1 In the seventh-century Syriac history by John bar Penkāyē, for instance, the Islamic conquest is described as happening “not with any war or battle, but in a menial fashion”: Brock, S., “North Mesopotamia in the late seventh century: Book XV of John Bar Penkāyē's Rīs Melle’”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 9, 1987, 57Google Scholar.

2 al-Balāḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, ed. De Goeje, M.J. (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 133, 141–2Google Scholar; Elias of Nisibis, Chronographie, trans. Delaporte, L.-J. (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1910), 83Google Scholar (year 19 H).

3 al-Balāḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, 145.

4 Dauphin, C., La Palestine byzantine. Peuplement et populations, 3 vols (Oxford: BAR, 1998), vol. 2, 367–70Google Scholar. People reached Byzantine territory from Antioch: al-Balāḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, 147; from Qinnasrīn part of the population moved northwards following the retreat of Eraclius' army: Eutychii Patriarchae Alexandrini, Annales, 2 vols, ed. Cheikho, L., de Vaux, B. Carra and Zayyat, H. (Beyrut: Typographie catholique, 1906–09), vol. 2, 19Google Scholar.

5 Yaʿqūbī, Ta'rīkh al-ya‘qūbī, 2 vols, ed. s.n. (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādir, 1960), vol. 2, 293Google Scholar.

6 C. Dauphin, La Palestine byzantine, vol. 2, 370–72. In the Context of the seventh century, the Islamic conquest should be compared to the Persian one, probably characterized by further destruction: Limor, O., “‘Holy Journey’: pilgrimage and Christian sacred landscape”, in Limor, O. and Stroumsa, G.G. (eds), Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land. From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 333–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For the transformation of the cities in this area during late antiquity, see Kennedy, H., “From polis to madina: urban change in late antique and early Islamic Syria”, Past & Present 106, 1985, 3–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walmsley, A., Early Islamic Syria. An Archaeological Assessment (London: Duckworth, 2007), 34–45Google Scholar.

8 The property of the churches was among the points elaborated by jurisperites: in the Aḥkām ahl al-ḍimma the churches are said to be the property of the Muslims. According to the author, this would be implied in one of the regulations included in the so-called Pact of ʿUmar (“we will not forbid the Muslims entering our churches during the day as in the night”): if the churches really belonged to the Christians their authorization would have been necessary to enter the property. Therefore Christian communities are allottees rather than owners of the buildings. This is, however, a fourteenth-century Ḥanbalī interpretation of the early Islamic rulings on Christian buildings and should therefore be contextualized in the late medieval and post-crusades context (Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Aḥkām ahl al-ḍimma, 2 vols, ed. Ṣ. al-Ṣāliḥ, Damascus: Presses de l'Université de Damas, 1961, vol. 2, 712Google Scholar).

9 The treaties established during the conquest will be further analysed in the last paragraph.

10 al-Jahshīyārī, Kitāb al-wuzarā’ wa-l-kuttāb, ed. Ṣaqqā, M., Ibyārī, I., Shalabī, ‘A. al-Ḥ. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Shalabī, 1938), 48Google Scholar.

11 Ibn ʿAsākir, Ta'rīkh madīnat dimashq, 2 vols, ed. al-Munajjid, Ṣ. al-D. (Damascus: Maṭbaʿāt al-mujammaʿ al-ʿilmī al-ʿarabī bi-dimashq, 1954), vol. 2, 17–24, 40–1Google Scholar; cf. Alexandrini, Eutychii Patriarchae, Annales, vol. 2, 43–4Google Scholar; al-Balāḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, 125–6.

12 al-Balāḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, 439.

13 On the religious demographic issue and its methodological problems, see Schick, R., The Christian Commmunities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule. A Historical and Archeological Study (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1995), 139–58Google Scholar. It is unanimously accepted that the watershed between a Christian and a Muslim majority in Bilād al-Shām should be fixed between the tenth and twelfth centuries: Heyberg, B., “Les Chrétiens”, in Garcin, J.C. (ed.), États, sociétés et cultures du monde musulman médiéval (Xe–Xve siècle), 3 vols (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), vol. 3, 147–56Google Scholar; Levtzion, N., “Conversion to Islam in Syria and Palestine and the survival of Christian communities”, in Gervers, M. and Bikhazi, R.J. (eds), Conversion and Continuity. Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands. Eight to Eighteenth Centuries (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990), 289–311Google Scholar; Bulliet, R. W., Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period. An Essay in Quantitative History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 104–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See below the cases of Edessa and Diyarbakir.

15 Johns, J., “Archaeology and the history of early Islam: the first seventy years”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 46, 2003, 411–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Bacharach, J. L., “Marwanid Umayyad building activities: speculations on patronage”, Muqarnas 13, 1996, 27–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Nasrallah, J., “Damas et la Damascène: leurs églises à l’époque byzantine”, Proche-Orient Chrétien 35, 1985, 41Google Scholar.

18 al-Balāḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, 120–1.

19 al-Balaḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, 125.

20 Eutychii Patriarchae Alexandrini, Annales, 39.

21 Ibn ʿAsākir, Ta'rīkh madīnat dimashq, vol. 2, 19.

22 Adamnanus, “Adamnani de locis sanctis libri tres”, in Geyer, P. (ed.), Itinera Hierosolymitana, Saeculi IV–VIII (Prague: Tempsky, 1898), 276Google Scholar.

23 Sauvaget, J., Les monuments historiques de Damas (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1932), 12–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 32–8, tav. 1; Creswell, K. A. C., Early Muslim Architecture, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), vol. 1, 180–96Google Scholar, fig. 99–100. Other scholars agree on this point: Flood, F. B., The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture (Boston, MA: Brill, 2001), 184–92Google Scholar; N. Khalek, “From Byzantium to Early Islam: Studies on Damascus in the Umayyad era”, PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2006, 29. A new interpretation of the early Islamic phase of the site and a good overview of the previous reconstructions (although Sauvaget's interpretation is not addressed) has recently been offered by Talal Akili. He locates the Byzantine church in the south-western side of the inner courtyard: The Great Mosque of Damascus. From Roman Temple to Monument of Islam (Damascus: ARCOD, 2009), 28–44Google Scholar.

24 Sauvaget's thesis is compelling, particularly bearing in mind what Eutichius says about the possibility of recognizing the remains of the church in the new mosque (Eutychii Patriarchae Alexandrini, Annales, 42) and the way in which Ibn ʿAsākir outlines the relationship between the door of the church and the qibla of the eighth-century mosque. On the other hand, Creswell's thesis, although he overlooks the crypt of St John's relics and its relation with the church, fits better with Ibn Shākir's account of the different directions taken by Christian and Muslim believers once they entered the area of the temenos and with the description of porticos all around the four sides of the church by al-ʿUmarī (on this last point, however, see the plan by Porter which clarifies how the columned outer temenos, of which only fragments are visible today, once entirely surrounded the inner temenos: Dickie, A.C., “The Great Mosque of Omeiyades, Damascus”, Palestine Exploration Fund. Quarterly Statement, 1897, pl. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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26 N. Khalek, From Byzantium to Early Islam: Studies on Damascus in the Umayyad Era (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2006), 12–47; see al-Balāḍurī's mention of al-Wāqidī's failure to find any reference to the requisition of half of the churches and houses by the conquerors in the treaty stipulated by Damascene people and Muslims (treaty presumably conserved in Damascus) (al-Balāḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, 123).

27 Ibn ʿAsākir, Tā’rīkh madīnat dimashq, vol. 2, 40–1Google Scholar; Eutychii Patriarchae Alexandrini, Annales, 42–4. According to Eutichius the church was still recognizable even in the new setting (wa-bāqiyāt ʿalā haḍā, Annales, 42). Spiers, who quotes some excerpts from the Diary of Captain Wilson – dated before the big fire of 1893 – describes the reuse of columns from previous buildings as being mostly Corinthian in style; although the western part of the prayer hall is said to have been by far the best preserved and most homogeneous, it has been so far impossible to establish the exact position of the St John church (Spiers, R.Ph., “The Great Mosque of the Omeiyades, Damascus”, Palestine Exploration Fund. Quartely Statement, 1897, 287–99Google Scholar).

28 Nasrallah, “Damas et la Damascène”, 49–53.

29 Saliby, N. and Griesheimer, M., “Un Martyrium octogonal découvert à Homs (Syrie) en 1988 et sa mosaïque”, Antiquité Tardive, 7, 1999Google Scholar, fig. 1.

30 Strange, G. Le, Palestine under the Moslems. A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500 (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1890), 353–7Google Scholar; al-Harawī, Kitāb al-ishārāt ilā ma‘arifat al-ziyārāt, ed. Sourdel-Thomine, J. (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1953), 8–9Google Scholar.

31 See, among others, Kennedy, H., “The Melkite church from the Islamic conquest to the Crusades: continuity and adaptation in the Byzantine legacy”, in The 17th International Byzantine Congress: Major Papers (Scarsdale, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, Melissa International Ltd., 1986), 328Google Scholar. Cf. Saliby, who argues that at the moment of the conquest of 637 the church was transformed into a mosque: Saliby and Griesheimer, “Un Martyrium octogonal découvert à Homs”, 389.

32 al-Balaḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, 131; al-Iṣṭakhrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. De Goeje, M.J. (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 61Google Scholar; Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. Kramers, J.H. (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 176Google Scholar; al-Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm, ed. De Goeje, M.J. (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 156Google Scholar. Caetani and Miednikoff have questioned the reliability of al-Balāḍurī's passage: they suggest that the word rabʿ should be read “neighbourhood” and not “fourth”: Caetani, L., Annali dell'Islam, 11 vols (Milano-Roma: Hoepli, 1905–26), vol. 3, 430Google Scholar.

33 K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 1, 17–20.

34 The octagonal structure, probably dating from the fifth century, was discovered near the eastern side of the twelfth-century mosque in 1988: Saliby and Griesheimer, “Un Martyrium octogonal découvert à Homs”.

35 Ibn Rustah, Les atours précieux (Kitab aʿlāq al-nafīsa), trans. Wiet, G. (Cairo: Publications de la Societé de géographie d’Égypte, 1955), 92Google Scholar; al-Iṣṭakhrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik, 61.

36 “The travels of Willibald”, in Wright, T. (ed.), Early Travels in Palestine (New York: AMS Press, 1969), 14Google Scholar.

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38 al-Ṭabarī, Tā’rīkh al-rusūl wa-l-mulūk, 3 parts, ed. De Goeje, M.J. (Leiden: Brill, 1964), vol. 3, 1422Google Scholar.

39 Duval, N. and Caillet, J.-P., “Introduction. La recherche sur les ‘églises doubles’ depuis 1936: historique et problématique”, Antiquité Tardive, 4, 1996, 22–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Patrich, J., “Early Christian churches in the Holy Land”, Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land, 355–99Google Scholar (esp. 383–4).

40 Ibn al-Shiḥna, Al-durr al-muntakhab fī tā’rīkh mamlakat Ḥalab, ed. al-Darwīsh, ʿA. (Damascus: Dār al-kitāb al-ʿarabī, 1984), 79–80Google Scholar; Herzfeld, E., “Damascus: studies in architecture – II”, Ars Islamica 10, 1943, 31Google Scholar; Sauvaget, J., Alep. Essai sur le développement d'une grande ville syrienne, des origines au milieu du XIX siècle, 2 vols (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1941), vol. 1, 74–5Google Scholar.

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45 Ibn al-Shiḥna, Al-durr al-muntakhab, 82. According to Eddé's analysis, the period of the decline of the Christian population in northern Syria – Aleppo included – should be dated between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries (Eddé, A.-M., La principauté ayyoubide d'Alep (579/1183–658/1260), Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999, 452–72Google Scholar, esp. 453–5).

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47 al-Balāḍurī, Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān, 172, 176.

48 Van Berchem, M., “Matériaux pour l'épigraphie et l'histoire musulmanes du Diyar-Bekr”, in Van Berchem, M. and Strzygowski, J. (eds), Amida (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1910), 51–2Google Scholar.

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51 Niehbuhr and Mordtmann, Geschichte der Eroberung, 108.

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66 Anonymi auctoris chronicon, 128. De’ Maffei argues that the present Friday mosque is on the site of the cathedral: De' Maffei, F., “Il problema della cupola su vano quadrato e la Santa Sofia di Costantinopoli”, La Persia e Bisanzio (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2004: 679–735), 719, n. 48Google Scholar. Sinclair, following Segal, suggests that the Byzantine remains visible in the mosque are instead the traces of St Stephen's church: Sinclair, T.A., Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey, 4 vols (London: The Pindar Press, 1987–90), vol. 4, 20–1Google Scholar.

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68 Northedge, A., Studies on Roman and Islamic Amman. History, Site and Architecture (Amman: British Institute in Amman for Archaeology and History, 1992)Google Scholar; Walmsley, Alan and Damgaard, Kristoffer, “The Umayyad Congregational Mosque of Jarash in Jordan and its relationship to early mosques”, Antiquity 79 (304, June 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, fig. 6.

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72 Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine, 245. Arce has recently pointed out the importance of the ecclesiastic complex on the citadel beyond the conquest: Arce, I., “The Palatine City at ʿAmman Citadel: the construction of a Palatine architecture under the Umayyads”, in Bartl, Karin and Moaz, Abd al-Razzaq (eds), Residences, Castles, Settlements. Transformation Processes from Late Antiquity to Early Islam in Bilad al-Sham (Rahden: Leidorf Verlag, 2008), 183–216Google Scholar.

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95 Fattal, Le statut légal des non-musulmans en pays d'islam, 174–5. See the case of the early ninth-century restoration of the dome of the Saint Sepulchre in Jerusalem: a much debated point was the size of the dome before and after the restoration (Alexandrini, Eutychii Patriarchae, Annales, vol. 2, 55–7Google Scholar).

96 Rahib, Petrus Ibn, Chronicon orientale, ed. and trans. Cheicho, P. L. (Beirut: Typographie catholique, 1903), 122Google Scholar; Elias of Nisibis, Chronographie, 108 (year 141 H). Recently, possible post-seventh century Christian foundations have been discussed by archaeologists: Segni, L. Di, “Christian epigraphy in the Holy Land: new discoveries”, ARAM, 15, 2003, 247–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walmsley, Early Islamic Syria, 120–6.

97 S. Brock, “North Mesopotamia in the late seventh century”, 57.

98 Yaʿqūb, Abū Yūsuf, Kitāb al-Kharaj, ed. al-Ḥasan, M. B. (Būlāq: al-Maṭbaʿa al-mīriyya, 1885), 88Google Scholar.

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100 Gottheil, Richard, “An answer to the Dhimmis”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 41, 1921, 390CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gottheil translates the passage as follows : “I shall take the southern part of the land around their churches as places for Mohammedan mosques, as they are situated in the very middle of the various cities” (Gottheil, “An answer”, 421). Levy-Rubin translates the passage ḥayr qiblī min al-kanā’is as the “southern wall of the churches” (Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire, 85). However minimal, the difference is significant: the southern wall of the church points out overlapping, whereas the southern (or qibla) side of the precinct indicates contiguity between buildings.

101 Ibn Asākir, Tā'rīkh madīnat dimashq, vol. 2, 19; J. Sauvaget, Les monuments historiques de Damas, 15.

102 al-Fidā, Abū, Mukhtaṣar tā'rīkh al-bashar, 4 parts in 2 vols (Istanbul: s.e., 1869/70), vol. 1, p. 168Google Scholar; Creswell, K. A. C., Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 1, 17–20Google Scholar, fig. 8; “The Great Mosque of Ḥamā”, in Ettinghausen, R. (ed.), Aus der Welt der Islamischen Kunst: Festschriften für Ernst Kühnel zum 75. Geburtstag 26.10.1957 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1958), 48–53Google Scholar; cf. Riis, P.J., Temple, Church and Mosque (Copenaghen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1965)Google Scholar. For other debated cases which do not, however, offer any sure dating, see King, G. R. D., “Two Byzantine churches in northern Jordan and their re-use in the Islamic period”, Damaszener Mitteilungen, 1, 1983, 111–36Google Scholar; Lenzen, C. J., “Ethnic identity at Beit Ras/Capitolias and Umm al-Jimāl”, Mediterranean Archaeology, 16, 2003, 86Google Scholar.

103 S. Bashear, “Qibla musharriqa and early Muslim prayer in churches”; Elad, A., Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship. Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 138–41Google Scholar.

104 Donner, F., Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 39–144Google Scholar.

105 R. Foote, “Commerce, industrial expansion and orthogonal planning”; Walmsley, Early Islamic Syria, 71–90.

106 J. L. Bacharach, “Marwanid Umayyad building activities”.

107 Tritton, The Caliphs and Their Non-Muslim Subjects, 50–1, 107.

108 See the momentary decision to suspend the exemption of Egyptian monks and bishops from the payment of the capitation under al-Muqtadir (924): Eutychii Patriarchae Alexandrini, Annales, II: 83.

109 See the case of Antioch reconquered by the Seljuks after Byzantine rule (St Cassianus church disappeared on this occasion: Hebraeus, Bar, Chronography, trans. Budge, E. A. W.. London: Oxford University Press, 1932, 229Google Scholar). Or the events at the time of the Muslim reconquest against the Crusaders (Anonymi Auctoris Chronicon ad A.C. 1234 pertinens, 422–3).

110 See note 16. The Islamization was not uniform, however: in the Palestinian area the majority of the population became Muslim only under the Mamluks: O. Limor, “‘Holy journey’: pilgrimage and Christian sacred landscape”, 345.

111 Frenkel, Y., “Baybars and the sacred geography of Bilād al-Shām: a chapter in the Islamisation of Syria's landscape”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 25, 2001, 153–70Google Scholar.

112 Cf. Caseau, “Sacred landscapes”, 45–51.

113 Kennedy, H., “Antioch: from Byzantium to Islam and back again”, in Rich, J. (ed.), The City in Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1992), 192Google Scholar; Frenkel, “Baybars and the sacred geography of Bilād al-Shām”.