affairs entirely to the side. Muhammad, however, is very clearly identified as the political leader of the Muslims at the time of the Islamic conquests of the Roman Near East. “When a most numerous multitude of Saracens had gathered together, they invaded the provinces of Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia, while one named Muhammad held the position of leadership over them [Syriae, Arabiae et Mesopotamiae prouincias inuaserunt supra ipsos principatum tenente Mahmet nomine]. Born of a most noble tribe of that people, he was a very prudent man and a foreseer of very many future events.”77 After a brief description of the conquest of Syro-Palestine,78 the chronicle notes Muhammad’s death and succession by Abū Bakr, who continued the conquests. “When Muhammad, the previously mentioned leader of the Saracens, had finished 10 years of rule, he reached the end of his life. [He is] the one whom they hold in such high regard and reverence until this day that they declare him to be the apostle and prophet in all their rituals and writings. In his place Abū Bakr of the Saracens (from which his predecessor also arose) was chosen by them. He organized a massive campaign against the Persians, which devastated cities and towns, and he captured very many of their fortifications.”79 The entire passage is extraordinarily positive for a Christian chronicle written under Islamic occupation. It is rather peculiar, however, in its apparent division of the Islamic conquest of the Near East into two successive stages: the first stage was begun by Muhammad in the “provinces of Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia,” which context makes clear are Roman provinces, while the second stage commenced after Muhammad’s death, when Abū Bakr led a massive campaign of conquest against the Persian Empire.80
This two-fold structure can perhaps be explained as the author’s attempt to harmonize two different accounts of the Islamic conquest of the Near East, one an older tradition ascribing leadership to Muhammad, witnessed in the Christian historical tradition, and the other an ostensibly emerging Islamic tradition that identified the beginning of the Near Eastern conquests with Abū Bakr’s reign. Roughly contemporary with the composition of the Spanish Eastern Source is the earliest Islamic biography of Muhammad, Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīra of the Prophet, compiled sometime not long before the author’s death in 767. According to Ibn Isḥāq’s seminal account, Muhammad died in 632 in Medina and was not involved in the conquest of Syro-Palestine, as discussed further in the following chapter. During the mid-eighth century then, an Islamic biography of Muhammad had begun to form in the eastern Islamic lands, where the Spanish Eastern Source was most likely composed, and, as Lawrence Conrad has demonstrated, some Christian historical writers appear to have had access to these nascent Islamic traditions and occasionally made use of them.81 The events of the Near Eastern conquests, however, were “only beginning to receive systematic historical attention” in the mid-eighth century, according to Conrad, and the Islamic historical tradition at this time could at best be characterized as “an emerging discipline.” Nevertheless, it would appear that the earliest Islamic traditions of Muhammad’s life and the Near Eastern conquests had possibly begun to circulate at this time, even though they may not have been written down yet, and some of these reports seem to have affected Christian historical writing of the period.82
Thus it seems possible that the author of the Spanish Eastern Source may have been aware of emerging Islamic traditions reporting Abū Bakr’s leadership at the beginning of the conquests, and his two-stage account of the Islamic conquests could accordingly be understood as an effort to synthesize two divergent traditions that were circulating in his milieu.83 An early tradition of Muhammad’s leadership during the Palestinian campaign has perhaps come into contact here with the traditional Islamic account of Abū Bakr’s leadership during the conquest of the Near East after Muhammad’s death. The author of the Spanish Eastern Source has possibly preserved both traditions and harmonized them by locating Muhammad’s leadership of a campaign against the Roman Near East slightly earlier in time, before the traditional date of his death, and then having Abū Bakr organize and execute the campaign against the Persian Empire only after Muhammad’s death. This solution results in a somewhat inaccurate chronology, in seeming to make the Islamic conquest of the Roman Near East commence somewhat earlier than it actually did, instead of extending the date of Muhammad’s death beyond its traditional date.84 In any case, the Spanish Eastern Source clearly preserves the tradition of Muhammad’s leadership at the beginning of the Islamic conquest of Syro-Palestine.
The same division of the conquest into two stages is also preserved in the Hispanic Chronicle of 754, although this chronicle adopts a considerably different attitude toward Islam, and consequently, its preservation of the Spanish Eastern Source differs in some significant details. In comparison with the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle, the Hispanic Chronicle is rather polemical, occasionally adding derogatory comments and, more frequently, omitting material from the Spanish Eastern Source that portrays Islam too favorably, as can be seen especially by comparing the citations that follow with those above. This chronicle is also considerably longer than the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle, since it includes extensive material on the Visigoths and focuses much more squarely on the Iberian Peninsula, while drawing on the Spanish Eastern Source to set events in Spain within a more global context. Moreover, the Hispanic Chronicle continues its record of eastern events until approximately 750, prompting the suggestion that perhaps the Spanish Eastern Source originally continued to this point, and the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle has for some reason truncated its source in 741.85 Yet it is not at all clear why the author of the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle would have done this, and so it is just as likely that the Hispanic Chronicle has somehow supplemented the Spanish Eastern Source with additional information from another source.
In its basic outline, the Hispanic Chronicle’s account of the rise of Islam and the Islamic conquests of the Near East largely repeats that of the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle, but it clearly has edited the Spanish Eastern Source to reflect much more negatively on Islam.
The Saracens rebelled in 618, the seventh year of the emperor Heraclius, and appropriated for themselves Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia, more through trickery than through the power of their leader Muhammad [Siriam, Arabiam et Mesopotamiam furtim magis quam uirtute Mammet eorum ducatore rebellia adortante sibi], and they devastated the neighboring provinces, proceeding not so much by means of open attacks as by secret incursions. Thus by means of cunning and fraud rather than power, they incited all of the frontier cities of the empire and finally rebelled openly, shaking the yoke from their necks. In 618, the seventh year of Heraclius, the warriors invaded the kingdom, which they forcefully appropriated with many and various consequences.86
Like the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle, the Hispanic Chronicle follows with a brief description of the Islamic conquest of Palestine, after which it notes the death of Muhammad and his replacement by Abū Bakr: “When Muhammad had completed his tenth year, Abū Bakr, from his own tribe, succeeded to the throne, and he too launched major attacks against the power of the Romans and the Persians.”87 Excepting the marked difference in tone, this report is remarkably similar to the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle’s description of the same events. Muhammad is clearly identified as the leader of the Muslims at the time of the initial campaign in Palestine, and there seems to be a two-fold structure to the campaign, beginning in Syro-Palestine and then expanding into Persia during the reign of Abū Bakr.
The most significant difference between these two accounts of the Islamic conquests is the Hispanic Chronicle’s indication that Abū Bakr led attacks against both the Romans and the Persians, in contrast to the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle, which describes Abū Bakr’s massive new campaign against the Persians only. Yet this is not a particularly serious discrepancy, and in actuality it does not contradict the two-stage presentation of the Arab conquests found in the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle and, almost certainly, in the Spanish Eastern Source as well. Presumably, the author of the Hispanic Chronicle reflects here the fact that Islamic military operations against the Roman Empire did not cease with the conquest of Syro-Palestine. After taking control of Syria and Palestine, the Arabs continued to make advances against the Byzantines, proceeding to conquer Egypt, North Africa,
