PAPERS IN MEDIAEVAL STUDIES 9

CONVERSION AND CONTINUITY

Indigenous Christian Communities

in Islamic Lands

Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries

EDITED BY

MICHAEL GERVERS
AND

RAM21JIBRAN BIKHAZI
 The Age of Conversions:
A Reassessment

in iecenr dccndei L"?: ;-as been a major s,"i.k in t?e ccnsensus on .#her,
most non-Arabs in the ierrito~y of the eariy 1s:amic empire became
Muslim. The older view had thc majority of non-Muslim non-Arabs
convening to Islam within a century of the conquest in order to escape
paying h e pll tax and was based on taxation figures recorded for Iraq'
and Egypt. In the case of E w t this was encouraged by yacaubi's
conclusion from tax receigts that most of the Christians in Egypt
had convened htween the reigns of 'uthm&~(644-56) and ~ u ' a w i ~ a h
(660-80).2 Becker gave the same reason for mass convcrsion but put the
attainment of a Muslim majority in Egypt in the first half of the ninth
c e n t ~ r y Likewise,
.~ the nominal conversion of the majority of pagan
Behers was dated to the early eighth ceniur/ following the completion
of the conquest of NOT?& A f r i ~ a and, ~ the native population of Spain was
assumed to have converted quickly after its c o n q ~ e s tThe. ~ belief in early
mass conversions was endorsed by Amold in spite of the lack of direct
e~idence.~
Extensive critical reexamination of rhe sources has subsequently
led to a ~ v i s i o r of
, this older view and to a later dating of the p i n t at
.which most non-Arabs lxcome Muslin. The work of Dennett n a k e d a
' Kremer, vol. 1. p. 172.
Ya'qubi Bd&n, p. 339.
3 Beckerisinmtudicn, vol. l , m.153-55.
Marpis, pp. 35-40.
Do?. vol. 2.p. 53.
Amold, m. 9-l0,SI-2, 103,210.

Converrion and Conriniiify: Indigenous Criri.lkn Cornunifies io Islam'c Landr, Eighth 10

Eighteenth Ceniwics, ed. ivlicllael Gcwen and Ramzi Jib- Bikhad, Papers in Mediaeval Studies F
(Toronto: Pontifical Insrime of Mediaeval Smdies, 1990),pp. 135-150. O P.I.M.S. 1990.
turning point by co~vincinglyeliminating the desire a escaF ?.he pon
tax as a motive for early mass conversion^.^ By the 1960's Ilodgson had
decided that extensive wnversions began under the later Mar+v&id
Umayyads in the eariy eighth century and became more genera! for
scverzl generations into the eady Abbasid period, by which t i ~ nost e of
the urban and much of the rural population of most of h e empire "seem
to have k c o m e iMuslims." '%S had k e n encouraged by greater equality
among Muslims, social nobility, and a wave of self-peqxtuating
economic expansion that drew rural convem to cities8 In the 1970's
Brett reported a consensus that most of the people in Egypt and North
Amca had converted to Islam by t\e pinth cen~di-y;~ Lapidus dared the
mass conversion of Egyptian Copts more precisely ir, the middle and
later decades of the ninth c e n ~ ~ r ymd
; ' ~BBuet set ice completion of the
primary conversion process in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq at 1010 and put ihe
ccnvcrsicn of Spanish Cikstiaas between 816 1 1 0 with the median
at about ?51.11 Ascording to Frye the rura! ppd2iioc of iran was
converted to Islam in the century between 850 a d 950.12 Bulliet has
argued that conversions were minimal in Iran before the mmid-eighth
century, that forty percent of those who converted probably did so
between 770 and 865, that Iran was a Muslim "country" by the early
tenth century, and that the conversion process was effectively coapleted
by the beginning of the eleventh century when eighty percent of the
population may have been Muslim.13 Bulliet's hypothesis and method of
analyzing genealogies were adopted by Glick to identify an "expI$sive
period" of conversion in Spain nearly coinciding with the reign of Abd
al-F.ahmS.n I11 (912-61), with Spain eighty percelit converted by a b u t
1100.14Although he is critical of both Bulliet and Glick, Wasserstein has
employed the idea of an "explosive gmwth in the rate of conversion to
Islam" in tenth-century Spain to explain cultural iniegration.15 Levtzion
has endorsed these views by genedizing that conversion to Islam is not
necessarily widespread after military conquest.16
The concept of an "age of conversions" has thus survived. Its date
has been successively revised downwards and t5e expianations f ~ itr
' Dennea.
Hodgson.voL 1. pp 30:. 304-5.
Breu. p. 9.
Lapidus. W .25657.
" Bulliet Conversion,pp. 117, 119, 123 ff., 131.
Frye"0bservatimn: p. 86: Frye Arabs, p. 141.
" Bulliei Conversion, pp. 44.50-51; Bulliet "Emergence: pp. 3 1.47. These views are iitegraied
in10 the text of Kennedy Age, p. 201.
" Glick, pp. 34-5,283.
" Wasscntein, pp. 26,33,37,168,226.
LeYtZion Con, I$lm,p. 9.