The Islamic Globalization

A History of Mankind (375)

Before the Quran was published, different people had different expectations and calculations regarding the impact of Arab-Muslim rule.

Indeed, the Muslim conquest of Egypt for a while looked like a boon for the patriarchate of Alexandria, for the first time independent of Constantinople’s pressures and machinations. When Byzantine troops briefly landed on the city in 645, intending to launch a campaign to recover control of Egypt — for a long time the wealthiest province of the Roman empire — only the Greek minority displayed any enthusiasm for the cause of the Christian emperor.

John, Bishop of Nikiu in the Egyptian Delta, wrote a chronicle around 680 blaming “the expulsion [of the Byzantines] and the victory of the Muslims” on “the wickedness of the Emperor Heraclius and the persecution of the orthodox through the Patriarch Cyrus.”¹ Remarkably, John was already writing in an era of widespread Egyptian conversions to Islam to avoid the jizya – which he laments in his writings – and still can’t bring himself to support the Byzantine Christians. Instead, he puts his faith on God’s providence and Jesus Christ’s message, trusting that such wayward Christians will see the light and return to the true faith, a widespread opinion among Eastern Christian elites of the time².

Overall, contemporary and later Syriac and Coptic literature portrays Roman/Byzantine rule as alien and heretic, with the implication that much of the Christian Levantine population was only too ready to betray the empire³. The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, written in Syriac by a man purporting to be the 4^th century Methodius of Olympus, goes as far as calling the Islamic takeover “a chastisement in which there will be no mercy” earned by errant Christians who strayed into cross-dressing, homosexuality and concupiscence.

An Eastern European Orthodox fresco from the era of Ottoman invasions in the Balkans, conveying some of Pseudo-Methodius’ concerns.