Abstract:
Many Syriac chroniclers considered the spread of Islam as a
punishment which befell their people because of their own sins.
Sometimes modern researchers put forward viewpoints for
which actually no confirming document is visible in Syriac chronicles.
Namely, allegedly, the Syriac-speaking Christians welcomed
the invasion of the Arabs and the Muslim conquerors as liberators
from the despotic fiscal and theological policies of the
Byzantine rule. Although the Byzantine government considered
a large part of the population as “Monophysite” and “Nestorian”
heretics, in the texts of the “Syriac Orthodox” or “Church of the
East” origin a hostile attitude is not in fact observable either to wards the Byzantine rule or towards the desire to strive to a
unified faith in all patriarchates and language communities. On
the contrary, nothing is specially anti-Byzantine or anti-Roman
in the rare notes, which may be indicating in favour of the Arabs,
but it should be noted that the anti-Byzantine mood of the Syriac-
speaking Christians must be partially related to the disseminated
heresy and official crimes of Byzantine rulers, both secular
and ecclesiastical.
It is possible that Syriac writers of the early times who took
heed of the hegemonic role of Islam in the language of religion
were those who tried to explain the Arab conquests and victories
according to the book of Daniel. They wrote in the apocalyptic
style. Such, a quite well-known work is the Apocalypse of
Pseudo-Methodius, created initially in the Syriac language and
translated later into Greek and Latin.
On the basis of a detailed analysis of the text, Reinink assumes
that the work was created in the Syriac Orthodox environment,
in the border area of Byzantium and Persia, near the town
of Sinjar. Apparently, this was a sharp reaction to the political
and social situation in that area at that period.
Other Syriac writers also explained the Arab domination
over the Christians by the Apocalypse and predicted what would
be the result of this. Until they all agreed that the sins of the
unity and especially the doctrinal unrighteousness were the main
reason for their unrest, all authors were not as optimistic
about the expected results as the author of the Apocalypse Pseudo-
Methodius.
