The Ottoman Empire as an Oppressive State for Non-Muslims

Edward Said belonged to a whole school of American apologists for Islam and the Arabs. This school goes back before WW2 and continued with Roosevelt's visit with King Ibn Saud on the Red Sea on an American warship. Once large amounts of oil were being shipped out of Arabia, which Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud had named "Saudi Arabia" after his dynasty, pro-Arab, anti-Israel policies could be justified by Washington as necessary to keep the oil flowing, a considerable part of the profits of which went to the American oil consortium ARAMCO, made up of four major US oil companies.

Did Prof William Polk have to gloss over Muslim crimes in order to keep the oil and profits flowing to American oil companies? I don't know but the Saudi royal family too was making large profits from the oil extracted by ARAMCO.

Polk was writing back in the 1950s and 1960s, when he was also for a time the director of  Middle East policy planning on the State Department's Policy Planning Council. In the late 1970s, Edward Said, a rather obscure English and comparative literature prof at Columbia U came out with the first of his books glossing over all the faults and blemishes of traditional Islamic society. Said's fairy tales were all the more persuasive because he himself came from a Middle Eastern family, albeit his family had been converted to the Anglican/Episcopal denomination of Christianity, most likely from the Greek Orthodox Church. Said's family originated in the Jerusalem area but his father had left there for America before the First World War. William Said served in the US Army in the war and gained US citizenship. He was hardly typical of the Muslim Middle Easterner, although he came back to the Middle East  after the war but he went to Cairo rather than Jerusalem. In Cairo he built up a large stationery and textbook business and became rather wealthy. Nevertheless, in the early 1950s, Nasser's pan-Arabist "socialist" regime was making life hard for all those who were not Muslim or "authentically" Egyptian (here too Muslims were favored over native Christian Copts). So William Said, a US citizen, brought his family to America where Edward took up an academic career and at some point married a Middle Eastern Christian woman from Lebanon. But she was not Anglican. Rather she was the daughter of a prominent Lebanese Quaker, a leader of a Church with a large Middle Eastern missionary establishment, which was deeply involved with the 1948 Arab refugees from Israel.

Said's books sanded down the rough spots and whitewashed the history of Muslim relations with non-Muslims, although his family were non-Muslims and had no doubt been dhimmis before the Ottoman Empire eliminated the dhimma in its full original form as Western influence over the Ottomans increased in  the late 19th century. Despite the tendentious fraud that Said's books Orientalism [1978], The Question of Palestine [1979], and Covering Islam [1981] and others represented, they made a great impact on Western intellectuals, especially on the breed called "leftists."

However, writing before the age of Said, Prof. Wayne Vucinich gave in 1965 a sketch of social conditions in the Muslim Ottoman Empire for non-Muslims that is accurate, although he softens the picture by keeping to a concise statement of the general facts, omitting the gory details. Here are quotes from Vucinich below the broken line:
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Discrimination. The Ottoman state system fostered denominational and social discrimination, for the population was grouped by religion, classes, and ranks. One alleged purpose of this division was to separate various groups from one another "as much as possible in order to prevent contact and possible conflict."[quoting S Shaw] Each individual . . . had a place in life established by his social status, and within "the bounds (hadd) of his place, he was absolute." . . .  The confessional and social compartmentalization was scarcely adopted by the Ottoman rulers out of altruistic reasons, but rather in order to make it easier for them to rule the heterogeneous populations they had conquered.

The non-Muslims were never able to mix freely in Muslim society. As subject infidels they were socially castigated and denied many of the rights enjoyed by the ruling Muslims. The government was Muslim, and the official language was Turkish. It was Islam and not the Turkish "national identity" that separated the rulers from the ruled. The Turks thought of themselves "almost exclusively as Muslims," and in this way they were no different from many of their subjects. Not until the nineteenth century did the concepts of "a Turkish nationality" and "Ottomanism" develop. But . . . not all Muslims were held equal. After the seventeenth century we note, for example,  a tendency for the "born" Muslims to blame "converted" Muslims for the empire's plight.
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[Wayne Vucinich, The Ottoman Empire: Its Record and Legacy (New York: Van Nostrand 1965), pp 63-64]

We will present more on this topic from Professor Vucinich in following posts.

Should We View Rashid al-Khalidi, Walid al-Khalidi, and Edward Sa`id as Colonialists --or Imperialists?

Yaacov Lazowick reports the following claim by Prof Juan Cole who would disqualify children from certain activities on account of the deeds of their fathers:

About a year ago Juan Cole made an unfair statement about Tzipi Livni, whereby since her father had been a terrorist in the Irgun, she had no moral standing to be requiring a cessation of Arab terror; since she's Israel's Foreign Minister, he effectively was rejecting her right to negotiate. Her father's identity was more important than her own actions, you see. At the time I responded, and he responded to me, and you can see my summary of the exchange here.

Actually, we could take the principle that Cole enunciated and go farther with it. Rashid al-Khalidi is Obama's friend and has a well-paying post at Columbia U. The Khalidi family long were part of the Arab-Muslim upper crust in Jerusalem and indeed belonged to the governing class of the Ottoman Empire. Consider Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi.

Now, my query to Juan Cole: Should Rashid be considered an imperialist because his family were favored by the Ottoman Empire with high, prestigious positions?? Moreover, Walid Khalidi worked with prestigious American and British institutions, such as American U of Beirut, Harvard, etc. If AUB is an imperialist or colonialist institution, as a strict theorist of neo-colonialism should agree, then should Walid [and Rashid too who also held a post at AUB] be considered imperialists or colonialists?

Edward Said's father was an American citizen who fought in WW One for the USA. After WW One, he "settled" in Egypt and became prosperous. He was not a native Egyptian nor was his family ancestry Egyptian. He was a citizen of a Western state, an imperialist state by Lenin's definition. So William Said [Edward's father] was a settler in Egypt while the country was under British hegemony. That is he was a colonist, or maybe even a colonialist. Can anything that Said be taken as genuine, by Edward Said's own standards, since his father was a colonialist and he himself was raised in upper-middle class prosperity in a country where the overwhelming majority of people were very poor??

[based on a comment to Yaakov Lazowick’s blog of 11-5-08]
For more data on the family background of Rashid and Walid Khalidi, see:

Yaacov Shimoni, Political Dictionary of the Arab World [in Hebrew only: יעקוב שמעוני, לקסיקון פוליטי של העולם הערבי (ירושלים , כתר 1988 ) ע'113

Yaacov Shimoni and Evyatar Levine, eds., Political Dictionary of the Middle East in the 20th Century (New York: Quadrangle 1974), p 222

On Edward Said's father, see:
Justus Reid Weiner, "My Beautiful Old House," Commentary September 1999. Also see the footnotes to this article which were once available on line, and the letters in response to Weiner's article which were published in Commentary in January 2000. In particular, see the letters of Jerold Auerbach and Marlin Moshe Levin, as well as the rejoinder to the letters by Justus Weiner himself.

One more point in response to Juan Cole. Arab terrorism throughout the decades since 1920 has been aimed at murdering as many Jewish civilians as possible. Perhaps piece-meal genocide would be a better term for what is usually called Arab or "palestinian" terrorism. On the other hand, the terrorism of the Irgun [ אצ''ל ] and other Jewish armed groups was mainly aimed at the British, although there were occasional acts of retaliation for Arab genocidal actions. Looming above all other Arab acts was the Arab collaboration in the Holocaust, particularly in the person of Haj Amin el-Husseini [Husayni], the British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem.
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Coming: More on Zbig Brzezinski as Obama's Evil Genius, more on Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, the Land of Israel, propaganda analysis, etc.

Arab leaders had helped the Nazi Mass Murderers in the Holocaust

Walt-Mearsheimer argue in their book, The Israel Lobby, that when Arab leaders called for "throwing the Jews into the sea," back in 1947-1948, they didn't really mean it [see earlier post]. This is ridiculous. I mentioned in an updating to that post that there was a historical precedent for driving a hated ethnic group into the sea. This happened at Smyrna in 1922, when the Turkish nationalist army, supported in various ways by both Western capitalist powers and the new, "revolutionary" anti-capitalist Soviet Union, drove Greeks into the sea [see here].

Another reason that the walt-mearsheimer claim is ridiculous, more important in fact than that there was a precedent for driving people into the sea, was the collaboration of Arab nationalist, pan-Arabist, and Arab pan-Islamist leaders with the Nazis in general and with the Holocaust in particular. The chief Arab Nazi collaborator was Haj Amin el-Husseini [al-Husayni], the British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem and the head of the Supreme Muslim Council in "palestine," a body set up by the British which had not existed before. Indeed the name "palestine" [or Filastin] had not been used by the Ottoman or Mamluk empires which ruled the country between the Crusades and the British conquest in 1917.

Somehow, Husseini, who was often called simply "the Mufti" when he was active and people knew who he was, has been forgotten. By "forgetting" Husseini anti-Israel propagandists in the guise of academics, of "leftists" or of statesmen, can pretend that the Arabs, the palestinian Arabs in particular, were innocent in the Holocaust and that therefore the Jews/Zionists were unfairly punishing the "palestinians" for what was a German or European crime. The truth is that the Arab nationalists collaborated in the Holocaust in Europe, Husseini in particular, and also slaughtered Jews in the Arab countries [search for Farhud on this blog]. Such massacres took place in Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere. Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdul-Nasser and their Free Officers coterie collaborated with the Nazis. Even after the war, both Sadat and Nasser proudly affirmed their admiration for Hitler. In his book, Revolt on the Nile, Sadat expressed regret that the Nazis lost the war, and in particular he blamed Egyptian Jews for causing his and Nasser's pro-Nazi plot, in the framework of the Free Officers, to fail.

Husseini's role was described in 1947 by Bartley Crum, a noted American liberal and member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine [1946].

Sir Frederick [a British member of the Anglo-American Committee] and I visited the war trials while we were in Nuremberg, and I spent some time talking to the American investigators who were reconstructing the Nazi conspiracy, for the prosecution, from the massive archives which the Allies had unearthed.
I remembered Edgar Ansel Mowrer's scoop in London when he printed the text of an affidavit that incriminated the ex-Mufti [Husseini] in the mass murder of the Jews. I understood that there was a large file on the Mufti in the archives of the Allied War Crimes Commission . . .
. . . I visited Jackson [Mr Justice Jackson, Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg International War Crimes Tribunal] the next day. I mentioned the Mowrer affidavit to him. He replied that he was familiar with it, but . . . I could see that the subject was unpleasant to him, so I dropped it.
There were others much interested in seeing that the Mufti's story was told. An Army intelligence officer, at three o'clock one afternoon, made it possible for me to enter a room and sit down at a table upon which was a thick file of documents. . .
The record of the ex-Mufti's intrigues was fantastic. This file showed clearly that he had climaxed a record of Fascism, anti-British intrigues, and anti-Semitism by helping spearhead the extermination of European Jewry. I had my hands on a German document signed by an agent of the Mufti scarcely twenty-four hours before Germany surrendered. . . Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo specialist in Jewish affairs, who had been the confidant of the Mufti. . . And Nazi records show that, accompanied by Eichmann, the Grand Mufti, incognito, visited the gas chambers of Auschwitz. . . ". . . the extermination of European Jewry." The Mufti told Wisliczeny [Dieter von Wisliczeny, a Nazi war criminal] that he "considered this [extermination] a comfortble solution to the Palestine problem." . . . Hitler had instructed that in any ransoming of concentration camp inmates, no Jews were to be included because an agreement had been reached with the Mufti that all Jews be exterminated. . . Negotiations were under way at that time for the ransom of the Jewish community of Bratislava. These negotiations broke down because the Mufti refused to countenance their being ransomed and as a result the entire community was liquidated. . . A letter from the Mufti to Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, on July 25, 1944, complained of German clemency toward the Jews. . .
. . . On June 5, 1943, he protested to the Prime Minister of Bulgaria [an Axis ally] against a plan by the Bulgarian government allowing emigration [from the Nazi-fascist zones] of four thousand Jewish children. These children, he argued, presented "a degree of danger to Bulgaria whether they be kept in Bulgaria or be permitted to depart from that country." Instead, he said, they should be sent to a place in which they would be "under stringent control --as for instance, Poland." The Mufti's protest was successful. No children's transport left Bulgaria after July, 1943. [Bartley C Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947), pp 109-112]

Husseini sent a like letter to the Rumanian foreign minister [Rumania too was an Axis ally]. Instead of letting Jewish children leave the Nazi-fascist domain

This time he again suggested Poland, pointing out that they would be under what he called "active supervision," a euphemism for the gas chambers. [Crum, p 112]

Whereas Husseini eagerly had Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust [ie, sent to Poland where Auschwitz was located], Arab propagandists and sympathizers of the Arab anti-Israel cause, like to accuse Israel of killing Arab children. However, when Arabs are doing the shooting they don't much mind. It seems that when Arabs shoot their own children [see here], that's OK.

Sources on the web for information on Arab collaboration in the Holocaust are here and here, to supply only a few of those sources available.
Remember Bartley Crum's book:
Bartley C Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947)

Note that Justice Jackson, the American chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, did not want to prosecute Husseini. This was policy, the policy of the Big Four war time allies [the US, UK, France, USSR]. Husseini was under supervised residence in France after WW2 from May 1945. He was allowed to leave France in 1946 and return to the Middle East where he resumed his Judeophobic intrigues, including agitating for war on the Jews in Israel. So Walt-Mearsheimer are concealing the evidence when they pretend that the Arabs did not really intend to drive the Jews into the sea in the 1947-49 war. The Arabs --such as the Mufti Husseini-- intended a worse fate for the Jews. The fact that the Allies did not want to prosecute Husseini at Nuremberg --his pro-Holocaust doings notwithstanding-- belie two of Edward Said's usual arguments: 1) the Arabs were and are innocent, especially of harming the Jews, and especially of the Holocaust; 2) the major Western powers were always looking to harm the innocent Arabs, to restrain Arab nationalism, to besmirch Islam, etc.

Another important fact that Walt-Mearsheimer don't deal with is that the Arabs in the various Arab-Muslim-ruled lands oppressed, humiliated, economically exploited the Jews for a period of more than a thousand years. That fact too is significant and various posts on this blog have documented and illustrated it.
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Coming: a top British journalopropagandist in love with walt-mearsheimer, Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Land of Israel, peace follies, propaganda, etc.

The Arab Conquest -- Massacre, Enslavement, Population Transfer, and the like

Descriptions written nowadays of the Arab/Muslim conquest of the Fertile Crescent lands [633-642] often paint a benign, mild picture of the conquest, which supposedly did not cause major inconvenience or disruption in the daily lives of the inhabitants and made few changes. Even a respected historian like Bernard Lewis leaned towards this edulcorated or embellished view in his The Arabs in History. Carl Brockelmann, the German, does likewise, writing:

Emperor Heraclius [of the Byzantine Empire]. . . In 632. . . installed Cyrus . . . both as patriarch of Alexandria and head of the civil administration at the same time. His ecclesiastical policy and his tax demands weighed so heavily on the Copts that they necessarily greeted the Arabs as emancipators, just as their Syrian fellow [monophysite] believers had done. . . In return for the promise of a fixed payment of tribute [jizyah] the Muslims bound themselves to leave the Christians in possession of their churches and not to interfere in the administration of their communal affairs. . . [C Brockelmann, History of the Islamic Peoples (New York: Capricorn 1960), pp 56-57]
In Egypt, as in the other provinces, the Muslims took over the substance of their predecessors' administrative system; they even left all their functionaries at their posts, which were generally administered by Copts later also. [This seems generous, but the Arabs, nearly all of them illiterate, were not fit for administration] [p 57]
. . . `Umar dispatched Khalid ibn-Thabit to conquer Jerusalem, which soon surrendered; `Umar himself approved the rather mild terms [p 55]
The cities and rural areas which had submitted to the Muslims without a struggle retained their freedom and their property. . . Localities which had had to be taken by force of arms fell to the victors as booty [p 61]

Brockelmann rightly points out that Muslims placed the conquered cities in two classes, those that had surrendered and those taken by force. However, despite what Brockelmann says, even those who surrendered might be dispossessed, as we shall see below.

In short, there is a common tendency to whitewash the Arab conquest. These mild portrayals of the Arab Conquest often serve the policy needs of 21st century empires, just as today's "neo-colonialism theory" and anti-Zionism often serve those same interests.

The edulcoration notwithstanding, documents from the early period of Arab rule often depict a brutal murderous conquest. Now, Milka Levy-Rubin, an Israeli historian has thoroughly examined Arabic and non-Arabic sources, as well as archeological findings, to show that whereas in some places --typically inland and hilly areas-- the conquest was relatively rather mild, along the coastal plain of the Levant, from Ashqelon to Antioch, there were population transfers, enslavement and massacres of recalcitrant cities and towns, flight by masses of inhabitants, especially Christians, but others as well, induced emigration of non-Arabs soon after the conquest, the takeover by Muslims of homes abandoned by the refugees, who had often hoped to return if the Byzantine Empire had succeeded in retaking their cities, confiscation of homes for the sake of Arab warriors, new populations replacing the old ones, etc. She cites one case where Jews were brought in to replace Christians. One can imagine that these Jews had also been forcibly uprooted from their homes and brought to a coastal city for the conquerors' purposes.

Levy-Rubin makes clear that the reason why inland areas suffered less change in their daily lives and less oppression is that the conquerors feared that if the Christian population --Greek and Aramaic-speaking-- stayed in place in the coastal cities and towns, they might aid a future Byzantine attempt at reconquest. The Jews on the other hand could be trusted more by the Arabs since they had their own resentments of Byzantine anti-Jewish policy. Nevertheless, Jews too suffered from the conquest as in this Syriac account which depicts Jews being massacred along with Samaritans and Christians east of Gaza. Levy-Rubin writes that even after conquest of a town or city had been completed, the conquerors might try to induce the native population to leave. This policy succeeded in several places and in some places freed up the homes formerly housing the departed natives for Arab settlement. We know that many Jewish homes in Tiberias --for example-- were taken over by Arab settlers, although it is not certain that the Jews had left before their homes were taken over.

Here are some passages quoted from Milka Levy-Rubin's article. It represents important, thorough research:

We learn from the words of al-Baladhdhuri [Muslim historian writing in Arabic, died ca. 892] that the northern coastal strip was mostly evacuated of its inhabitants. . . Among the cities of which many of the inhabitants left, he counted. . . Gabala [not to be confused with Gbal = Byblos], Antarados (Tartus), Trablus (Tripolis), Beirut (Berytos), Tyros (Tyre, Sour [= Tsor]), Sidon. [M Levy-Rubin, "The [Arab] Conquest as a Shaper of the Map of Settlement in the Land of Israel in the Early Muslim Period," Cathedra (September 2006; Jerusalem, Yad Ben-Zvi, in Hebrew), p 56]

Meanwhile, Antioch [Antiochia, Antakiya] and Laodicea [Latakiya],

were partially abandoned [p 56]

However,

Caesarea was conquered by the sword [that is, it did not surrender] and its inhabitants were taken captive [and sold as slaves], and it seems that `Akko and Ashqelon too were mostly evacuated of their Christian inhabitants in the end. At the end of the process, the coastal strip was emptied of the overwhelming majority of its previous inhabitants, and the latter were replaced by a new population. [p 56]

What can we learn about the way in which the Christian population was evacuated from the coastal cities? At which stage of the conquest and in which way was it evacuated? . . . In many cases, the city was conquered first and only afterwards abandoned by its inhabitants. [p57]

Milka Levy-Rubin continues her article with details illustrating what happened in particular cities. We will return to her picture of events which vitiates much of Brockelmann's mild depiction, and the claims of other embellishers and edulcorators as well. And her main source is al-Baladhdhuri, a Muslim historian.

At a time, when charlatans like the late Edward Said have demanded adherence to an embellished picture of Arab and Islamic culture in the name of "leftist" political correctness --in the name of "anti-imperialism," God save us-- yet often serving the contemporary policies of empires, the ugly truth is a necessary corrective.
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Coming: more on James Baker and US Middle East policy, more from Milka Levy-Rubin on the Arab conquests, Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron, propaganda, peace follies, etc.

Arab Conquests Finished Off the Ancient East, according to the Louvre

Link added 1-14-2010

The famous Louvre Museum in Paris admits that the Arab Conquests, the coming of Islam, represent a discontinuity --a breach, a sharp turning point-- in the history of Oriental civilization. In fact, the Arab Conquests finished off, wrecked, in plain English, the ancient East. Here is how the Department of Oriental Antiquities of the Louvre describes itself in its galleries[first English, then French original].

Collections of the Louvre - Department of Oriental Antiquities
"The Department of Oriental Antiquities is devoted to the ancient civilizations of the countries of the Near and Middle East, from the birth of villages more than 10,000 years ago until the arrival of Islam. Starting with the IIIrd Millenium, the same written culture, the cuneiform, was spread throughout the ancient East, including Egypt."

Collections du Louvre - Antiquités Orientales
“Le département des Antiquités orientales est consacré aux civilisations anciennes des Pays du Proche et Moyen-Orient, depuis la naissance des villages il y a plus de 10.000 ans jusqu’à l’arrivée de l’Islam. A partir du IIIe millénaire, une même culture écrite, celle du cunéiforme, est répandue dans l’ensemble de l’Orient ancien, y compris l’Egypte.”

Now some might want to soften the picture by saying that the arrival of Islam was a new departure. Indeed, the Louvre's Department of Oriental Antiquities itself softens the picture by saying "the arrival of Islam." Maybe it merely arrived, just like a letter in the mail. In fact, it was a brutal conquest which wrecked the Ancient East, putting an end to ancient Oriental civilization in the cradle of its birth. Nevertheless, despite the Louvre's use of a euphemism announcing "the arrival of Islam," it recognizes that the East has never been the same since the Arab-Islamic conquest, which submerged the pre-existing cultures, peoples, religions, and languages of the ancient East, wrecking whole civilizations. Edward Sa`id, arch-propagandist that he was, could not recognize this truth, or did not want to recognize it.

For contemporary views of the Arab Conquest, see the two preceding posts on this blog. For Spanish readers, the post of 4-26-2007 includes the Spanish version of an important passage from a contemporary account [in Syriac] of the Arab Conquest of Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, along with two English versions of the same passage.
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Here is the Louvre's official Spanish-language version of the text quoted above in English & French:

El departamento de Antiguedades orientales esta dedicado a las civilizaciones de los paises de Oriente Medio y Proximo, desde el nacimiento de las aldeas hace mas de 10.000 anos hasta el advenimiento del Islam. A partir del III milenio, una misma cultura escrita, de caracteres cuneiformes, se expande por todo el Antiguo Oriente, incluido Egipto.

UPDATING- 18 June 2008
Here's an example of what is said above. A wonderful lighthouse was built at Alexandria in Egypt during the period of rule of the Ptolemies, a Macedonian dynasty descended from one of Alexander's generals, called Lagos.
Here is a partial description of the lighthouse and an admission by an Egyptian archeologist that it was wrecked at the time of the Arab conquests. The quote is taken from here.

The lighthouse used to have a huge mirror, which according to myth, reflected the whole of the city. The mirror and the brazier at the top created the large[st] amount of light ever produced by a lighthouse. As such the lighthouse of Alexandria influenced man's initial thinking about the uses of lenses. According to Dr. Hawass the lighthouse remained functioning until the Arab conquest in 641 AD.

An admission by the foremost archeologist in Arab Egypt. Some attempts to partly restore the lighthose were relatively briefly successful.
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Link Added 1-14-2010 John J O'Neill concurs with me that the Arab/Muslim conquests finished off classical civilization. Whereas I focus on civilizations in the Middle East [the Orient in Roman geographical terminology], O'Neill looks from the point of view of Europe [here & here]
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Coming: More on James Baker, Jews in Jerusalem & Hebron, peace follies, propaganda, etc.

More on the Arab Conquest as an Act of Love & Generosity

Here is another account from Andrew Palmer's West Syrian Chronicles about the kind, loving, and generous Arab conquests of the seventh century.

This account is from the year 637 CE:

. . . and in January they took the word for their lives, (did) [the sons of] Emesa, and many villages were ruined with killing by [the Arabs of] Muhammad and a great number of people were killed and captives [were taken] from Galilee as far as Beth . . . . . and those Arabs pitched camp beside [Damascus?]. . .
[Andrew Palmer, ed. & tr., The Seventh Century in the West Syrian Chronicles (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 1993), p 1]

A depressing series of events. But Edward Sa`id doesn't like the way Western travelers, writers, and scholars have depicted the noble Arab. However, this and the previous post on this blog present accounts from Palmer's book that were written by native Middle Eastern folk, by Orientals. I wonder what Sa`id said about this book, or would have said about it had he been aware of it. Emesa, located in central Syria, is now called Homs or Hims. Apparently the manuscript was in poor condition, forcing Palmer to try to infer which word or words may have originally been in places where the manuscript was defective. In the account quoted from Palmer here, the brackets and words in them are from Palmer, not me, although on other posts the brackets and their contents are mine.

UPDATING: Readers of Spanish can find on the previous post [of 4-26-2007], as an updating, a Spanish version of the passage from the ancient Syriac chronicle of 640CE given in two English versions on that post.
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Coming: The Louvre on Islam as replacing the ancient East, Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron, peace follies, propaganda, etc.

The Arab Conquest of the Ancient East, the Orient -- Not All Fun & Kisses

The Islamomania so prevalent today in Western academia, following the lead of the mendacious Edward Sa`id of Columbia University --in particular-- often depicts the spread of Islam and the Arabs as a peaceful process welcomed by the native peoples. According to this rosey-colored view, it was not really a conquest but an excursion of love, no more aggressive than the poetry competitions called the jocs florals of the medieval troubadours of Provence in southern France, and of Catalonia.

Here is an account of the Arab conquest of the Land of Israel. The account or chronicle, composed in the year 640 CE, was translated from a Christian form of Aramaic, widely spoken in the Levant and Fertile Crescent countries before and after the Arab conquest, but becoming increasingly extinct as its speakers flee from Arab/Muslim brutality in their homelands.

On Friday, 4 February, at the ninth hour, there was a battle between the Romans [= Byzantines] and the Arabs of Muhammad in Palestine twelve 'miles' east of Gaza. The Romans fled, leaving behind the patrikos the son of YRDN [בר ירדן בסורסית], whom the Arabs killed. Some 4,000 village people of Palestine were killed there, Christians, Jews, and Samaritans. The Arabs ravaged the whole region. . .
The Arabs invaded the whole of Syria and went down to Persia and conquered it; the Arabs climbed the mountains of Mardin [now in southeastern Turkey, formerly considered part of Syria in the broad sense] and killed many monks there (in the monasteries of) Qedar [= קידר?] and Benotho. . . "
[Andrew Palmer, ed. & tr., The Seventh Century in the West Syrian Chronicles (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 1993), pp 18-19]

Here's another translation of the same passage:

In the year 945, indiction 7, on Friday 7 February (634) at the ninth hour, there was a battle between the Romans and the Arabs of Muhammad (tayyaye d-Mhmt) in Palestine twelve miles east of Gaza. The Romans fled, leaving behind the patrician bryrdn, whom the Arabs killed. Some 4000 poor villagers of Palestine were killed there, Christians, Jews and Samaritans. The Arabs ravaged the whole region.
[Robert Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It. . .]

Notes: "The year 945" refers to the Seleucid era which began in 312 BCE. The name "tayyaye" refers to an Arab tribe, the Tay. This name is often used as a name for Arabs in the documents excerpted by Bat Ye'or in her books The Dhimmi and The Decline of Oriental Christianity. . . The name "bryrdn" is בר ירדן explained in Palmer's translation.

Now, this is not the usual rosey colored peaceful, or sometimes chivalrously glorious, depiction of the Arab conquest that academic Islamomaniacs are pleased to favor the literate public with today. Note that the chronicle mentions Jewish villagers killed along with Christians and Samaritans. Unfortunately, the author used the name "palestine" to refer to the Land of Israel. The P word had been introduced by Emperor Hadrian after suppressing the Jewish Bar Kokhba Revolt circa 135 CE. The P name replaced Judea as the official Roman name for the country. The purpose was to punish the Jews for the revolt by no longer calling the country after them. It also meant to make any future Jewish revolt more difficult.

This passage helps answer the question of the impact of Islam on the Orient. Was it constructive or destructive? In our view, the Arab-Islamic conquests wrecked the ancient East, which was a center of civilization in ancient times. The Arabs submerged the pre-existing cultures, peoples, religions, and languages. The East has never recovered, although it did not totally decline all at once. Its light continued to shine brightly enough into the Middle Ages so that it gave honor to the Arabs/Muslims --its wreckers-- to whom a high civilization is attributed for that period, but which now seems to have been the mere embers of the ancient East, embers that became dimmer over the centuries and were extinguished for good with the death of Ibn Khaldun, Arab civilization's last notable representative, in 1406. Sa`id, as a base propagandist, could not recognize this. Was Sa`id justified in identifying the East tout court with the Arabs and Islam?

UPDATING: here is another version of the passage above, in Spanish translation, with some significant differences in detail.

“Y en el año novecientos cuarenta y cinco [se entiende, de la era de los griegos], en la séptima indicción, en el mes de Shebat, en el día cuarto, feria sexta, a la hora de nona, hubo una batalla de los romanos con los árabes de Mahoma en Palestina, a doce millas al oriente de Gaza. Los romanos huyeron, y abandonaron al Patricio, hijo de Iardan, y a éste lo mataron los árabes. Allí murieron unos cuarenta mil campesinos pobres de Palestina: cristianos, judíos y samaritanos. Y los árabes devastaron toda la región. Y en el año novecientos cuarenta y siete, en la novena indicción, los árabes invadieron toda Siria, y descendieron a la región de los persas y la sometieron. Y subieron al monte de Mardæ, y los árabes asesinaron a muchos monjes en Qedar y en BnÅtå...” [Francisco Javier Martinez, Archbishop of Granada, in a lecture before the Royal Historical Academy (Real Academia de la Historia), 29 April 2002]

The most significant difference is the number of local civilian victims among Christians, Jews and Samaritans. This translation gives the number of "40,000 poor peasants of Palestine," whereas the versions quoted above give the number of 4,000. This translation also identifies the month as Shebat rather than February. Shebat is one of the months of the Hebrew calendar. It usually overlaps January and February. The date is given as the 4th of Shebat, whereas Hoyland's version gives 7 February and Palmer's version gives 4 February.
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Coming: more on James Baker, on propaganda, Jews in Hebron & Jerusalem, peace follies, etc.

An 18th Century Traveler Describes Dhimmitude in Egypt

Carsten Niebuhr, an 18th century Danish traveler in the Middle East, then called the Orient, published this account of being a dhimmi in Egypt.

In Cairo, no Christian and no Jew can show himself mounted on a horse. They only ride donkeys and must get off as soon as they encounter an Egyptian, even the least important. The Egyptians never go about except on a horse, preceded by an insolent servant who, armed with a big club, warns the man on the donkey to show the obligatory marks of respect for his master, by crying out: "Infidel, get off! . . ."

It is true that in Egypt these distinctions between Mohammedans and persons belonging to other religions are made on a grander scale than anywhere else in the Orient. Christians and Jews must get down to the ground even in front of the house of the Chief Cadi; in front of more than some twenty other houses where the judges give justice; in front of the gate of the janissaries, and in front of several mosques. It is not tolerated that they even pass in front of several mosques very venerated for their holiness or through the El-Karafe quarter where many tombs and prayer houses are located; they must make a detour in order to avoid these places, for the very ground on which they stand is so sacred in the eyes of the people that it could not tolerate being profaned by the feet of Infidels.
[M. Niebuhr, Travels through Arabia and Other Countries in the East, vol. I (Edinburgh 1792), pp 81-82. Quoted by Yahudiya Masriya, pp 29-30]

This description was confirmed not long afterwards by a member of Napoleon's scientific research staff that came to Egypt along with him. When an important personage came along in the streets of Cairo, riding on a horse, . . .

The Christians and the Jews were obliged to get off their donkeys.
[Tableau de l'Egypte pendant le sejour de l'Armee francaise, par A.G....D, membre de la Commission des Sciences et Arts, seant au Kaire, an XI, 1800, vol. I, p 14. Quoted by Yahudiya Masriya, p 30]

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Note: Yahudiya Masriya [= Egyptian Jewess in Arabic] was an early pen-name used by Bat Yeor. This latter name is also a penname and means Daughter of the Nile in Hebrew.
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Coming: poems of Zion, archeological updates, oppression and persecution of Jews in Jerusalem under Muslim rule