii (1961), 25-37, with further bibliography.

129 Letopisnoe povestvovanie sv. Feofana Ispovednika (Vienna, 1912). This work, which is not only very scarce but practically unreadable, was not well received. See critical review by F. Uspenskij, VizVrem 22 (1916), 297-304, and the somewhat more cautious one by E. W. Brooks, BZ 2.2 (1913), 154-5.

130 On whom see Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, i. 273-5. The part of Kedr. that concerns us here is still only available in the uncritical Bonn edn. (1838).

131 The major part of this work, contained in cod. Paris. gr. 17I2, remains unpublished. See A. Markopoulos, [H Xpovoypaslita Tov greek text which did not trancribe well], diss. Ioannina, 1978, esp. 111 ff.

132 Notably DAI, 22.9 ff. and 25.3 ff.

133 E. Follieri, 'La minuscola libraria dei secoli IX e X', in La Paleographie grecque et byzantine, Colloques internat. du CNRS, 559 (Paris, 1977),144-5.

134 K. Weitzmann, Die byzantinische Buchmalerei des 9. and so. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1935), 40, 43.

135 L. Perria, 'La minuscola "tipo Anastasio" ', in G. Cavallo et al., eds., Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree provinciali di Bisanzio (Spoleto, 1991), i. 316.

136 See above, n. 34.

137 Ed. C. Loparev, De S. Theodoro monacho hegumenoque Chorensi, Zapiski Klass. Otd. Imp. Russk. Arkheol. Obsc;. I (1904), suppl. 1-16. Its dependence on Theophanes was demonstrated by T. Schmit, Kahriye Dzami, IRAIK II (1906), 9 ff., who supposed (p. 16) that the author of the Life used either a fuller redaction of Theophanes or one of the latter's sources.

Hoyland (2011:4-20) discussed dependants of the lost work of Theophilius of Edessa.

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND

Byzantinists tend to view the period from 630 to the 750s as a historiographical desert and speak of it as a 'long silence' or 'long gap'.⁴ This is in part because history-writing in the sixth century had enjoyed a considerable measure of vitality. All the three main genres were well represented: secular classicising history (Procopius, Agathias, Menander, John of Epiphaneia and Theophylact Simocatta), church history (Zosimus, John of Ephesus and Evagrius) and the world chronicle (John Malalas and John of Antioch).⁵ And it is also in part because there are almost no extant historical texts for this period; its events are of course charted by later historians, but the works they depend on do not in general survive.

Because of this historiographical dearth, it seems worthwhile to try and recover one text that was definitely composed at this time, the chronicle of Theophilus of Edessa, an astrologer in the Abbasid court in Iraq in the second half of the eighth century. It has become accepted of late to identify Theophilus’ chronicle with the so-called 'eastern source’, the existence of which had been postulated from the eighteenth century.⁶ This conclusion had been arrived at from careful comparison of three later Christian chroniclers: the Byzantine monk Theophanes the Confessor (d. 818), the West Syrian patriarch Dionysius of Telmahre (d. 845),⁷ and Agapius, bishop of the north Syrian city of Manbij (wr. 940s).⁶ The latter, who relies very heavily upon the ‘eastern source’ for the period 630-750s, states explicitly that he has drawn upon the ‘books’⁹ of Theophilus of Edessa:

Theophilus the Astrologer, from whom we took these accounts, said: I was myself a constant witness of these wars and I would write things down so that nothing of them escaped me He has many books about that and we have abbreviated from them this book. We added to it what we perceived to be indispensable, but we avoided prolixity.¹⁰

Dionysius of Telmahre also names Theophilus as one of his informants:

One of these writers (who wrote ‘narratives resembling ecclesiastical history’) was Theophilus of Edessa, a Chalcedonian who regarded it as his birthright to loathe the Orthodox (...)¹¹ We shall take from the writings of this man some details here and there from those parts which are reliable and do not deviate from the truth.¹²

The fact that Theophilus of Edessa is indeed known to have penned ‘a fine work of history’¹³ has been regarded as proof positive that Theophilus is the author of the ‘eastern source’. The situation is a little more complex than this

THEOPHILUS' DEPENDANTS

I should emphasise at the outset that by using the term ‘dependants’ I do not mean that the authors below used Theophilus’ chronicle in a slavish manner. Indeed, one of the key conclusions to be drawn from the translation below is that while it is clear that Theophanes, Dionysius and Agapius relied substantially on a single common source, they nevertheless felt free to creatively revise and reshape it, to abbreviate and reword it, and to supplement it with material from other sources.

I. Theophanes the Confessor (d. 818; writing in Greek)

Theophanes was born in 760 to noble and rich parents. His father, governor of the region by the Aegean Sea, died while his son was still young. As heir to extensive estates in Bithynia and a considerable fortune, Theophanes spent his youth in ‘hunting and riding’ and married a woman of comparable wealth. He entered imperial service with the rank of groom and was assigned the task of superintending the rebuilding of the fortifications at Cyzicus on the southern side of the Sea of Marmara. He would undoubtedly information on both Byzantine and Arab affairs. For the latter he is heavily dependent upon the ‘eastern source’ for the period 630-740s. Even after this date, however, Theophanes continues to narrate events occurring in Muslim-ruled lands, until ca. 780. Either he made use of another chronicle for these three decades or, more likely, he had at his disposal a continuation of the ‘eastern source’.²⁷ The preponderance of material concerning Syria and Palestine suggests that the continuator was from that region.²⁸ Most of the very few entries in Theophanes for the period 630-740s that are not from the ‘eastern source’ are also concerned with Syria and Palestine, so it is likely that this continuator was a redactor as well, inserting the occasional entry within the text of the ‘eastern source’.²⁹ The addition of notices on the succession of the Melkite patriarchs of Antioch in the years 742-56 implies that this continuator/redactor was a Melkite clergyman. It is quite possible that it was George Syncellus himself who did this work. We know he was based in Palestine for a time, at one of the monasteries in the Judaean desert,³⁰ and he specifically states that, in addition to the material of earlier historians, he added ‘a few events which happened in our own times’ (quoted in full above). This suggestion is not in the end provable, but it is plausible and is a very neat and economical solution.

When compared to Agapius and Dionysius, it becomes immediately apparent that the ‘eastern source’, as he appears in Theophanes, has been substantially abbreviated and his notices have sometimes been amalgamated, thus creating’ a causal link between events that seem originally to have been unconnected.³¹ This compression is probably a consequence of Theophanes’ bias for Byzantine affairs and should not be attributed to the continuator.³²

2. Dionysius of Telmahre (d. 845; writing in Syriac)

Dionysius came from a wealthy and well-established Edessan family. He studied at the monasteries of Qenneshre and of Mar Jacob at Kayshum before being elevated to the position of patriarch of the West Syrian church in 818, which position he held until his death in 845.³³ At the request of John, metropolitan of Dara, he consented to undertake what others, despite his exhortations, had declined to do, namely ‘to set down in writing for the generations which are to come the events which have occurred (in the past) and which are occurring in our own time’.³⁴ The finished product was described by a later chronicler as follows:

He composed it in two parts and in sixteen books, each part containing eight books divided into chapters. He wrote it at the request of John, metropolitan of Dara. In this chronicle are included the times, a period of 260 years, from the beginning of the reign of Maurice - that is, from the year 894 of the Greeks (582) - until the year 1154 (842) in which there died Theophilus, emperor of the Romans, and Abu Ishaq (Mu‘tasim), king of the Arabs.³⁵

This division into parts - one devoted to church history, the other to secular history - and books and chapters indicates a sophisticated approach that differs from that found in earlier Syriac historiography. In his preface Dionysius characterises his work as a pragmateia, a term used by classical writers to mean a treatise strictly and systematically formulated, and he distances himself from those who ‘composed their narratives in a summary and fragmented fashion without preserving either chronological accuracy or the order of succession of events’. In contrast to such writings, he says. Our aim is to bring together in this book everything which our feeble self is able, with God’s assistance, to collect, and to ascertain the accuracy (of each report) as attested by many persons worthy of credence, to select (the best version) and then to write it down in (correct) order’.³⁶

Bar a few fragments, Dionysius’ achievement unfortunately does not survive.³⁷ Much can, however, be recovered by comparing the writings of those who later drew upon it, notably the West Syrian patriarch Michael the Syrian (1166-99) and an anonymous Edessan chronicler of the early thirteenth century whose work is referred to simply as the Chronicle of 1234, since that is the year in which it stops.³⁸ These two authors were compiling their chronicles within a decade of one another and yet would seem to have been working independently. Both explicitly cite Dionysius a number of times,³⁹ and Michael implies that Dionysius was his only substantial source for the period 582-842. We can, therefore, be reasonably sure that every notice common to both writers in this period derives from Dionysius. However, neither of these two passes his oeuvre on to us intact; rather, they both add, omit, abbreviate, rephrase and reshape.⁴⁰ Michael breaks up the text of Dionysius and distributes the material over three columns devoted to ecclesiastical affairs, natural phenomena and civil history. The Chronicle of 1234 has one continuous narrative until the time of Constantine and then divides its notices into secular and church history, relegating the latter to the end. Michael’s ecclesiastical column is extensive, but much of this is treated as civil history by the chronicler of 1234, whose church history is relatively small.⁴¹ It seems likely that Dionysius, given his position as patriarch, would have deemed his ecclesiastical history the more important and so given it greater space, but it is difficult to say for sure.

In the preface to his work Dionysius states that he would take from Theophilus of Edessa ‘only those parts which are reliable and do not deviate from the truth’. The reason for this proviso is the rivalry in their faith, Dionysius being a Miaphysite and Theophilus a Chalcedonian. In reality, however, Dionysius conveys to us more of Theophilus than either Theophanes or Agapius, albeit only through the filters of Michael and the Chronicle of 1234. Most of the notices in Michael’s civil history column for the period 630-750 have a counterpart in Theophanes and Agapius, and so most clearly represent Theophilus; but many of Michael’s notices on natural phenomena and almost all of the ecclesiastical reports derive from elsewhere.⁴² The Chronicle o f 1234 has often been thought to best preserve Dionysius, and so Theophilus. This is true to the extent that it often quotes Dionysius in full and does not break up the narrative structure into subject categories as Michael does. Yet on closer study it proves to be quite an eclectic work. For example, it dislikes short notices, preferring to have a paragraph’s worth before accepting a report. And for the Arab conquests and the first Arab civil war it turns to Muslim sources, not merely supplementing, but borrowing wholesale.⁴³ Except for these two occasions, however, almost of all of its notices on civil affairs would seem to derive from Theophilus.

It is evident that Dionysius produced a comprehensive and carefully structured work. The church history takes centre stage, coming first and comprising a formidable array of documents; the secular history follows, smaller in size, but great efforts were made to assemble as much material as possible. The two parts, assigned eight books each, were then crossreferenced and otherwise linked by glimpses forward and flashbacks, and the whole was set forth in a fluid and florid Syriac diction.⁴⁴ For Islamicists it is valuable as the best witness to Theophilus of Edessa’s chronicle and for revealing to us something of the life and conditions of the Christians, who still constituted a majority of the population of the Near East in Dionysius’ day.

3. Agapius, bishop of Manbij (wr. 940s; writing in Arabic)

The earliest manuscript of this author’s chronicle, Sinai Arab 580 of the late tenth century,⁴⁵ assigns it the following title: ‘The book of history, the composition of Mahbub son of Constantine the Byzantine of Manbij, the title of which is (dedicated) to the man crowned with the virtues of wisdom, versed in the ways of philosophy, commended by the truths of knowledge, righteous and benevolent, Abu Musa ‘Isa son of Husayn.’⁴⁶ Unfortunately we know nothing about the latter character and very little about Agapius (the Greek equivalent of Mahbub) himself beyond what is in the heading.⁴⁷ His work begins with Creation and halts abruptly at the end of the reign of Leo IV (775-80), but he would seem to have continued until ca. 942, since at one point he states that ‘the kingdom of the Arabs’ has endured for 330 years.⁴⁸ The work was known to the Muslim polymath Mas‘udi (d. 956), who deemed it one of the best books he had seen by the Melkites on history.⁴⁹

Agapius has very little information for the years 630-750s that is not drawn from Theophilus of Edessa. The only other source that we can detect is a Muslim history, which is revealed from the occasional provision of a Hijri date or the full name of a Muslim authority, and also from notices such as who led the pilgrimage in certain years and who the governors were for a particular caliph.⁵⁰ He would also seem to be dipping into it for certain events of key importance to the political life of the Muslims, especially their various civil wars.⁵¹ In addition, it may underlie his chronology, for most of his notices are dated according to the years of the reigning caliph. As regards his use of Theophilus, Agapius is rather erratic, sometimes quoting him at length, at other times abbreviating him considerably.

4. The Chronicle of Siirt (written in Arabic)

This text, so called because the manuscript was discovered in the town of southern Türkey bearing that name, narrates the history of the saints and patriarchs of the Nestorian church, and the principal events of the Roman, Persian and Arab empires that impinged upon it. Its interest for us is somewhat limited since the two volumes that contain the work are both defective at the beginning and end: it starts abruptly in 251, has a lacuna in the middle corresponding to the years 423-83, and halts mid-sentence in 650.⁵² It presumably began with Jesus, demonstrating the continuity of the Eastern Church with Christianity’s fount. How far it extended is less easy to say. The mention of place names such as Baghdad (founded in 762), Samarra (830s) and Jazirat ibn ‘Umar (founded by and named after Hasan ibn ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab al-Taghlibi, d. ca. 865), and the reference to Mosul as the seat of a metropolitan (from 820s) take us to the late ninth century.⁵³

Further indications can be gleaned from the sources that the chronicler names at intervals. The Ecclesiastical History of Daniel bar Maryam, a contemporary of the patriarch Isho‘yahb III (d. 658), is cited five times, and that of two other approximate contemporaries, Elias of Merw and Bar Sahde, are cited two and three times respectively. The works of the eighth-century theologian Shahdust, bishop of Tirhan, and the biographies compiled by the patriarch Isho‘ bar Nun (824—28) are each excerpted twice. And the Chalcedonian philosopher and physician Qusta ibn Luqa, who died some time in the reign of the caliph Muqtadir (907-32), is cited four times, bringing us into the tenth century.⁵⁴ A terminus ante quem is given by the observation that Isho‘yahb III was the last head of the church to bear this name,⁵⁵ which means that the work antedates the appointment of Isho‘yahb IV in 1020. The Chronicle of Siirt was, therefore, composed between 907 and 1020.

A source not cited by the chronicler is the work of Theophilus of Edessa. Unfortunately, since the Chronicle ofSiirt breaks off in 650, we do not have much material for comparison with Theophilus, but there are a few notices that reveal close correspondence: the pact between Heraclius and Nicetas to depose Phocas (AD 610), the rift between Khusrau and Shahrbaraz (ca. 626), Khusrau’s dispatch of Rozbihan against Heraclius (627), a sign in the sky ca. 634 and ‘Umar’s building activity in Jerusalem ca. 642 (all cited in the translation section below). However, for the first three notices, which occur before the Arab conquests, we cannot be sure whether they go back to Theophilus or to some other source that Agapius and Dionysius have in common, such as the Sergius of Rusafa whom Dionysius names as a source for this period (see below) and who may have been accessible to the chronicler of Siirt. The sign in the sky is a brief entry that is likely to travel easily between chronicles, so we are only left with the account of ‘Umar’s building activity in Jerusalem. This is quite close to the narratives of Theophanes, Agapius and Dionysius (see the entry thereon in the translation section below), but as a single notice it does not give us a sufficient basis for assessing how much and in what way the Chronicle of Siirt used Theophilus.

5. The Byzantine-Arab Chronicler of 741 (written in Latin)

This is a somewhat odd composition. Its content is as follows:

Spanish affairs (99c): six cursory references to Visigothic kings (§§1-3, 5, 9, 14). dated according to the Spanish era. from the death of Reccared in 602 to the accession of Suinthila in 621. The Spanish dating era is no longer used after 640. The conquest of Spain is only mentioned among other triumphs of Walid’s reign (§36), but there is an entry devoted to the battle of Toulouse in 721 (§42). Byzantine affairs (299c): brief notices on the emperors from the death of Phocas in 610 to the accession of Leo III in 717: only Heraclius receives any substantial treatment (629c of Byzantine notices; 18% of all notices). Arab affairs (629c): this is the major component of the chronicle and comprises entries on each ruler from Muhammad until Yazid II (720-24), giving the length and events of their reigns and often some personal description.

The initial references to Visigothic kings are drawn from Isidore of Seville’s History of the Goths, but it can hardly be regarded as a continuation of Isidore since it concerns itself thereafter only with eastern rather than western rulers. One might instead see the work as a continuation of John of Biclar’s Chronicle, which, as a contribution to the universal chronicle tradition, had a more eastern focus than Isidore’s history and ended in the reign of Reccared, with whose death the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle o f 741 begins. Moreover, both place the Byzantine emperors in a numerical scheme that goes back to Augustus. But the almost total absence of Spanish material, which John of Biclar does include in some measure, makes impossible any strict alignment with the Spanish historiographical tradition.⁵⁶

The second distinctive feature of the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle of 741 is its favourable attitude towards the Arab caliphs, and not only towards the more renowned ones such as Mu‘awiya and ‘Abd al-Malik. Thus, though noting that he had little success in war, it characterises Yazid I as:

A most pleasant man and deemed highly agreeable by all the peoples subject to his rule. He never, as is the wont of men, sought glory for himself because of his royal rank, but lived as a citizen along with all the common people (§28).⁵⁷

The chronicler evidently relies upon a Near Eastern source, and this must have been composed in Syria, since the Umayyad caliphs are each described in a relatively positive vein, all reference to ‘Ali is omitted, Mu‘awiya II is presented as a legitimate and uncontested ruler (§29) and the rebel Yazid ibn al-Muhallab is labelled ‘a font of wickedness’ (§41). Another chronicle from eighth-century Spain, the Hispanic Chronicle of 754⁵⁸ also makes use of this Syrian source, and a comparison between the two Latin texts makes clear that it must have dealt with both Arab and Byzantine rulers - though the latter much more briefly - and was more extensive than either of its transmitters, both of which abbreviate it, at times substantially. One would expect this Syrian source to have been in Greek, since that was the usual language of exchange between east and west, and there are a few parallels between it and Byzantine chronicles.⁵⁹ Yet as regards Arab rulers, no Greek source displays such a positive attitude towards them as the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle of 741. Dubler suggested it was written by a Spanish convert to Islam, but no Muslim would portray the rise of Islam as a rebellion, and surely no convert would refrain from passing some comment upon his newly adopted faith. The Syrian source of the Latin texts reports many of the same events and halts at the same point (ca. 750) as the common source of Theophanes, Agapius and Dionysius of Telmahre, and it is tempting to postulate that the Spanish chroniclers are dependent on a Latin translation of this common source. However, there are very few textual parallels⁶⁰ (though this could just be because the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle is heavily abbreviating his Syrian source) and Theophanes, Agapius and Dionysius have much material not found in the Spanish texts.

A brief comment is required concerning the date of the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle of 741. The concluding notice is as follows:

Then Yazid, king of the Saracens, his fourth year having unfolded, departed from this life, leaving the rule to his brother, Hisham by name; and he determined that after his brother the one bom of his (Yazid’s) own seed, named Walid, should rule (§43).

This takes us only to 724 and no later event is narrated, nor is the length of Hisham’s reign given.⁶¹ It is because the entry on Leo III’s accession (in 717) contains the remark ‘he took up the sceptre for 24 years’ (i.e. until 741 ) that the text is associated with the year 741. But this suggests that the chronicler had intended to proceed further. The notices on Arab affairs in the Hispanic Chronicle of 754 carry on in much the same vein until ca. 750, concluding with the accession to power of the Abbasids, and it is simpler to assume that the author is still relying on the same Syrian source rather than to posit some other Near Eastern source for the period 724-50. It may be, then, that we have the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle o f 741 in a curtailed form and that it too originally continued until ca. 750.⁶²

THEOPHILUS’ CHRONICLE

From a comparison of Theophanes, Dionysius and Agapius it becomes immediately apparent that their notices for the seventh and eighth century follow a chronological order. A few are misplaced, but the intention was clearly to progress through history from some point in the past up until the author’s own day. Yet it is also evident from the frequency with which Dionysius and Agapius either begin a notice with ‘at this time’ or else disagree with each other on dating that Theophilus’ work was not annalistic and was indeed rather sparing with dates.⁶³This is an important point, for modem scholars often rely upon Theophanes for ascertaining the date of an event. But it is because he is writing an annalistic work that he puts notices under specific years, not necessarily because these notices were dated in the sources he is using. And in the case of the notices on eastern affairs, Theophanes often had to place them just where he thought best.

...

Theophanes, Dionysius and Agapius are clearly dependent on a common source from the notice on Abu Bakr’s despatch of four generals in 634 onwards. Before this time Theophanes is able to obtain fairly full coverage from Byzantine sources and only occasionally has notices in common with Dionysius and Agapius.

...

The last notice that Theophanes, Dionysius and Agapius would seem to have in common concerns the manoeuvres of the caliph Marwan against Sulayman ibn Hisham and Dahhak the Kharijite in 746. Thereafter Theophanes begins to adduce new material, and we can conclude that this point marks the commencement of the activity of the continuator of the ‘eastern source’. Agapius and the chronicler of 1234 correspond very closely in their narratives - to the extent that one could often pass for a translation of the other - from 744 to 750, then a little less so until 754-55.⁶⁷ Both conclude with an account of the revolt of ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Ali, uncle of the first Abbasid caliph Abu l-‘Abbas, against the latter’s brother, Mansur, who defeated ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Ali with the help of his general Abu Muslim and became the second Abbasid caliph.

THEOPHILUS’ SOURCES

There has been almost no study at all of what might have been the sources used by Theophilus. It is not an easy question to answer, since we have no direct clues and, as noted above, the period from 630 to the 750s is an obscure one in Eastern Christian historiography. Looking at the subject matter of the chronicle, we can see that there are three principal types of material: Byzantine (notices about Byzantine emperors and dealings with the Muslims from a Byzantine perspective, especially battle narratives), Muslim (notices about caliphs, military campaigns and civil wars) and disasters (plagues, earthquakes, famines, floods etc.) or signs in the sky (comets, eclipses etc.). Though no firm conclusions can be drawn as yet, it seems worthwhile advancing some tentative observations about this material in the hope that it will stimulate further research in this direction.

1. Byzantine material: the 'eastern source'?

There are frequent laments in modem scholarship about the lack of Byzantine writing on the Arab conquests, and yet Theophilus presents us with some quite lengthy and detailed notices on this subject: the battles with the Arabs (of the patrician Sergius; of Theodore, brother of Heraclius; and of the general Baanes), Heraclius’ farewell to Syria, the Arab conquest of Egypt, the Arab subjection of Syria and Mesopotamia, the Arab capture of Cyprus and Arwad, the naval battle of Phoenix, the failed rebellion of Shabur (supported by the Arabs) against Constans, the defeat of an Arab fleet in the 670s and successful Mardaite raids against the Arabs.⁷⁵ One could assume that these battle narratives were a unit in themselves, an account of Arab-Byzantine clashes that ended on a positive note, a few Byzantine triumphs that held out hope for the future recovery of this Christian regime. Otherwise one might suppose that Theophilus received them already collated with all the rest of the Byzantine material, most obviously the notices on Byzantine emperors, and postulate that he had to hand a full Byzantine chronicle covering the period ca. 630-750s or ca. 590-750s.

I label these accounts Byzantine simply because they describe events involving Byzantine characters and would seem to take the Byzantine side rather than the Arab. Indeed, a number of the battle accounts were evidently selected because they constitute victories for the Byzantines (e.g. Phoenix, Shabur’s aborted revolt, the failed Arab naval advance on Constantinople and devastating Mardaite raids against the Arabs). Even with defeats, the tenor is pro-Byzantine; think, for example, of the image of the heroic patrician Sergius, who, having fallen off his horse, brushes aside offers of help from his soldiers, selflessly advising them rather to run and save themselves from the pursuing Arabs; or the loyal chamberlain Andrew who courageously stands his ground against the caliph Mu‘awiya and lectures him on the art of rule.⁷⁶ Now the perspective of such narratives is rather at odds with Theophilus’ documentation of the third Arab civil war and the Abbasid revolution (743-54), where his interests would seem to lie almost wholly with the Muslim Arab government. It is entirely plausible, then, that Theophilus did have a Byzantine chronicle at his disposal, and that he simply supplemented it and brought it up to date with material drawn from the Muslim sphere. I would also venture to suggest that we should identify this Byzantine chronicle with the aforementioned ‘eastern source’ and so dissociate it from Theophilus, if only for the practical purpose of trying to identify the latter’s Byzantine source(s).⁷⁷

Since Theophilus was highly accomplished at translating from Greek into Syriac, as noted above, it is tempting to assume that this ‘eastern source’ was in Greek, and there are some hints from Theophilus’ dependants that this might have been the case.⁷⁸ But since Syriac was replete with Greek vocabulary and a high proportion of educated Syriac-speakers were competent in Greek, it is extremely difficult to demonstrate that a Syriac text is definitely derived from Greek, especially if, as here, one no longer has the original Syriac text. Who might have been the author of this ‘eastern source’? He was without doubt a Chalcedonian, which would explain his pro-Byzantine leanings, but probably from the Levant rather than from a Byzantine-ruled region, for many of his notices, such as those about the sabotage of the Arab fleet in Tripoli and the encounter between Andrew and Shabur at the court of Mu‘awiya, even if pro-Byzantine, reveal a fair degree of familiarity with what was happening in Muslim-ruled lands. One possible candidate is the aforementioned George Syncellus. We know, from his own admission, that he was intending to write a world chronicle up to his own day, and it was only ill health that prevented him from completing it past the reign of Diocletian (285-305). Possibly the latter portion (305-813) was more complete than is usually supposed, even if still a little rough and not properly edited.⁷⁹ We would then have to look for another continuator of the ‘eastern source’, since it is unlikely that a copy of George’s chronicle, halting at ca. 743, would have gone to Theophilus while another copy, which he extended to ca. 780, went to Theophanes.⁸⁰ Another possible candidate for the authorship of the ‘eastern source’ is John son of Samuel, whom Dionysius describes as ‘of the western country’ (i.e. somewhere in the Levant, most likely the Mediterranean coastal region) and whom he places among those who wrote ‘narratives resembling ecclesiastical history’.⁸¹ This is the same category that Dionysius uses for Theophilus of Edessa, which both strengthens the argument (i.e. their styles are compatible) and weakens it (would not Dionysius have noticed if Theophilus was heavily reliant on John, though would he have said so if he did?)

A final matter that requires consideration is whether this ‘eastern source’ reached Theophanes, Dionysius and Agapius only via Theophilus of Edessa or by means of an intermediary. The former scenario seems most likely for Agapius and Dionysius, but it is possible that the ‘eastern source’ reached Theophanes independently, via someone who extended it until 780 (and translated it into Greek, if it was originally written in Syriac rather Aan in Greek). This and all questions to do with the authorship and nature of the ‘eastern source’ will, however, remain highly speculative until more work has been done on them, but it is interesting to observe that there was considerably more Byzantine history writing at this time than is usually allowed for.

2. Muslim material

Comparison between Theophilus and the Syriac Chronicle of 819, written by a monk of Qartmin monastery in northern Mesopotamia, reveals a number of close textual correspondences in quite a few of the notices on Muslim affairs and natural phenomena (listed in Appendix 2 below). It is not totally impossible that the Chronicle of 819 was using Theophilus, but the two works have many notices that they do not share and they have a very different character,⁸² and so it is much more likely that they are independent of each other, but have a common source, and this is evidently a Syriac chronicle that went up to the 730s, the point at which they cease to have any shared notices. It has been argued that this common source is John of Litarb (d. 737),⁸³ a stylite monk living in early eighth-century northern Syria. We still have the remnants of a lively correspondence that took place between John, Jacob, bishop of Edessa (d. 708), and George, bishop of the Arabs (d. 724), and he seems to have been a major Christian intellectual of early Islamic Syria.⁸⁴ His spiritual master, Jacob of Edessa, wrote a Eusebian-style chronicle up to 692, and it is reported that John continued it up to the time of his own death.⁸⁶ The only potential problem with this is that Dionysius remarks that ‘part of his (John of Litarb’s) book is conveyed (hmil) in this book (of mine)’,⁸⁶ and so he would effectively be using John twice (directly and via Theophilus of Edessa), though this is not impossible.⁸⁷

One important aspect of this common source of Theophilus and the Chronicle of 819 is that it draws our attention to how and in what form information about Muslim affairs circulated among Christians of the Near East. The items these two texts share (listed in Appendix 2 below) are particularly concerned with caliphs, and indeed it is the reigns and deeds of caliphs and their opponents that make up the bulk of the Muslim Arab material found in the various Christian chronological texts for the period ca. 630-750s. Should we think of one single ‘history of the caliphs' (a sort of Liber calipharum) on which all Christian chronicles relied or of a multiplicity of them?⁸⁸ On the one hand the material in Christian chronicles does follow a fairly standard pattern and they share the same basic contents. Yet on the other hand each chronicle possesses details that are not in the others. For example, the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle of 741 and the Chronicle of 819 have very different notices on Walid I:

Walid succeeded to power, (taking up) the sceptre of rule of the Saracens in accordance with what his father had arranged. He reigned for 9 years. (He was) a man of great prudence in arranging his armies to the extent that, though destitute of divine favour, he crushed the strength of almost all the neighbouring peoples adjoining him. He debilitated Byzantium in particular with constant raiding, brought the islands to the point of destruction and tamed the land of India by raids. In the western regions, through a general of his army by the name of Musa, he attacked and conquered the kingdom of the Goths established in Spain with ancient solidity, and having cast out their rule he imposed tribute. So, waging all things successfully, he (Walid) gave an end to his life in the ninth year of his rule, having already seen the riches of all the peoples displayed to him. (Chron Byz-Arab 741, §36)

A devious man, who increased the exactions and hardships more than all his predecessors; he completely wiped out robbers and bandits; and he built a city and called it ‘Ayn Gara. (Chron 819, 14)

A recent article by Sean Anthony examined the account of the assassination of ‘Umar I in Theophanes, Agapius and Dionysius and compared it with a number of Muslim depictions of this event, concluding that the latter served as the basis for the former.⁸⁹ Because Anthony just takes the one incident and does not deal with these texts as a whole, he assumed that it was Dionysius who inserted the Muslim material, since Theophanes and Agapius had much shorter notices. However, the latter two authors very commonly abbreviate Theophilus and there are enough similarities between their and Dionysius’ account (see the translation below, under the year 644) to make it clear that all three are using, whether directly or indirectly, a common source. But was this common source Theophilus or an author that he was drawing upon; to put it another way, was Theophilus responsible for incorporating the Muslim material in his work or was he reliant upon a chronicle that had already done this work for him?⁹⁰ Since he worked as an astrologer at the Abbasid court, it is very likely that he spoke and read Arabic and he would have been in a good position to procure Arabic books. It is certainly plausible, then, that we should regard him as the one who made all of this material on the Muslim regime available to later chroniclers.

At this point, however, one should note that there are two quite distinct types of Muslim material in Theophilus: the fairly short and simple notices on individual caliphs up to and including Hisham (724-43), which are pithy and unconnected, and the very full and detailed account of events from 743-54, which is presented as a continuous narrative and includes causal explanations. The former could travel orally and so, though they might derive ultimately from a Muslim source, could be picked up by a Christian writer who was not intimately familiar with Muslim affairs or writings. The latter presume deep acquaintance with Muslim politics and very likely with Muslim historical texts.⁹¹ When Theophilus says, in the words of Agapius cited above, that ‘I was myself a constant witness of these wars’, one assumes that it is to the events of 743-54 that he is referring, and it is this section that I would almost certainly attribute to Theophilus’ own hand. How much of the earlier Muslim material, on the succession of the caliphs, he put together and how much he simply took over from an earlier author is a question that cannot at present be answered.

THE CIRCULATION OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND EARLY ISLAM

One reasonably sure conclusion that could be inferred from the above discussion is, first, that a lot more historical material was circulating between the Muslim and Christian communities than is usually assumed⁹² and, secondly, that there was already a fairly advanced tradition of Muslim history-writing by the mid-eighth century. We get a hint of the former point from one of our earliest Christian caliphal histories (composed ca. 724—25), which is little more than a list of caliphs and their time in office, but which would appear, from its use of the lunar calendar⁹³ (Yazid II died in AH 104-05) and of Arabic technical terms (rasull‘messenger’ and fitnal'civil war’), to derive from an Arabic original:

A notice of the life of Mhmt the messenger (r...ä)⁹⁴ of God, after he had entered his city and three months before he entered it, from his first year; and how long each king lived who arose after him over the Muslims once they had taken power; and how long there was dissension (ptnâ)⁹⁵ among them.

• Three months before Mhmd came.⁹⁶
• And Mhmd lived ten years (more).
• And Abu Bakr son of Abu Quhafa: 2 years and 6 months.
• And ‘Umar son of Kattab: 10 years and 3 months.
• And ‘Uthman son of ‘Affan: 12 years.
• And dissension after ‘Uthman: 5 years and 4 months.
• And Ma‘wiyä son of Abu Syfan: 19 years and 2 months.
• And Yazid son of Ma‘wiya: 3 years and 8 months.
• And dissension after Yazid: 9 months.
• And Marwan son of Hakam: 9 months.
• And ‘Abd al-Malik son of Marwan: 21 years and 1 month.
• Walid bar ‘Abd al-Malik: 9 years and 8 months.
• And Sulayman son of ‘Abd al-Malik: 2 years and 9 months.
• And ‘Umar son of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz: 2 years and 5 months.
• And Yazid son of ‘Abd al-Malik: 4 years and 1 month and 2 days.

The total of all these years is 104, and 5 months and 2 days. (Chron 724,155)

What can we say about the second conclusion, namely that there was already a fairly advanced tradition of Muslim history-writing by the mid-eighth century? At this time we can observe two different styles: compilations of anecdotes on a particular topic, such as ‘The Campaigns of the Prophet’, ‘The Battle of Siffin’, ‘The Murder of Hujr ibn ‘Adi’ and ‘The Life of Mu‘aw iya'⁹⁷ and year-by-year lists of holders of high office and notable events.⁹⁸ Gradually these two genres began to influence each other. There was an increasing emphasis on giving some chronological order to narratives of early Islam;⁹⁹ conversely and coincidentally, there was a move to flesh out lists compiled from government records that had been kept since probably the reign of Mu‘awiya (661-80),¹⁰⁰ and that could include caliphs, governors, judges, leaders of the pilgrimage, commanders of the summer and winter campaigns into Byzantine territory, and so on.¹⁰¹ Names of those who had fallen in battle may also have been inscribed since they had a bearing upon the distribution of stipends.¹⁰² Then, in the early ninth century, we begin to get our first chronicles (ta'rikh ‘alä l-sinin): those of al-Haytham ibn ‘Adi (d. 822) and Abu Hassan al-Ziyadi (d. 857), and, our first extant example, that of Khalifa ibn Khayyat (d. 854).¹⁰³ In these, and especially in the ‘History of the Prophets and Kings’ of Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (d. 923), we see a full marriage between historical narratives and official annals.¹⁰⁴

It is not impossible that Muslim historians hit upon using an annalistic style of presentation independently,¹⁰⁵ but since the technique has a considerable pedigree in the Middle East, it is worth examining the possibility of borrowing from the other cultures existing in the region. There is no firm evidence of Iranian authors producing annalistic writings;¹⁰⁶ neither did Nestorians until Elias of Nisibis (d. 1050).¹⁰⁷ Annalistic techniques were, of course, deployed by writers in the Greco-Roman tradition as far back as Thucydides, who was himself probably confirming the practice of individual cities before him. Any direct influence upon the Arabic tradition seems unlikely, however, given the conspicuous absence of Arabic translations of Byzantine historical works.¹⁰⁸ Moreover, the Eusebian tradition of chronography in Greek appears to have faltered after the efforts of Panadorus and Anianus in the fifth century,¹⁰⁹ and Greek historical writing as a whole sank into the doldrums with the onset of Arab rule, as noted above. On its re-emergence in the late eighth and early ninth century, it does evince an interest in precise chronological narrative, as is exemplified by the chronicle of Theophanes, but an indebtedness to some Syriac or Arabic model is readily apparent.¹¹⁰

West Syrian history-writing, on the other hand, suffered far less disruption.¹¹¹ The royal annals of Edessa inspired a subsequent episcopal tradition of annalistic record-keeping, of which we find extracts in chronological works of the mid-sixth and mid-seventh century.¹¹² At monasteries such as Qenneshre and Qartmin in northern Mesopotamia, the tradition was continued until the time of Dionysius of Telmahre, who gave it new vigour.¹¹³ After the fashion of Eusebius, ‘other men charted the succession of years, namely Jacob of Edessa and John the stylite of Litarb’, as noted above. Language constituted no barrier to exchange between Syrian and Arab cultures. Many Arabs, Muslim as well as Christian, knew Syriac, and West Syrian Christians made use of Arabic very early on as a language of scholarship.¹¹⁴ So if one were to posit extraneous rather than indigenous origins for the annalistic form in Muslim historiography, then it is to the West Syrian historical tradition that one should look.

It is worth emphasising, in conclusion, that the lines between Christian and Muslim were not drawn so rigidly as often tends to be assumed, either in terms of definitions or in terms of social relations. It is true that Christians living in the Byzantine realm were to a large degree insulated from contact with Muslims, but for those living under the latter's rule it was a different story. The claim of the Mesopotamian monk John bar Penkaye that ‘there was no distinction between pagan and Christian, the believer was not known from a Jew’ may be exaggerated,¹¹⁵ but it is nevertheless instructive. The initial indifference of the Muslims to divisions among the peoples whom they conquered, when compounded with the flight and enslavement of an appreciable proportion of the population and with the elimination of internal borders across a huge area extending from north-west Africa to India, meant that there was considerable human interaction across social, ethnic and religious lines. This was especially true for those who sought employment in the bustling cosmopolitan garrison cities of the new rulers, where one was exposed to contact with men of very diverse origin, creed and status. In addition, there were the widespread phenomena of conversion and apostasy, of inter-confessional marriage and festival attendance, of commercial contacts and public debate, all of which served to break down sectarian barriers.

An excellent illustration of this point is the author of the chronicle that I translate in this volume, Theophilus of Edessa. He began his life in Edessa, the key city of Syriac Christianity, yet ended up in Baghdad, the heart of the early Abbasid Empire. He advised Muslim caliphs on astrological affairs and his scientific writings were appreciated by later Muslim astrologers, but excerpts from them also entered into a Byzantine astrological corpus. He translated works of Galen and Homer into Syriac, but seemed also to be comfortable with writing a history of Muslim caliphs and rebels in the Near East. Theophilus cannot, therefore, be viewed as simply a Christian who writes under Muslim rule; he is evidently a highly educated man, still influenced by the traditions of Antiquity as well as cognisant with the culture of his employers.

None of this is to say that religious affiliation did not count for a great deal; it obviously did. But it did not exert, in some predictable fashion, an all-encompassing power to direct patterns of social relations in such a way as to prevent external influence or positive response to that influence. Religious specialists of the various confessions in the Near East might well have wished that this were the case, but the region was and remained too diverse in terms of culture, ethnicity, history, language and so on for that ever to happen.

Footnotes

4 Treadgold, Early Byzantine Historians, 340. 348. For a survey of what history was being written in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, and a consideration of why it was curtailed, see Whitby. ‘Greek Historical Writing after Procopius'. See also my Seeing Islam, ch. 10, which I draw upon here.

5 For the historiography of this period see Croke and Emmett, History and Historians in Late Antiquity, ch. 1; Croke, ‘Byzantine Chronicle Writing'; Treadgold. Early Byzantine Historians. chs. 6-9; Debié. L'écriture de l'histoire en syriaque.

6 See especially Conrad. ‘The Conquest of Arwad* (Conrad, ‘Theophanes', 5-6, refers to earlier literature), and Bomit. Entre Mémoire et Pouvoir. 143 η. 52. Howard-Johnston. Witnesses, 192-236. assesses the worth of Theophilus. but without discussing its composition/transmission. Shortly before 1 was due to submit this book, I was put in contact by Glen Bowersock with a student of his, Maria Contemo, who was about to submit a PhD thesis on the ‘eastern source', but we decided, since we were both at a very advanced stage in our respective projects, that it would be better to complete them independently. Maria's work will undoubtedly be an important re-evaluation of the 'eastern source'.

7 Though not extant, Dionysius’ work is heavily drawn upon by Michael the Syrian (d. 1199) and the anonymous chronicler of AD 1234 (see the sections dealing with these two authors below).

8 Brooks, ‘Theophanes and the Syriac Chroniclers’; Becker, ‘Eine neue christliche Quelle'; Conrad, ‘Theophanes’, 43. Manbij is the Arabic name of the city; the Syriac name is Mabbug and it was known to Greek-speakers as Hierapolis.

9 Arabic kutub, a quite general term that one could also simply translate as ‘writings'.

10 Agapius, 525. The wars in question are those between the Arab dynasties of the Umayyads and the Abbasids, and Agapius wants to add weight to his narrative by noting that it derives from an eyewitness. However, that Theophilus' ‘many books’ dealt with Christian as well as Muslim history may be inferred from Dionysius' remark that Theophilus’ writings sometimes misrepresented the Miaphysites.

11 For Eastern Christians the question of orthodoxy/heresy mostly turned on the problem of Christ’s nature. The Miaphysites (or Monophysites; Copts in Egypt, Jacobites in Syria) wished not to dilute the divinity of Christ and so insisted on one divine nature, the human and divine elements having fused at the incarnation. The Nestorians (or East Syrian Christians), found chiefly in Iraq and Persia, wanted to hold on to the very comforting fact that Christ had become a human being like us and to avoid saying that God had suffered and died, and so stressed two distinct natures, a human and a divine. Trying desperately to eschew the two extremes of denial of Christ's humanity and dualism, the Chalcedonians (or Melkites). who represented the imperial position, postulated two natures, united but distinct. Each group would tend to refer to themselves as the Orthodox. Though important in their own right, these confessional divisions were also bound up with regional, ethnic and linguistic affiliations. See further Atiya. Eastern Christianity and Meyendorff. Eastern Christian Thought.

12 Michael the Syrian (henceforth Msry) 10.XX. 378/358: se below for further discussion of this passage.

13 Bar Hebraeus. CS, 127; MD, 220.

27 It does not seem likely that the ‘eastern source’ itself continued until 780, for the chronicles of Agapius and Dionysius no longer share any notices with Theophanes after the 740s.

28 See Appendix 1 below; Brooks, ‘Theophanes and the Syriac Chroniclers’, 587; Conrad, ‘The Conquest of Arwad’. 336-38.

29 E.g. Theophanes, 328 (Heraclius visits Tiberias), 335-36 (battle of Mu’ta), 348 (death of Thomas, bishop of Apamea, and the burning of the bishop of Hims), 412 (Iraqis burn the markets of Damascus).

30 Thus regarding Rachel's tomb situated between Jerusalem and Bethlehem he says (Chronographia. 122 [trans. Adler and Tuffin, 153]): ‘In my journeys to Bethlehem and what is known as the Old Laura of blessed Chariton I personally have passed by there frequently and seen her coffin lying there on the ground’. See also Mango, ‘Who Wrote the Chronicle of Theophanes?', 13 n. 16; Huxley, ‘Erudition', 215-16.

31 E.g. Theophanes, 365 (‘Abd al-Malik’s minting of coins and Justinian’s breaking of the peace), 399 (earthquake in Syria and Umar U’s banning of wine).

32 It was probably Theophanes too who chose to compress the account of the Arab-Persian confrontation into one short notice.

33 Abramowski, Dionysius von Telmahre, discusses the Church and its relationship with the state in Dionysius' time and also Dionysius' own contribution as patriarch.

34 Msyr 10.XX, 378/358 (Dionysius' preface).

35 Msyr 12.XXI, 544/111.

36 Msyr 11.XVIII, 454/487-88. This is a literal rendering; the translation of Palmer. WSC. 94-95, makes it clearer; ‘Weak as I am, my aim is as follows: To collect with the help of God whatever information I can find and to put it all in this book in good order, selecting the most reliable version of events attested by the majority of trustworthy witnesses and writing them down here in the correct sequence.’ For more detailed discussion of the format of Dionysius' chronicle see Conrad, ‘Syriac Perspectives'. 28-39; Palmer. WSC, 85-104.

37 These fragments are edited and translated by Abramowski, Dionysius von Telmahre, 130-44. A few brief citations from Dionysius are also given by Elias of Nisibis, 1.174-80 (AH 138, 140, 142, 146. 152-53)

38 For these two authors and their chronicles see Chabot's and Fiey’s introduction to their translations of Michael and the Chronicle of 1234 respectively, and most recently Weltecke, 'Les trois grandes chroniques syro-orthodoxes’.

39 Chron 1234. 2.17-20, 257. 267; for the numerous references of Michael to Dionysius see Conrad. ‘Syriac Perspectives'. 30 and n. 87 thereto.

40 At different times each will have a longer account than the other; since historical information about the seventh and eighth centuries was scarce, it is unlikely that either was able to add new details, so they must both at times be abbreviating. An example of how they both rework Dionysius is given by Brock, ‘Syriac Life of Maximus’. 337-40, and it is made very clear in my translation below.

41 E.g. Cyrus' part in the conquest of Egypt, the Jews' removal of crosses from the Mount of Olives and the appearance of a false Tiberius (see translation below). Though there are occasions when the reverse is true; e.g. the notice on the Arab attack on the convent of Simeon the Stylite is in the ecclesiastical part of Chron 1234. 2.260, but in the civil section of Msyr 11. VI. 417/422.

42 Michael also reports a number of censuses, seemingly not drawn from Theophilus: e.g. ca. 668 Abu l-A‘war made a census of Christian labourers/soldiers for the first time (Msyr 11 .XII, 435/450); in AG 1009/698 ‘Atiyya made a census of foreigners (Msyr 1 l.XVI, 447/473; Chron 819, 13).

43 This is important to note; I had myself, taking over received wisdom that the Chronicle of 1234 accurately represented Dionysius (e.g. Palmer, WSC, 102: Ί assume that the Chronicle of 1234 preserves Dionysius faithfully'), accepted that the Arabic material was inserted by Dionysius (see Hoyland. ‘Arabic. Syriac and Greek Historiography'). However, since not a single item of it is found in Michael, this cannot be so and must have become included in the Chronicle of 1234 at a later date.

44 See Palmer. W5C. 85-89. for references and further discussion.

45 See Gibson. ‘Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts*. 123-24; Atiya, The Arabic Manuscripts of Mount Sinai. 23.

46 The Bodleian manuscript (Hunt 478 dated 1320) misses out a few words of the title, giving simply: ‘The book of the title crowned...' (Kitâb al-‘unwän al-mukallal...) and this is how the work has come to be known (i.e. as the ‘Book of the Title'/Kitâb al-'Unwân).

47 Such information as we do have about him is collected by Vasiliev, ‘Agapij Manbidjskij'; see also Graf, GCAL. 2.39—41. and Nasrallah. Mouvement littéraire dans l'église melchite 2.2, 50-52.

48 Agapius. 456. The year AH 330 corresponds to 941 -42: this is equated by Agapius to AG 1273. but a marginal note says ‘it is wrong*, and indeed it should read AG 1253.

49 Mas‘udi. 154.

50 E.g. Agapius. 474 (‘Umar replaced Khalid with Abu ‘Ubayda as commander of Syria), 476 (‘Umar appointed Abu ‘Ubayda over Egypt in addition to Syria), 477 (‘Umar named Mu‘awiya governor of Syria in place of Abu ‘Ubayda). 483 (‘Uthman led the pilgrimage in the eighth year of his reign), 485 ( ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Abbas led the pilgrimage in the year of ‘Uthman’s murder). 487 (Mu'awiya's governors), 488 (Marwan ibn al-Hakam led the pilgrimage, ‘Amr ibn al-‘As died). Also the notice on Mu‘awiya's capture of Rhodes, which adds details to Theophilus' account, may derive from this Muslim chronology (see Conrad, ‘Arabs and the Colossus', 173).

51 It is, however, very difficult to determine the content of Theophilus* account of the first civil war, since his dependants each have very different accounts (see the entry thereon in the translation below).

52 On the manuscripts of this work see Degen, ‘Zwei Miszellen zur Chronik von Se'ert'. 84-91.

53 Fiey, ‘Isho‘denah et la Chronique de Séert', 455: note that the text of Muhammad’s pact with the Christians of Najran was said to have been discovered in AH 265/879 (Chron Siirt C il PO 13,601).

54 References and further literature on each are given by Sako. ‘Les sources de la Chronique de Séert’, where other minor sources are noted, though not Theophilus of Edessa.

55 Chron Siirt LIV. 460.

56 See Diaz y Diaz, ‘La transmision textual del Biclarense', 66-67: Wolf, Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, 1-10 (John of Biclar). 11-24 (Isidore of Seville), 25-42 (Chron Byz-Arab 741).

57 There is some parallel here with the short biographies of caliphs given by Muslim histories at the end of a ruler’s reign; e.g. Tabari, 2.1271 : ‘In the view of the people of Syria, Walid ibn ‘Abd al-Malik was the most excellent of their caliphs. He built mosques - the mosque of Damascus and the mosque of Medina - and set up pulpits, was bountiful to the people and gave to the lepers, telling them not to beg from the people. To every cripple he gave a servant and to every blind person a guide. During his rule extensive conquests were achieved: Musa ibn Nusayr conquered Andalus, Qutayba conquered Kashgar and Muhammad ibn al-Qasim conquered Hind.’

58 This chronicle is much more straightforward. It follows in the footsteps of John of Biclar. for the scope of both is Mediterranean-wide but with an Iberian focus, and both treat matters ecclesiastical and secular. The author, an Andalusian cleric, generally disparages the emirs of Spain and makes clear his antipathy towards the invaders: ‘Even if every limb were transformed into a tongue it would be beyond human nature to express the ruin of Spain and its many and great evils’ (§45). See Pereira, Crônicon mozarabe de 754; Barkai. Cristianos y musulmanes en la Espana medieval, 19-27; Collins. Arab Conquest of Spain, 57-65; Wolf, Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, 28-45.

59 Parallels are indicated and sources discussed by Dubler. ‘La cionica arabigo-bizantina de 741, 298-333, who, however, exaggerates both the similarities with other chronicles and the number of sources that would be circulating in Byzantium and Spain in the seventh century. In the opinion of Nöldeke, ‘Epimetrum’, the Syrian source was composed in Greek by a Miaphysite of Syria. An additional argument in favour of a Greek intermediary is the similarity in the rendering of Arab names between the two Latin texts and a short chronology of AD 818 in Greek (Schoene, Eusebi chronicorum libri duo. Appendix IV).

60 As opposed to notices on the same subject; such textual parallels as do exist are presented in the translation below.

61 Collins. Arab Conquest of Spain. 55, infers that the text must date to 744 or that the final notice was added later, not realising that the accession of Walid II after Hisham (d. 743) was pre-arranged by Yazid II. Collins’ discussion of the text (53-57) is nevertheless very helpful.

62 Though the observation that ‘it is a descendant of the son of the latter (Marwan ibn al-Hakam) who holds their leadership up till now in our times’ (§31) suggests that the chronicler is writing while the Marwanids are still in power, unless the reference is to the fact that Spain was governed by a descendant of Marwan.

63 Theophilus may have proceeded by simply narrating events, arranging his entries in chronological order as far as possible and occasionally giving synchronisms after the fashion of Eusebius; e.g. ‘In the year 34/35/37 of the Arabs, 10/13 of Constans and 9 of ‘Uthman. Mu'awiya prepared a naval expedition against Constantinople’ (Theophanes. 345; Agapius. 483; Msyr 1l.XI, 430/445; Chron 1234, 274).

67 It is not impossible that Agapius is using Dionysius directly, or a transmitter/continuator of Dionysius, but he does state explicitly that he is citing the actual writings of Theophilus (see above).

75 For these narratives see the translation below under the years 634-36 (Sergius/Theodore/ Baanes). 636-40 (Heraclius’ farewell; capture of Egypt. Syria and Mesopotamia), 649-50 (Cyprus and Arwad), 654-55 (Phoenix), 666-67 (Shabur), ca. 672 (defeat of Arab fleet) and 677 (Mardaites).

76 See the relevant notices in the translation section below, under the years 634 and 666-67. Speck. Geteilte Dossier. 170. takes this as an indication that the 'eastern source’ was in Greek, which is possible (see next paragraph), but not cogent, for Syriac-speaking Chalcedonians of Palestine and Syria could also be expected to have held such a position, especially in the early decades of Muslim rule.

77 One could go so far as to make the ‘eastern source'/Byzantine chronicle the principal source and Theophilus no more than the author of an addition on the third Arab civil war/ Abbasid revolution, but Dionysius makes clear that Theophilus wrote a full chronicle and that it must have treated Christians as well as Muslims, since it contained what Dionysius considered to be pejorative remarks about Miaphysites (‘His presentation of all events involving one of our number is fraudulent': Palmer. VV5C. 92). Though one could argue that both chronicles were available separately to Theophanes. Dionysius and Agapius. it is easier to explain how these three authors record much the same events in much the same order if we think of one overall chronicle (nevertheless combining a number of different sources) that was available to all three of them, whether directly or indirectly, and that they supplemented with different materials.

78 E.g. Sergius’ characterisation of the eunuch Andrew as ‘neither man nor woman nor ’wd’t’rws (= Greek oudeteros)'. Heraclius’ Greek farewell to Syria/sosou Syria, and the pun in Emperor Constans’ dream about Thessalonica/thes allo nikën before the battle of Phoenix, though one could also argue that the Greek is there for literary effect. See also Speck. Geteilte Dossier, 52-53, 169-71, 185-87, 499-502 and 516-19, and n. 59 above, and notes 242. 261-63,272, 276, 342, 392, 402-3, 682 and Appendix 1 n. 17 in the translation below.

79 This is effectively the view of Speck, Geteilte Dossier, esp. 516-19, though he sees George’s work as a loose dossier rather than a complete text. Cf. Huxley, ‘Erudition’, esp. 216-17. Palmer, WSC. 95. notes that Dionysius includes a certain George of Ragtaya in his review of past chroniclers and suggests this could this be George Syncellus.

80 Though Speck does argue for this, postulating a second dossier.

81 I would myself prefer to identify Dionysius' John bar Samuel with John of Antioch, since Dionysius does seem to be presenting the key exponents of the various genres, and John of Antioch fulfilled such a position for the Christian world chronicle. Dionysius mentions a John of Antioch, but this almost certainly intends John Malalas. On these two figures see Treadgold, Early Byzantine Historians, 311-29, 235-56.

82 The Chronicle of 819 principally presents the history of the monastery of Qartmin. drawn from the latter's archives, and then mostly brief notices on local church affairs, natural disasters / phenomena, and the Muslim caliphs. See further Palmer, WSC, 75-84, and Palmer, ‘Chroniques brèves’. Brooks. ‘Sources of Theophanes', was the first to draw attention to this common source.

83 Palmer, ‘Chroniques brèves', 70 and 79.

84 We have sixteen letters of Jacob to John (see my Seeing Islam, 741) and four letters of George to John (Wright, Catalogue, 2.988: on George see Tannous, Between Christology and Kalam).

85 Msyr 10.XX, 378/358: ‘Others charted the succession of the years, namely Jacob of Edessa and John of Litarb'.

86 Msyr 1 l.XX, 461/500, unless Michael himself is speaking here.

87 If we want to assume that Dionysius' list of chroniclers in his introduction is a pretty comprehensive guide, then John son of Samuel is still an unknown and we could select him as our candidate for this common source (and not identify him with John of Antioch, as I suggested above), but of course the very fact that he is an unknown means that this does not advance our knowledge very much.

88 Note that Elias of Nisibis cites two anonymous sources on Muslim history: a "chronicle of the kings of the Arabs' and a "chronicle of the Arabs' (Borrut, "La circulation de l' information historique'. 145): unless both titles refer to the same source.

89 ‘The Syriac account of Dionysius of Tel-Mahre on the assassination of "Umar ibn al-Khattab.'

90 Could, for example, the ‘eastern source’ have included Muslim as well as Byzantine material? In this case Theophilus would have done no more than add material on the third Arab civil war and the Abbasid revolution to a very full chronicle that covered Muslim and Byzantine politics up to ca. 743.

91 See the example I give in n. 876 in the translation section below, on the massacre of the Umayyads, where there is almost word-for-word equivalence with the account of the Muslim historian Ya‘qubi.

92 For some interesting thoughts along these lines see Conrad, ‘The Mawâli. See also Figure 1 below

93 The total given at the end of the list, 104 years and 5 months and 2 days, only works if one counts in lunar years: Yazid II died in AH 104-5/724, but 104 solar years would take one into AD 727.

94 A later hand has tried to erase this word, which is clearly meant to be Arabic rasüll messenger’.

95 This represents the Arabic word fitna. which denotes civil discord.

96 The ‘three months before Mhmt came’ presumably refers to the interval between the beginning of the Islamic calendar on 16 July 622 and the date of Muhammad’s arrival in Medina on 24 September 622. See Tabari, 1.1255-56, where it is explained that though Muhammad’s emigration to Medina is the starting point of Muslim chronology, the fact that he made it in the third month of the year means that ‘year 1 ’ begins 2 1/2 months earlier.

97 These and other examples are given in Faruqi, Early Muslim Historiography, 214-302. Compare the extant work on the ‘Battle of Siftin' by Nasr ibn Muzahim al-Minqari (d. 828). Moreover, Mourad, ‘Al-Azdi’, has recently shown that the ‘Conquest of Syria' by Abu Mikhnaf al-Azdi (d. 774) substantially survives in the work of its later redactors, such as Abu Isma‘il al-Azdi (d. ca. 820). See also Elad, ‘Beginnings of Historical Writing'; Borrut. Entre Mémoire et Pouvoir.

98 The earliest that we can discern is by Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 742), who served the Umayyad regime in various departments of their administration. On him see Duri. Historical Writing, 95-121, and see 115-16 for his list of the reigns of the caliphs.

99 Jones, ‘The Chronology of the Maghâzi (that is, of the campaigns of the prophet Muhammad).

100 Papyri, inscriptions and coins suggest that an effective Umayyad administration was in place at a very early date; see Donner, ‘The Formation of the Islamic State'.

101 Rotter, ‘Abu Zur‘a al-Dimashqi’; Schacht. Origins, 100 (on the early provenance of Kindi's lists).

102 See Tabari, 1.2496 (on ‘irafat). Sellheim (‘Prophet, Chalif und Geschichte', 73-77) and Schacht (‘Müsä ibn ‘Uqba’, 288-300) have discerned name-lists as a discrete element in Muhammad's biography.

103 Duri, Historical Writing, 53-54 (Haytham); Sezgin, GAS, 316 (Abu Hassan); Schacht in Arabica 16 (1969), 79f. (Ibn Khayyat).

104 That is, between akhbär and ta'rikh: see further Crone, Slaves, introduction. On early Islamic historiography in general see Donner, Narratives: Robinson, Islamic Historiography: Howard-Johnston, Witnesses, 354-94.

105 It could, for example, originate in pre-Islamic practice; cf. Tabari. 1.1254: ‘When they dated an event, they did so from the like of a drought which occurred in some part of their country, a barren year which befell them, the term of a governor who ruled over them, or an event the news of which became widespread among them' The cataclysmic nature of the hijra could have served to halt the constant revision of termini a quo by furnishing the ultimate point de repère.

106 Spuler, ‘The Evolution of Persian Historiography’, 126-32; Christensen, L'lran sous les Sassanides, 59ff. But see Morony, Iraq after the Muslim Conquest, 564-65 (’Sasanian royal annals’).

107 Nestorians seem to have favoured a biographical arrangement of material; cf. the anonymous Chronicle of Khuzistan and the Chronicle of Siirt (see bibliography).

108 Steinschneider. Die arabischen Übersetzungen aus dem Griechischen, fails to signal any.

109 The Chronicon Paschale. which goes up to 630, is obsessed with chronological computations. even coming up with its own system, but does not seem to have enjoyed wide circulation or influence.

110 Mango, ‘The Tradition of Byzantine Chronography’. 363-69.

111 Both the Chronicle of 819 and the Chronicle of Zuqnin have a gap for the years AG 976-88/664-77 (Palmer, WSC. 59 and 77), but a number of notices on natural phenomena shared by Theophanes, 353-55. and Msyr 11 .XIII. 436/456-57, show that there was still some activity.

112 Debié. ‘Record Keeping and Chronicle Writing in Antioch and Edessa’.

113 For example, the work of earlier authors is clear in the Chronicle of 819 (Palmer. ‘Chroniques brèves’, and Brooks. ‘Sources of Theophanes and Syriac Chroniclers’).

114 Griffith. ‘Stephen of Ramla and the Christian Kerygma in Arabic in Ninth Century Palestine’. For a later example of such sharing of historical ideas see Borrut, ‘La circulation de l’information historique’.

115 John bar Penkaye, 151/179. I expand upon this point in the first two chapters of my Seeing Islam.