The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East

Abstract This article examines a ḥadīth text that illustrates the complicated interactions between Christian and Islamic sacred spaces in the early period of Islamic rule in the Near East. In this narrative, the Prophet Muḥammad gives a group of Arabs instructions for how to convert a church into a mosque, telling them to use his ablution water for cleansing and repurposing the Christian space for Muslim worship. Contextualizing this narrative in terms of early Muslim-Christian relations, as well as late antique Christian religious texts and practices, my analysis compares this story with Christian traditions regarding the collection and usage of contact relics from holy persons and places. I argue that this story offers an example of early Islamic texts’ engagement with, and adaptation of, Christian literary themes and ritual practices in order to validate early Islamic religious claims.

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The Decline of Green-Glazed Jars after the Early Abbasid Period

Islamic Law and Society ◽

10.1163/15685195-bja10012 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-43

Author(s):

Elon Harvey

Keyword(s):

Indian Ocean ◽

Near East ◽

Coastal Areas ◽

Horn Of Africa ◽

Date Syrup ◽

The Indian Ocean ◽

China And Japan ◽

Early Islamic ◽

Southern Iraq

Abstract Green-glazed jars were manufactured in southern Iraq during the Parthian, Sasanian, and early Islamic periods. In the latter period, they were distributed in great numbers in the Near East and in coastal areas along the Indian Ocean from the Horn of Africa to China and Japan. The jars are thought to have been used chiefly for storing “date-syrup.” Around the 4th/10th century their production was significantly reduced and their prevalence greatly declined, a phenomenon that has puzzled archeologists. In this study, I identify these jars with “the green jars” (al-jarr al-akhḍar or ḥantam) mentioned in some classical Islamic texts. According to numerous Ḥadīth, the Prophet prohibited nabīdh (date-wine) in “green jars.” While many Muslim jurists held that the Prophet withdrew this prohibition and that these jars were lawful, many found the use of these jars reprehensible or even forbidden. I suggest that the Ḥadīth in which the Prophet prohibited green jars may have contributed to the decline of green-glazed jars.

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Conclusion to Part II

Caliphs and Merchants ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198855828.003.0008 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 175-176

Author(s):

Fanny Bessard

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Near East ◽

Late Antique ◽

Early Middle Ages ◽

Rural Markets ◽

Early Islamic

From 700, the early Islamic economy remained strongly aligned with its late antique heritage, which brought a definite rupture between the Near East and Europe. Robin Fleming shows that Britain’s towns fell into total decay after the departure of the Roman legions.1 The prominence of the urban marketplace in the Near East in the early Middle Ages certainly contrasted with Carolingian Europe in that the European systems of exchange mostly took place in the form of weekly rural markets....

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Reshaping Marketplaces

Caliphs and Merchants ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198855828.003.0007 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 149-174

Author(s):

Fanny Bessard

Keyword(s):

Near East ◽

Power Dynamics ◽

Late Antique ◽

Early Medieval ◽

Agrarian Society ◽

Early Islam ◽

Early Islamic

Early Islamic marketplaces have been studied almost exclusively for their art historical and architectural values, by Maxime Rodinson in the preface of El señor del zoco en España, while their functioning and process of development have not yet been fully elucidated. It is also believed that marketplaces in early Islam functioned as their late antique predecessors, with apparently nothing bequeathed from pre-Islamic Arabia, where dedicated spaces for trade were extremely rare. This chapter considers what happened to urban marketplaces in the Near East after the Muslim conquests, to look at the fate of the late antique legacy under the new Arab masters—a people with contrasting indigenous commercial traditions—in the context of new power dynamics from 700 to 950. It explores the ways in which early medieval marketplaces differed from the late antique past, and the role they played in the agrarian society of early Islam.

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