Sources of Spread of Islam

The events that occurred during the spread of Islam are much better documented than those of the advent of Islam.  Here, we start finding archaeological evidence, though they are scarce.  If we have to depend solely on them, we cannot reconstruct the history of this period.  We still have to bank mainly on extant writings and use archaeological evidence to verify (or refute) them.

Sources and their limitations

Among the extant writings, the earliest are those produced by non-Muslim sources. Actually, not a single writing of Islamic origin is available from any date earlier than the 9^th century CE.  Luckily, some non-Muslim writers are eyewitnesses to the events of the spread of Islam. Some others are nearly contemporary. Still, some others have written not long after the events.  Despite the advantage of timing, they have limitations. First of all, almost all of them are Christian clergymen. They are presumably prejudiced. ¹ They are not neutral reporters.  They articulate a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ whereby ‘us’ are the Christians and ‘them’ are the Muslims. Moreover, they are ill-informed. ²  They have a good insight into the political psychology of Christians of the Middle East of their times, which other sources neglect, but they know nothing about internal Arab Muslim politics. They are reporting the events from kind of ‘behind the lines.’  For example, Sebeos is totally erroneous when he assigns the twentieth year of Yazdegerd [652 CE] and the eleventh year of the emperor Constans [652 CE] to the nineteenth year of the lordship of the Ishmaelites [640 CE]. ³  Not only are they ignorant about the politics, strategies and policies of the Muslims, but they are also sometimes unaware of basic knowledge that was otherwise generally available at that time. Furthermore, with the exception of presumed contemporaries, non-Muslim sources are cursory to disclose their source of information.⁴  Lastly, they are insufficiently brief.  No historian has ever created a history of the events of the spread of Islam by merely using non-Muslim sources combined with archaeological evidence.

Hesitantly, we have to include the 9^th Century Islamic sources in the narration of any history that deals with the events of the spread of Islam.  As expected, the 9^th Century Islamic sources have exactly the same problems which early Islamic sources about the advent of Islam have.  Their horometrical distance from the events they are writing about cannot be neglected.  We know Muslims started preserving the events of the spread of Islam in written form during the 8^th century CE.  Ibn Ishaq, Waqidi and Ibn Sa’d, all were present in written form and Baladhuri (d. c. 892 CE) cited them in his works.⁵ Ironically, none of them has survived.  The earliest surviving Islamic source is Ya’qubi who hails from the third quarter of the 9^th century CE. ⁶ Then, all Islamic sources are religious scholars. ⁷  Like non-Muslim sources, they maintain their own divide of ‘us’ and ‘them, where ‘us’ are the Muslims and ‘them’ are non-Muslims. For example, look at a passage of Baladhuri: “in pursuance of his [caliph Mansur’s] orders his ‘āmils in the frontier fortresses made tours in Asia Minor where they wrought heavy slaughter, subdued the land and won many brilliant victories.  One misfortunate was the loss of the life of Yaqẓān ibn ‘Abd al ‘Ā’la ibn Aḥmad ibn Yazīd ibn Asīd as Sulāmi.”⁸ Here Baladhuri equates the ‘heavy slaughter’ of the Christian population of Asia Minor to a ‘great victory’ and laments the death of one Muslim soldier as ‘unfortunate’.  The problem with the narrative of the history of 9^th Century Islamic sources is not so much that they are wrong, but like all histories told from the standpoint of the victor, they are idealizing and one-sided. ⁹ Though, generally speaking, Islamic sources disclose their source of information, the authenticity of their source of information remains questionable.  All their isnād (اِسناد) were not in written form to be copied from. They were still gathering verbal reports circulating in society by the time of writing. ¹⁰  To complicate matters further, all Islamic sources have internal contradictions.  They keep writing a multitude of differing statements for the same event and at the end close the description of the event with a single statement – and Allah knows better (wallāh ul ‘ālam).  The poor reader, after the agony of going through all the pages, concludes: ‘definitely, Allah knows better’.  Islamic sources, furthermore, differ widely from each other on the same event.  Commenting on this issue Ya’qubi notes that transmitters of traditions differ in their accounts and chronologies.  Some add things some omitted things. ¹¹ Generally, Islamic sources are aware of the internal politics of early Muslims but they supposedly censor the material in favour of their patronizing ruler and the historical beliefs of their reader. As far as the internal politics of non-Muslim political entities is concerned, they are aware but are brief on this subject.  The brevity of Islamic sources about politics, strategies, policies and political psychologies of the defeated people amounts to almost neglect.

Islamic sources are not reporting the historical traditions circulating in society word by word. They use their editorial skills. Reporting a tradition transmitted to Baladhuri from Ḥusain bin Aswad through Mūsa bin Ṭalḥah, Baladhuri writes, ‘the Prophet sent Mu’ādh bin Jabal to collect the ṣadaqah of al-Yaman ordering him to take on dates, wheat, barley and grapes’.  Then Baladhuri adds, ‘perhaps he said raisins’. ¹²  Finally, none of the 9th-century Islamic sources are preserved in totality. Even if a historian uses all available Islamic sources of the 9^th century CE, and combines them with earlier non-Muslim sources and archaeological evidence, still he faces difficulty in giving a logical flow to his historical narrative.  No historian has ever written a convincing history spanning from the events of pre-Islam to the spread of Islam without citing Tabari.  And when Tabari published his Tārīkh ul Rusul wal Mulūk in 910 CE, the 10^th century CE had already started.

Hence, a historian of the spread of Islam has a difficult task. Some of the material he utilizes is from as early as the event itself.  Some of the material he uses got generated about three centuries after the event.  He cannot take any of that material at face value. He has to read between the lines to produce any recognizable sketch of this period.  Then he has to mix and match archaeological, non-Muslim and Islamic sources to give colour to the sketch.

Introduction to salient sources

Before we proceed further, it would not be out of order, to introduce salient sources used in this text extensively.  Minor sources will be detailed in the text where they are used.

Sebeos, a Christian Bishop from Armenia, commonly gets credit for writing the anonymous ‘Armenian Chronicle’. ¹³  Historians believe that the author of the chronicle had lived through the events of Arab conquests which he mentions briefly in his chronicle. The chronicle notes events up to 661 CE, by the end of the First Arab Civil War. ¹⁴ He is contemporary to the events and on one occasion he expresses vividly that he has extracted his knowledge from eyewitnesses. The primary problem with Sebeos is that he is achingly brief.

Ya’qubi (Ya’qūbi يَعقُوبِى) was a Persian, resident of Isfahan.  He spent his childhood in Armenia and his youth in Khurasan up to 873 CE. He attached himself to the court of the Iranian dynasty of the Tahrids.  Though he travelled extensively in his later years, before his death in Egypt in 898 CE, he couldn’t get rid of the hues of the Tahirid court from his work on history. As the events written in his compendium, usually referred to as Tārīkh al-Ya’qūbi or Tārīkh ibn Wādīh, don’t go beyond 873 CE, we can assume that he had published it by that time.  In this sense, Ya’qubi is chronologically the first extant Islamic source available to a historian of the spread of Islam.  His Shi’ite inclination reflects throughout his work.  This shortcoming of Ya’qubi prevents a historian from reckoning on Tārīkh al-Ya’qūbi blindly. ¹⁵

Baladhuri (Balādhuri بَلاذُرى) was a Persian, resident of Baghdad.  He had special relations with caliphs Mutawakkil and Musta’im.  He was a tutor to the son of caliph Mu’tazz. ¹⁶  According to Ibn Nadim, the author of Fehrist, Baladhuri died in 892 CE.²²  His preserved year of death gives us confidence that he might have published his Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān by 890 CE. ¹⁷ Baladhuri doesn’t make the slightest effort to hide his leaning towards his Abbasid masters throughout his work.  Moreover, his extant writing is simply an abridged edition of an earlier detailed work.  These drawbacks of Baladhuri compel a historian to look further for sources.[/note]

The ethnicity of Tabari (Ṭabari طَبَرى) is doubtful. He could be a mixed Persian and Arab. Born and raised in Almo in Tabaristan, he travelled widely. To gain credit for impartiality, Tabari never attached himself to any court. He used his personal resources to do all the research and to publish his findings. Furthermore, his forty-volume monumental work Tārīkh ul Rusul wa’l Mulūk, first published in 910 CE, is very well preserved.  The virtues of Tabari make him stand out among Islamic sources about the spread of Islam.  However, he is far from unquestionable trustworthiness. He admits to having censured some historical traditions available to him.

Summary

So, where do we stand?  Either we can pick only archaeological evidence and the writings of eyewitnesses and discard all others. In this case, we shall create a fragmentary history and declare that we know almost nothing about the events of the spread of Islam. Or we can pool all sources available to us up to the beginning of the 10^th century and evaluate them by established principles of meta-analysis.  In this case, we shall create an integrated history, though we cannot declare that it is bona fide. This text uses the later approach.

As expected, this text gives archaeological sources precedence over all others. Generally, this text gives earlier sources precedent to later ones. In doing so this text is mindful that the early sources are not necessarily more accurate than later ones. ¹⁸  The most powerful tool this text uses is triangulation.  If a source material is used by historians of many different points of view, then the source material is valid. Lastly, this text doesn’t use any source later than Tabari.

End notes

1. Robert G. Hoyland, In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), introduction 2.
2. Robert G. Hoyland, In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), introduction 2.
3. Sebeos, Sebeos’ History, ed. and trans. Robert Bedrosian (New York: Sources of the Armenian Tradition, 1985), 157.
4. ,
5. See: Al-Imām abu-l ‘Abbās Aḥmad ibn-Jābir al-Balādhuri.  Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān, ed. and trans. Philip Khūri Ḥitti, (New York: Columbia University, 1916), 9.
6. Ya’qūbī, Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-, The Works of Ibn Wāḍīḥ al-Ya’qūbī: An English Translation, Eds. and Trans. Matthew S. Gordon, Chase F. Robinson, Everett K. Rowson and Michael Fishbein, (Leiden: Brill, 2018), Vol. I, P 3.
7. Robert G. Hoyland, In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 42.
8. Aḥmad ibn-Jābir al-Balādhuri.  Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān, ed. and trans. Philip Khūri Ḥitti, (New York: Columbia University, 1916), 299.
9. Robert G. Hoyland, In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), introduction 2.
10. Many times Baladhuri collected verbal reports from one of his contemporaries. For an example of it see: Aḥmad ibn-Jābir al-Balādhuri. Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān, ed. and trans. Philip Khūri Ḥitti, (New York: Columbia University, 1916), 312. On other occasions, Baladhuri quotes a verbal report from an informer who read that material in an already published book but Baladhuri doesn’t seek to see the book himself.  Neither has he known the name of the book. See: Aḥmad ibn-Jābir al-Balādhuri.  Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān, ed. and trans. Philip Khūri Ḥitti, (New York: Columbia University, 1916), 255.
11. Ya’qūbī, Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-, The Works of Ibn Wāḍīḥ al-Ya’qūbī: An English Translation, Eds. and Trans. Matthew S. Gordon, Chase F. Robinson, Everett K. Rowson and Michael Fishbein, (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 597.
12. Aḥmad ibn-Jābir al-Balādhuri.  Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān, ed. and trans. Philip Khūri Ḥitti, (New York: Columbia University, 1916), 108.
13. Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw it (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1997), 124.
14. Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw it (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1997), 125.
15. Biographical sketch of Ya’qubi, his works and dating of his Tārīkh to around 873 CA and his Kitab ul Buldan to around 890 CE see: Ya’qūbī, Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-, The Works of Ibn Wāḍīḥ al-Ya’qūbī: An English Translation, Eds. and Trans. Matthew S. Gordon, Chase F. Robinson, Everett K. Rowson and Michael Fishbein, (Leiden: Brill, 2018), Vol, P 2 – 27.
16. Al-Imām abu-l ‘Abbās Aḥmad ibn-Jābir al-Balādhuri.  Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān, ed. and trans. Philip Khūri Ḥitti, (New York: Columbia University, 1916), 6.
17. Ibn Nadim, Kitāb Al-fehrist, ed. Gustav flūgel, (Leipzig: Vogel 1871), 113.  Also see: Yākūt, Mu’jam al-Udabā’, ed. Margoliouth, (Leiden, 1907) 127 – 132.  And also see: al-Kutubi. Fawāt al-Wafayāt, (Bulaq: 1283) vol. I, P 8 – 9.  Originally from Al-Imām abu-l ‘Abbās Aḥmad ibn-Jābir al-Balādhuri.  Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān, ed. and trans. Philip Khūri Ḥitti, (New York: Columbia University, 1916), 6 See also: Robert G. Hoyland, In God’s Path: the Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 146.
18. To understand this concept of history writing see: Chase F. Robinson, The conquest of Khūzistan: a historiographical reassessment (Near and Middle Eastern History Seminar, School of Oriental and African Studies, Feb. 1996) 16, 17.