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The contiguity between churches and mosques in

early Islamic Bild al- Shm

In early Islam, Muslims generally did not worship in a single space with churches, but
prayed in the same area, near a church, and may have attended church because they
viewed it as sacred.

Islamicization of landscape took place from 11th century onward

Legal context and modus vivendi

The construction of mosques within the late antique Christian cities conquered
in the seventh century was one of the constitutive elements of the encounter
between Muslims and Christians.

I have mentioned above the treaties established at the moment of the Islamic
conquest as well as some later dispositions. These legal texts help to outline the
reorganization of different communities lives under the new rule of Islam, for
which there are few other sources. At the same time, however, these texts are
of a different nature and their redaction took place in different periods.
The treaties established at the moment of the conquest were probably written
down and preserved by members of the defeated communities.87 These documents
are not available today, but have been handed down with various degrees
of accuracy in later works by Muslim historians. This bulk of material eventually
conflated into diverse versions of the Pact of Umar, a standardized epistolary
text which summed up the ninth-century conditions of non-Muslim people under
Islamic rule.88 One of the reasons for the emergence of the set of prescriptions
and prohibitions for non-Muslims, known as the Pact of Umar, was probably
the demographic growth of Muslims in the conquered cities. This phenomenon
led to further severe confrontations with non-Muslims and to a more urgent need
to establish, reinforce and patrol community boundaries.89 The third set of documents
relating to the conditions of minorities under early Islamic rule are the
transcriptions of specific edicts issued by Muslim authorities, medieval historians
and other authors. Such was the case, for instance, of the edict of Yazd
II (d. 724) which ordered, among other things, the removal of any Christian
sign from urban public spaces.90 Another is the case mentioned above of the
early ninth-century order issued in the area of Urfa to destroy all Christian buildings
erected after the conquest.91

Several of these legal decrees involved Christian buildings. What is interesting

is that sources mainly recorded those decisions as being aimed at reducing
and controlling the freedom and social life of non-Muslims. Less well known is
the course of daily life between these peaks of legislation.92

Quite often the latitude given to or obtained by non-Muslim communities

exceeded the limits imposed by the legal decisions of the central authority.
Let us consider, for instance, the restoration of the houses of worship: Urfa
and Diyarbakirs cathedrals were restored after the Islamic conquest

87 Meir M. Bravmann, The state archives in the early Islamic era, Arabica 15/1, 1968,
8799, at 879; Chase F. Robinson, Ibn al-Azraq, his Tarikh Mayyafariqin, and
early Islam, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 6/1, 1996, 727.
88 After Tritton (The Caliphs and Their non-Muslim Subjects, 517) see A. Noth,
Problems of differentiation between Muslims and non-Muslims: re-reading the
Ordinances of Umar (al-shurt t al-umariyya), in R. Hoyland (ed.), Muslims and
Others in Early Islamic Society (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 10324; M. R. Cohen,
What was the pact of Umar? A literary-historical study, Jerusalem Studies in
Arabic and Islam, 23, 1999, 10057.
89 The whole process, from the surrender treaties to the rise of a standardized version of
the
Pact of Umar, has recently been discussed by Milka Levy-Rubin: Non-Muslims in the
Early Islamic Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 5887.
90 Alexander A. Vasiliev, The iconoclastic edict of the Caliph Yazid II, A.D. 721,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9, 1956, 2347.
91 A. Fattal, Le statut lgal des non-musulmans en pays dislam (Beirut: Impr.
catholique,
1958), 190; Mark Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 164.
92 Opinion expressed by Taref Khalidi, personal communication, Beirut, May 2009.

In the case of Urfa there is even evidence of an approval or endorsement by the same
caliph Muwiya. This is echoed in the Nestorian patriarch Saids negotiation
with the new rulers according to Bar Hebraeus: in exchange for accepting
Islamic rule he was promised help in the case of restoration of churches.93 All
this contrasts with the norms contained in the Pact of Umar in which both
the prohibition of erecting new non-Muslim sacred places and of restoring extant
buildings are asserted.94 It must be added that the latter point was much debated
by the jurists: in several cases the restoration was permitted under the terms that
the nature and dimensions of the original (i.e. pre-Islamic) building would not be
altered.95

Theory and practice were also distinct as far as the building of new churches
was concerned. The evidence is archaeological, as shown by the church of St
Stephen at Umm al-Rass, and textual, as proved, for instance, by the edification
of St Marks church in Alexandria in Egypt some years before 681 and by the
erection of the great church in Nisibis in the year 758.96 In at least one case permission
to build new churches was included in the pact of surrender: Mar
Gabriel, abbot of the monastery of Qartmin in north Mesopotamia, was given
licence to build new churches and monasteries.97

In the ninth-century Kitb al-kharaj by Ab Ysuf Yaqb, a distinction was

drawn between new cities and those inherited: in the former, constructions by
Christians were forbidden, whereas in the latter the rules were dictated by the
pact/treaty established at the moment of the conquest.98 But even going by
this pattern practice seems to have varied: as in the case of Baghdad, as portrayed
by the patriarch of Antioch Christophorus. Although the Christian community
of Ctesifonte did not take part in the early stages of the construction of
the city, after a few decades the commercial and cultural heyday of Baghdad
attracted a number of Christians who settled in and had several churches built
for their use.99

Generally speaking, it appears that the pacts established during the Islamic
conquest ratified the conquered communities property of the existent sacred
buildings: the following decisions about them swung according to the

93 Bar Hebraeus, Barhebraei chronicon ecclesiasticum, vol. 2, 1158.

94 Cohen, What was the Pact of Umar?, 141.
95 Fattal, Le statut lgal des non-musulmans en pays dislam, 1745. See the case of the
early ninth-century restoration of the dome of the Saint Sepulchre in Jerusalem: a
much debated point was the size of the dome before and after the restoration (Eutychii
Patriarchae Alexandrini, Annales, vol. 2, 557).
96 Petrus Ibn Rahib, Chronicon orientale, ed. and trans. P. L. Cheicho (Beirut:
Typographie
catholique, 1903), 122; Elias of Nisibis, Chronographie, 108 (year 141 H). Recently,
possible post-seventh century Christian foundations have been discussed by
archaeologists:
L. Di Segni, Christian epigraphy in the Holy Land: new discoveries, ARAM,
15, 2003, 24767; Walmsley, Early Islamic Syria, 1206.
97 S. Brock, North Mesopotamia in the late seventh century, 57.
98 Ab Ysuf Yaqb, Kitb al-Kharaj, ed. M. B. al-Ht asan (Blq: al-Matb t aa al-
mriyya,
1885), 88.
99 H. Zayat, Vie du patriarche melkite dAntioche Christophore par le protospathaire
Ibrahm b. Yuhanna. Document indit du X sicle, Proche Orient Chrtien, 2, 1952,
223.