Persuasive argument
Sir: The problem with calling the initial Islamic campaign ‘unprovoked’ (Letters, 12 July) is that many events in late antiquity — and modern times — were also unprovoked. The Magyar settlement in what is today Hungary in the tenth century AD was unprovoked. Not many today assert that the Hungarians should be driven back to central Asia.
Byzantine Christian rule in Palestine and Syria was not popular in the seventh century because it was driven by a hunt for heresy. The populace held a variety of differing beliefs on the Trinity and the nature, or natures, of Christ. Islam allowed people to believe as they wished. Moreover there were Christian Arabs in pre-Islamic Syria. It is not surprising that several commentators — including Theophanes, Dionysius of Tel-Mahre — make no great thing of the Islamic conquest. Its peace terms were generous. By contrast, the Sassanid Persian campaign of 20 years earlier had wrecked the towns, and carried away the most holy relic of the True Cross.
I am all for an end of sugary tales of nonsensical history. But any attempt at finding truth has to look at context, and seek good sources. Perhaps the comment, dating from 1707, of Mathurin Veyssière de la Croze, the royal librarian of Berlin, is to the point: ‘I own, that violence had some place here, but certainly persuasion had more.’
Christopher Walker
London W14
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