were likely not as important during Islam’s first decades. The apocalypse of Rabbi Shimʿōn is itself important evidence of the early Islamic community’s openness to other monotheist confessions, and it would seem that it preserves the visionary hopes of a Jewish group that joined cause with the invading Arabs and the message of their prophet, whom they saw as their liberator. There are in fact strong indications that Islam’s sacred geography originally focused not on Mecca and the Ḥijāz, but instead on Jerusalem and Palestine, which Muhammad’s earliest followers seem to have regarded as the promised land of their inheritance, a holy land rightfully belonging to Abraham’s descendants, Jews and Arabs alike. The Islamic invasion of the Holy Land thus seems to have been conceived at least in part as the liberation of the Abrahamic patrimony from Roman rule and oppression, an undertaking that would have aligned the Arab cause with Jewish apocalyptic hopes.
Consequently, one would imagine that this apocalypse of Rabbi Shimʿōn reflects the perspective of a Jewish group that was sympathetic to, if not even allied with, the invading Arabs and their prophet. Its prediction that this prophet would lead the conquest of the Holy Land thus seems to reflect the perspective of contemporary eyewitnesses who themselves had some experience of the invasion and early Islamic rule over Jerusalem. Whatever the precise nature of the community behind this text may have been, it clearly describes the invading Arabs and their prophet in positive terms, as divinely appointed agents of deliverance. The sharp dissonance of this favorable assessment of Muhammad and his devotees with later Jewish attitudes toward Islam speaks not only to the antiquity of the source itself; this quality also diminishes the possibility that Muhammad’s participation in the conquests was contrived to serve some polemical purpose. To the contrary, it is extremely difficult to envision a later Jewish redactor inventing the idea of Muhammad’s divinely appointed liberation of the Holy Land. It is instead much easier to understand such sentiments as reflecting the impressions of contemporary Jews whose apocalyptic expectations aligned them, at least for a time, with the invading Muslims and their prophet.
The Khuzistan Chronicle (ca. 660 CE)
Further evidence of Muhammad’s leadership during the conquest of Palestine occurs in a brief, anonymous Syriac chronicle that was probably composed in the Khuzistan region of southwestern Iran, where most of its events take place. The Khuzistan Chronicle, as this text is often called,39 is generally dated to around 660 on the basis of its contents, including most notably the fact that it makes no clear reference to any event after 652.40 The chronicle’s account of the Islamic conquests is somewhat unusual in that it describes the events of the conquests twice and in two very different contexts. The chronicle first gives a rather general notice of the conquests according to its chronological sequence, and then near its conclusion, the author returns to a discussion of the Islamic invasions outside of the broader chronology and in more detail, focusing especially on Islamic military activity in Khuzistan. This doublet reflects a rather peculiar feature of the chronicle’s general organization. Most of the chronicle adheres to a strict chronological order in relating events, marking time according to the succession of both the Persian emperors and the leaders of the East Syrian (that is, “Nestorian”) church. But following accounts of the reigns of Emperor Yazdgerd III (632–52) and Patriarch Maremmeh (646–49), the work suddenly alters its structure. The chronicle’s final entries include, in order, “an account of the miraculous conversion of some Turks by Elias of Merv (d. after 659), a list of towns founded by Seleucus, Semiramis and Ninus son of Belus, a portrayal of the Arab conquests (630s-40s), and a short survey of Arabian geography.”41 This sudden departure from chronological sequence has led many interpreters to suggest that these final sections are the work of another author, who has appended this material, including the second description of the Islamic conquests, to an earlier chronicle that originally concluded with Patriarch Maremmeh’s death.42 Other factors, however, suggest that both sections are in fact the work of the same author, and as Hoyland has proposed, “it may be, then, that the disjuncture is not an indication of a change in author, but of a change of focus and/or source.”43 It seems plausible that upon reaching the end of his historical narrative, the chronicler turned in his conclusion to focus on topics of special significance for mid-seventh-century Khuzistan and East Arabia. This shift of focus presumably reflects the author’s interest in his own milieu, and consequently, there is a very real possibility that the information in this section is based on eyewitness reports or even the author’s own personal knowledge.
In this final section, the chronicle’s second account of the Islamic conquest narrates the Arab invasion of northern Khuzistan, focusing especially on the capture of the cities Shush and Shushtar. The account is so rich in detail that it almost certainly derives from eyewitness reports,44 but inasmuch as it describes the conquest of Mesopotamia instead of Palestine and does not identify Muhammad as leading the invasion, this vivid account is unfortunately irrelevant to the matter at hand. The chronicle’s initial notice of the Islamic conquests, however, which appears according to chronological sequence, is more valuable in this regard. Here the chronicler describes the initial Arab assaults against both Persia and the Byzantines in Syro-Palestine, reporting these events as follows:
And Yazdgerd, who was from the royal lineage, was crowned king in the city of Estakhr, and under him the Persian Empire came to an end. And he went forth and came to Māḥōzē and appointed one named Rustam as the leader of the army. Then God raised up against them the sons of Ishmael like sand on the seashore. And their leader was Muhammad [
The structure of this passage seems to indicate Muhammad’s leadership of the Arabs during their initial attacks against the Persians and the Romans. After first naming the Persian “king,” Yazdgerd, and then identifying the leader of the Persian army in Rustam, the chronicler describes the Arab invasion of Persia, designating Muhammad as the Arab leader in this specific context. Muhammad’s positioning alongside of these other leaders in the conflict, including Heraclius, strongly suggests Muhammad’s participation in the initial phase of the Near Eastern conquest.
Unfortunately, we know very little regarding the sources from which the author obtained his information that Muhammad was leading the Muslims at the time of the conquests. The chronicler identifies his sources rather generally as the ecclesiastical and secular histories from the period between the death of Hormizd son of Khosro and the end of the Persian Empire.47 But since the Khuzistan Chronicle was composed so soon after the events of the Islamic conquests, it is certainly possible that its author relied on reports of eyewitnesses rather than written sources for knowledge of the Islamic invasion, particularly since he appears to have relied on eyewitness testimony for his description of Khuzistan’s conquest. In any case, the author himself was most likely not an eyewitness to the Palestinian campaign or to Muhammad’s role therein: how he came by the information that Muhammad was leading this powerful army is not known. But in the Khuzistan Chronicle’s favor are the facts that its author seems to have taken a special interest in recording the events of the Islamic conquest, and that he had access to eyewitness testimonies (or perhaps even personal experience?) for at least some of his information. As for the character of the observation, it is not polemical, nor does the notice of Muhammad’s leadership during the conquests serve any sort of grand narrative within the chronicle; here the chronicle makes descriptive observations about events that took place less than thirty years prior. Thus the Khuzistan Chronicle forms an additional witness to a tradition of Muhammad’s continued leadership of the Muslims as they began their
