Muslim Period Conference Report

[Disclaimer: Once again, I am reporting on a subject about which I know comparatively little. The opinions of the various scholars are their own. Please do not shoot the messenger. Thank you - AIWAC]

Well, I must say that the conference was not a total disaster. Most of the lecturers remained within their alloted time frame (more or less), and many of the presentations were quite enlightening. Some people even remembered to tell jokes and keep the audience (including yours truly) awake. Below are some some of the highlights:

As mentioned before, this subject of this conference was Israel during the First Muslim Period, from the Muslim conquests in the 7th century until the Crusades (late 11th century), although most of the lectures covered only the Muslim Conquests and the Ummayad Period. The subject of the reliability of the Muslim historiography of the conquests was a particularly contentious subject. Prof. Amiqam Elad and a master student of his (forgot his name) argued that it was possible to unearth historical facts and events from the Muslim sources through a critical reading thereof. They claimed that although the Muslim sources we now have were written a century or two after the fact, this does not prevent us from discerning the earlier sources and checking their credibility (ala Josephus, for instance). Prof. Moshe Sharon, on the other hand, dropped a bombshell by claiming that the Muslim histories were a bunch of bubba mayses with kernels of truth. He compared the Muslim historical project to an alternate reality in which no documents survived from WWI, and in which the history thereof was done by interviewing some old Germans. Needless to say, this caused much consternation and discussion. [Sharon has an article plugging this line that is due to come out soon in Studia Orientalia (I think this is it). Should be interesting.]

Archaeology of the Muslim period was another theme in the conference. Prof. Yossi Patrich discussed the transition of Ceasaria from the Byzantine to the Umayyad Period. Dr. Katya Zitrin discussed the subject of roads in Israel during the Umayyad period, where she showed that the Umayyad "road project" consisted mainly of maintenance of Roman and Byzantine roads and installations, rather than the construction of new roads or milestones. Dr. Gideon Avny of the Israeli Antiquities Authority shed new light on Ramle, the city that was erected from scratch during the Umayyad period. He showed that the number of excavations being done there has grown exponentially and has contributed a great deal to our knowledge of the city.

Another theme of the conference was the life of the Dhimmi communities under Early Muslim rule. The picture that emerged was mixed. Dr. Michael Erlich showed that the historical evidence points to a general tolerance of Dhimmi religious structures, with mosques and churches/synagogues exiting side by side rather than mosques replacing churches. Dr. Avni also showed this to be the case - in Jerusalem, for instance, Christian institutions (at least until the 9th century) grew during this period, and Dr. Shimon Gath showed that there were large, mainly unmolested Dhimmi communities in Ramle, a Muslim-built city. On the other hand, another lecturer (whose name escapes me for the moment) showed that the flight of much of the population of the cities along the coast during the Muslim conquests - due both to fear of war and a Muslim policy of expelling the Dhimmi inhabitants along the coastline - lead to a collapse of these cities and a break between the Middle East and the Mediterannian (which became called 'the Byzantine (hostile) Sea'). The Christian communities were now cut off from centers in Asia Minor, and had to adjust to life under Islam.

All in all, an interesting conference. I hope that there will be a discussion of later Muslim periods (Fatimid, Mamluk etc), to see whether the picture described above changed and why.