Fragment on the Arab Conquests are fragmentary notes that were written around the year 636 AD on the front blank pages of a sixth-century

Syriac Christian Syriac Christianity ( syr, ܡܫܝܚܝܘܬܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܬܐ / ''Mšiḥoyuṯo Suryoyto'' or ''Mšiḥāyūṯā Suryāytā'') is a distinctive branch of Eastern Christianity, whose formative theological writings and traditional liturgies are expr ...

manuscript of the

Gospel of Mark The Gospel of Mark), or simply Mark (which is also its most common form of abbreviation). is the second of the four canonical gospels and of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist to h ...

. The fragment depicts events from the early seventh century conflict between the Byzantines and "the

Arabs The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Wester ...

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...

", particularly of the

battle of Yarmouk The Battle of the Yarmuk (also spelled Yarmouk) was a major battle between the army of the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate. The battle consisted of a series of engagements that lasted for six days in August 636, ...

Robert Hoyland Robert G. Hoyland (born 1966) is a historian, specializing in the medieval history of the Middle East. He is a former student of historian Patricia Crone and was a Leverhulme Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. He is currently Professor of Late ...

: '' Seeing Islam as Others Saw It'', p. 116.

Text

Text in square brackets is conjectured, being unreadable in the original.

Analysis

The fragments are believed to be contemporary to the events of the Arab conquest of the early 7th century. They also provide one of the earlier date for the

battle of Yarmuk The Battle of the Yarmuk (also spelled Yarmouk) was a major battle between the army of the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate. The battle consisted of a series of engagements that lasted for six days in August 636, ...

as having taken place on 20 August 636, assuming Yarmouk is to be identified with the "battle of Gabitha" mentioned in the fragments. Cook and Crone in '' Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World'' take the fragments to indicate that

was still alive in 636 at the battle of Yarmouk, contradicting the Muslim accounts of his death.

Patricia Crone Patricia Crone (March 28, 1945July 11, 2015) was a Danish historian specializing in early Islamic history. Crone was a member of the Revisionist school of Islamic studies and questioned the historicity of the Islamic traditions about the beginnin ...

, Michael Cook, ''Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World''

References

{{reflist 7th-century Christian texts Arab–Byzantine wars Muslim conquest of the Levant 636

Text

Analysis

See also

References