Sebastian Brock, "Syriac Views of Emergent Islam," in G.H.A. Juynboll (ed.), Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society, 9-21 (notes 199-203).
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Sebastian Brock, "Syriac Views of Emergent Islam," in G.H.A. Juynboll (ed.), Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society, 9-21 (notes 199-203).
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This
article looks at Syriac sources to help answer the question, “How did the
Syrian people assimilate into their world view the events surrounding the
Arabian arrival?” Brock first
outlines the religious spin that was put on the Muslim occupation, for example
by Sophronios, Maximos the Confessor, John of Phenek, and the Doctrina Jocobi.
These separate accounts would all paint a picture of the Arabs in terms
of their own ecclesiastical interpretation.
And they would all talk about Islam in terms of their religion, e.g., the
Muslim conquest as punishment for sins of the Christians; Muhammad as the
Anti-Christ; the Building of the Dome of the Rock as the “rebuilding of the
temple;” and so on.
The Syriac writers used terminology that indicated they were somewhat cognizant of the evolution of rulers and kingdoms, perhaps associated with the, “Book of Daniel, with its picture of successive world empires … For Muhammad the title “prophet” is not very common, “apostle” even less so. Normally he is described as the first of the Arab kings, and it would be generally true to say that the Syriac sources of this period see the conquests primarily as Arab, and not Muslim” (p. 14).
The author concludes: “to writers of every ecclesiastical body there was, without any doubt, some theological reason to be sought for the demise of the two former world empires and the concomitant ills suffered by Christians as a result of the Arab invasions” (p. 20).