Nonetheless, the Hispanic Chronicle clearly presents the Persian campaign as something begun only in the reign of Abū Bakr, and thus as a second stage in the Islamic conquest of the Near East. More importantly, the Hispanic Chronicle’s adherence to a two-phase description of the conquest is indicated again in its summation of the earliest Islamic conquests, which follows immediately after the notice concerning Abū Bakr. “After the tenth year of Muhammad’s rule had expired in 628, in the seventeenth year of the emperor Heraclius, they chose the aforementioned Abū Bakr, of Muhammad’s own tribe, in his place, and the Arabs fought with sword against Persia, which had been abandoned by the Roman empire. Abū Bakr ruled for almost three years, powerfully waging war.”89 Here the Hispanic Chronicle mentions Persia specifically in connection with Abū Bakr, essentially identifying the beginning of the campaign against Persia with the commencement of his reign. Furthermore, this passage bears a striking similarity to the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle’s description of Abū Bakr’s reign, making it rather probable that this two-stage account of the Islamic conquests was present in the Spanish Eastern Source. Most likely then, this lost Greek chronicle described the initial Islamic assault on Palestine and Syria as occurring under Muhammad’s leadership, while presenting the assault of Persia as a second stage in the conquests that commenced under Abū Bakr. Thus, the Hispanic Chronicle’s attribution of attacks against the Romans to Abū Bakr is best understood as an addition by its author, who no doubt was aware that conflict between the Byzantines and Muslims continued into the first caliph’s reign and beyond.
In conclusion then, the Spanish Eastern Source was most likely a Greek chronicle written in Syria, sometime very close to 741. It is clear that this chronicle described the Islamic conquest of Syro-Palestine under Muhammad’s leadership and then represented the conquest of Persia as a second stage of the conquests that commenced under Abū Bakr. This two-fold conception of the Islamic conquests possibly reflects an effort to reconcile an earlier tradition of Muhammad’s leadership during the assault on Palestine with an emerging Islamic tradition that separated Muhammad from the Near Eastern conquests and identified their beginning with the reign of Abū Bakr. We do not know the source of the Spanish Eastern Source’s information regarding the Islamic conquests and Muhammad’s role therein, but given its later date and its apparent connections with the Eastern chronicle tradition, its report may derive from earlier literary sources.
There is no indication that this account of the rise of Islam has been doctored to suit any grand narrative, and perhaps most remarkably there is no trace of any apology or polemic in the Spanish Eastern Source, at least insofar as it is represented by the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle. There is hardly any reason to suspect that the redactor of the latter document was responsible for this favorable depiction of Islam, particularly in view of the comparative data afforded by the Hispanic Chronicle. In fact, so positive is the Spanish Eastern Source’s view of Islam that it is tempting to suspect that somehow there are Islamic sources lying just behind it. Perhaps some now lost early Islamic (Umayyad?) historical traditions also preserved a primitive tradition of Muhammad’s leadership during the Palestinian campaign, such as we find attested in the non-Islamic sources. The Letter of ʿUmar discussed below certainly suggests this possibility. Furthermore, as noted above, the remarkably positive representation of Islam and its early leaders in the Spanish Eastern Source probably reflects an expectation of scrutiny by Islamic readers. In light of this, it seems rather unlikely that its author would either deliberately misrepresent Muhammad as the leader of the Palestinian conquests or would include information widely regarded as false by the Islamic authorities. This source in fact seems to be very close to the center of Umayyad power, and its use by these two early medieval Spanish chroniclers demonstrates not only that the tradition of Muhammad’s leadership during the campaign in Palestine remained current in Christian historical writing over a century after the events themselves but also that this tradition had spread even to the West in early Islamic Spain.
The Syriac Common Source: The Chronicle of Theophilus of Edessa (ca. 750 CE)
The Syriac Common Source is a now lost medieval chronicle that we have already mentioned briefly in discussions of the Doctrina Iacobi and the Spanish Eastern Source. The first traces of this vanished chronicle began to emerge in the later nineteenth century, when it was discovered that the Greek chronicle of Theophanes (written 814 CE) and the Syriac chronicle of Michael the Syrian (written 1195 CE) had used a common source in compiling their notices for the seventh century and much of the eighth, the so-called Eastern Source, or Syriac Common Source, as we have determined to call it. In Michael’s case, it was further known that he had used this lost source at second hand, as it had been mediated to him through yet another lost chronicle, the Chronicle of Dionysius of Tellmahre (d. 845), which Michael implies was the only substantial source available to him for the seventh and eighth centuries.90 The subsequent publication of the Christian Arabic chronicle of Agapius (written ca. 940) and the anonymous Syriac Chronicle of 1234 have added further clarity to the picture. Agapius depends almost entirely on the lost Syriac Common Source for his description of events during the years 630–754, providing now a third independent witness to this missing source.91 The Chronicle of 1234, in contrast, presents a second source that has drawn its seventh- and eighth-century material almost exclusively from Dionysius of Tellmahre’s lost chronicle, preserving its contents in what many think is a less heavily edited version than is found in Michael’s chronicle. Since Dionysius’s chronicle is believed to have best preserved the Syriac Common Source, this anonymous thirteenth-century chronicle is an invaluable resource for reconstructing the contents of this now lost text.92
All of this makes determining the contents of the Syriac Common Source a rather complex and at the same time fairly straightforward endeavor. Since it is generally assumed that the Chronicle of 1234 has most faithfully preserved the Syriac Common Source, via Dionysius of Tellmahre’s vanished chronicle, one begins by looking at this chronicle, but at each point, one must also compare the data from Theophanes, Agapius, and Michael. Only after evaluating the various testimonies from all of these sources both with one another and with the tendencies of each individual chronicle can one come to a judgment as to what the Syriac Common Source most likely reported. When several sources converge very closely, we can be quite certain that this material has been faithfully preserved from the Syriac Common Source. By this means, an outline of this lost chronicle can be restored, as evidenced in Hoyland’s very helpful summary of its contents.93 Moreover, we now know the author of this important history of the seventh and eighth centuries to have been Theophilus of Edessa, an eighth-century Maronite scholar who served as court astrologer to the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mahdi.94 Theophilus is said to have written several works on astrology, and his knowledge of Greek was such that he translated the Iliad and perhaps the Odyssey into Syriac, but all of these works are now lost, except for a few surviving fragments and excerpts. Most importantly for the present purposes, however, Theophilus also composed a chronicle, which, as Conrad has convincingly demonstrated, is almost certainly to be identified with the lost Syriac Common Source.95
Unfortunately, Theophilus of Edessa’s account of Muhammad’s life and the rise of Islam is somewhat difficult to determine, since the various witnesses to his Chronicle themselves preserve different descriptions of these events. Hoyland nicely summarizes the situation as follows: “Theophanes almost totally ignores Theophilus for his notice on Muhammad, drawing instead, indirectly, on Jewish and Muslim sources. Agapius abridges Theophilus, as he himself acknowledges, and supplements him with material from the Muslim tradition. That leaves Dionysius, who seems to me to best preserve Theophilus’ entry.”96 Luckily, Dionysius’s account of the rise of Islam is well preserved in both Michael the Syrian’s Chronicle and the Chronicle of 1234: the two are either identical or very close in wording at this point. Michael’s text does contain a few passages not found in the Chronicle of 1234, many of which are polemical in nature, but these are more likely to have been added by Michael than deleted by the latter.97 Thus we may with some confidence regard the following passage from the Chronicle of 1234
