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The contiguity between churches and mosques in early Islamic Bilād al-Shām

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2013

Mattia Guidetti
Mattia Guidetti*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
mguidett@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article examines the transformation of the sacred landscape in the cities of Syria and Palestine from late antiquity to early Islam. This phase of urban and architectural history, often obscured by the changes brought in during the medieval period, is investigated through a close comparison of textual and material evidence related to the main urban religious complexes. It is suggested that the new Friday mosques were frequently built contiguous to Christian great churches, creating a sort of shared sacred area within the cities. Legal issues related to the Islamic conquest and the status of minorities are considered in order to explain the rationale behind such a choice by Muslims.

Keywords

Early IslamChurchesMosquesSacred landscapePartitionContiguity
Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 229 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2013 

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References

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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”.