Kyle Brunner

The goal of my fellowship project at ANAMED was to complete the research and writing of the remaining chapters of my dissertation of the same title. Following the Arab-Muslim conquest in 639 CE, the Byzantine provinces Osroene and Mesopotamia were merged with the Sasanian provinces Arwayestan and Arzon into one caliphal province called al-Jazīra. My dissertation answers how the Umayyad Caliphate organized and managed this new administrative territory, the consequences of the removal of Byzantine and Sasanian dominion, and how local non-Muslim communities responded to this dramatic shift in the political landscape. To study the Umayyad rule and society of al-Jazīra has been described, in particular by Chase Robinson, as an impossible task and that its history would be written almost ex nihilo.[1] There has yet to be a new study of northern Mesopotamia during Late Antiquity and the Early Islamic period that challenges and broadens our current knowledge.

Over the course of my fellowship at ANAMED, I have made much progress on my dissertation and will now be able to defend it by September of this year. My dissertation is divided into three main sections, each consisting of two chapters. Sections one and two are organized chronologically from the sixth to the mid-ninth century CE, while section three is thematic, dissecting the relationship between constructed space and the articulation of power and authority among the Arab-Muslim elite and the non-Muslim settled and pastoral population.

Part one establishes the geographic and environmental context of Upper Mesopotamia during the sixth century CE, alongside an examination of Byzantine and Sasanid administration and settlement over the frontier. Here, I have developed a new narrative for the regional context before the rise of Islam, where I attempt to bridge the fields of Byzantine and Sasanian history. While at ANAMED, I have translated from Syriac to English many letters written during the 630s CE from Ishoʿyahb III to the priest Mushe and Quryaqos, the metropolitan bishop of Nisibis (modern Nusaybin). These letters document the development of a food crisis that gripped the region on the eve of the Arab-Muslim conquests, which provide a socioecological context for the last years of Sasanian rule over the territories of Nisibis and Nineveh.

Part two investigates the early formation of the Umayyad province of al-Jazīra from the Arab Conquest until the reign of ʿAbd al-Malik. Here, I have proven that al-Jazīra was not merely an invention of the Marwān family of the Umayyads, as is commonly held by scholars of Early Islamic history. First, I have reevaluated our surviving conquest accounts written in Arabic, Armenian, Greek, and Syriac. By doing so, I have disproven N. Posner’s argument that the tradition of Sayf ibn ʿUmar that is preserved by al-Ṭabarī can be corroborated by Theophanes’ Chronographia.[2] This is because of my new interpretation of how Theophanes structured his text and the various dating systems used. Accordingly, I have found that both non-Muslim sources and the Muslim traditions that stem from Ibn Isḥāq and al-Zuhrī all link chronologically. It is only al-Ṭabarī who preserved the outlying tradition. Current scholarly literature has still put little emphasis on a notice from the Chronicle of Khuzestan (wr. 660s CE) which mentions an amīr (governor/commander) of the city of Nisibis in the early 640s CE. Further, a Syriac inscription recently found in Nisibis has written on it the Hijri year 30. We can then at least say that an Arab-Muslim polity was in place at Nisibis immediately after the conquest.

Part three then turns to the relationship between power and place in the Early Islamic al-Jazīra. This section will challenge Chase Robinson’s claim that “a history of the settled communities of the [Late Umayyad] Jazira cannot be written.” The dramatic flight of the former Byzantine and Persian political elite created a vacuum, allowing local familial and economic elite to expand their sphere of influence. Because of this, new systems of patronage and practices of authority were developed between these local elite and the Arab-Muslim authorities. The first chapter of this section will inspect the archaeological record of the Early Islamic Jazira, focusing on multiple types of human habitation such as urban and rural settlements, individual agricultural estates, military forts, and Syrian Christian monasteries.

While at ANAMED, I have been editing a new book with my advisor Robert Hoyland that offers the first Syriac edition and English translation of the Life of Aba Sallara and his Mother Elishbaʿ, based on a manuscript housed in the Church of the Forty Martyrs in Mardin. According to the hagiographic text, these saints lived during the early years of Islam on Mt. Izla, north of modern Nusaybin. The book will also contain a chapter written by another ANAMED fellow, Simon Brelaud, on Christian monasticism in the Sasanian Empire.

From the beginning of the eighth century CE, we see an increase in the number settlements from archaeological surveys, as well as intense investment by members of the Marwānid family in local agricultural projects across Upper Mesopotamia. At the same time, networks of monasteries along the former Byzantine and Sasanid frontier began to expand their efforts to acquire new properties—in both rural and urban settings. The last chapter that I will finish over the summer looks at the governorship of al-Jazīra, starting from Muḥammad b. Marwān to Mūsá b. Muṣʿab of the ʿAbbāsid period; there has been no true study on the amīr and their administration of al-Jazīra. This section also examines the ways in which local communities engaged with the authority of the amīr. Key sources for this study include Syriac hagiographical literature, such as the Lives of Theodotos of Āmid, Simeon of the Olives from Qartmin, and the anonymous Syriac chronicle from the Monastery of Zūqnīn, located near Āmid. Together, these sections will begin a new frame of study for Upper Mesopotamia, placed within a multi-scalar view of its inhabitants and landscape.

[1] Chase F. Robinson, Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia (Cambridge, 2000), ix, 63.

[2] N. F. Posner, “The Muslim Conquest of Northern Mesopotamia: An Introductory Essay into Its Historical Background and Historiography” (PhD diss., New York University, 1985).