International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Leif Inge Ree Petersen
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway; 
[e-mail]
A Reassessment of Byzantine and Arab Operations 634-37 AD 
Based on a Multispectral Reading of BL Syriac MS Add 14461, 
A Fragment on the Arab Conquest
One of the most intractable problems of the 7
th
century is basic chronology, which has received 
much scholarly attention in recent years. Despite an emerging consensus for rehabilitating e.g. 
Sebeos’ account of the failed Arab siege of Constantinople in 654 and re-dating the naval operations 
against the city in the 670s, the course of the early Islamic conquest of Syria and Palestine remains 
hopelessly muddled and has thus never been satisfactorily explained. Late Christian and Muslim 
sources present a bewildering array of alternative dates and actors, so that interpretations of the 
dramatic Byzantine collapse in the mid-630s depend on which chronology is chosen.
While Howard-Johnston recently presented a coherent methodology for reassessing 7
th
-
century sources, this was not applied to the only contemporary chronicle: a fragmentary narrative 
on the cover leaf of a 6
th
-century Syriac gospel book preserved in the British Library. In the late 
630s, a contemporary observer scribbled down at least 25 lines, in sprawling Syriac hand, with 
first-hand observations on the ongoing Arab conquest of Palestine and southern Syria. Potentially a 
treasure trove of contemporary information, where all other sources, whether Arabic, Syriac, Greek 
or Armenian, are late or elliptical, the use of this text has, however, long been limited due to its 
severely deteriorated state. Much of the text is unclear or illegible due to wear and tear. Thus, the 
great Syriacists Nöldeke and Brooks have each produced only fragmentary editions of the text, with 
such extensive lacunae that any significant emendation is subject to criticism and any historical 
conclusions fraught with uncertainty. Thus a new reading of the MS in the early 1990s by Brock, 
Palmer and Hoyland discarded a number of older readings and conjectures. Current readings can 
do little more than confirm that there were military operations in the region in the years 634-37, 
although basic details such as direction of movement, or even who is pursuing whom, is often 
entirely conjectural. The only reasonably certain fact is that preparations for a major engagement 
were made by both sides at Gabitha (near Yarmuk) in August 636.
A multispectral reading carried out in April 2015 at first yielded meager results, but thanks 
to painstaking comparison of each single letter in each of 47 high-resolution images in natural, 
infrared, ultraviolet and composite versions, it has been possible to recreate much of the lost 
text. The reconstruction has further been assisted by an idiosyncratic handwriting that strongly 
circumscribes possible readings of partial letters that have been ignored or misunderstood when 
working only with the manuscript. Thus it is possible to present a secure date for the surrender of 
Damascus, follow Roman and Arab movements in Lebanon, southern Syria and Galilee, and provide 
information on the nature of the conquest, with the text speaking of captives, plunder, and probably 
forced labor. Furthermore, the reading of “Mw
ḥ
md” (Mu
ḥ
ammad) is confirmed in two places, one 

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of which occurs near a previously unrecognized sobriquet that seems to reflect the author’s view on 
the background for unfolding events in the earliest MS with a Christian opinion on the prophet of 
Islam. The framework thus constructed can be used to test later Muslim and Christian chronicle 
traditions and provide an explanation for early Arab successes.