Bat Ye’or’s book is a comprehensive and significant work, which examines a topic far too often ignored in histories of the Middle East, Islam and the crusades: the fate, status and experience of Christians and Jews living under Islamic rule from the 6th to the 19th centuries. It is based on a wealth of documentary evidence drawn from Arab, Turkish, Armenian, Latin, Greek and Balkan sources. It includes a discussion of the sources and includes a 23 page-long bibliography. It also analyzes the historiography to date and provides an appendix of documents supporting her principle theses, translated into English, which encompasses 175 pages of evidence.
In short, this is an eminently well-researched and meticulously documented scholarly book rather than a polemical or popular work of history — which perhaps explains why it has not received the prominence it is due. Another factor contributing to the apparent neglect of this important work is that it depicts the fate and represents the views of the victims, who are now for the most part exterminated, forgotten and powerless, in contrast to narratives written from Arab/Islamic or Western European perspectives. I can’t help but wonder if the fact that Ms. Ye’or is an Egyptian, a woman, and a Jew (but not a professor) had not likewise contributed to her work being unjustly slighted by academics, without anyone undertaking a serious refutation of her basic findings.
Ye’or notes that the most common terminology for describing Jews and Orthodox Christians in Islamic states is “protected minorities.” This very term, she argues, is misleading. The Orthodox Christians were throughout most of the 1,300 years covered in this book the majority population of the states in which they lived. Second, they were not ‘protected’ but rather gradually driven to near extinction. This book describes in great detail how that came about.
Ye’or is careful to note the acquiesce and indeed collaboration of key elites in the conquered communities. In the beginning, “treaties” with the ravaging nomadic tribes from the Arabian Peninsula seemed merely like common sense and self-defense once the imperial powers of Byzantium and Persia became too weak to protect the local population. Paying “tribute” seemed like the lesser evil, to hopeless defiance.
Ye’or likewise describes without apology the rivalries and hatred between the various Christian sects and their anti-Semitism, factors that enabled the Muslim conquerors to effectively play the groups off against one another. She makes no secret of the religious fanaticism of some Christian monks, which led to bitter hatreds and rivalries between various Orthodox churches. These, in turn, undermined the sense of solidarity among the Christian subjects of Islam.
Ye’or is also quick— and nowhere more bitter — than in pointing out that it was above all the religious leadership that profited from the new situation. Christian and Jewish leaders alike became the representatives of their respective communities and were made responsible for collecting the tribute and paying their Arab masters. This gave them greater autonomy than under the former Byzantine regime, while also offering multiple opportunities to enrich themselves. Last but not least, Ye’or freely acknowledges and highlights the degree to which some elites — secretaries and translators, accountants and bankers, merchants and professionals — adapted to the new situation and, in exchange for collaboration, were allowed to prosper — at the expense of the vast majority of the co-religionists.
Yet Ye’or musters overwhelming and almost numbing evidence that the vast majority of Christians and Jews living under Islamic regimes were subjected to frequent waves of violence punctuated by periods of oppression and humiliation. She describes how the repeated extortion of money, goods, livestock, and even children, reduced entire populations to such destitution that they abandoned their lands altogether and fled into the mountains to be hunted down like outlaws and wild beasts. She describes how the repeated raids by nomadic tribes turned entire regions into wastelands because no crop could be sown much less harvested. “The once-flourishing villages of the Negev had already disappeared by about 700, and by the end of the eighth century the population had deserted the greater part of the region stretching from south of Gaza to Hebron, fleeing back northwards, abandoning ruined churches and synagogues.” (102) This depopulation and desertification of once-flourishing and densely populated regions, described in full by both Muslim and Christian chroniclers, was the result of the massive deportation of captives — that is the enslavement of entire populations.
No one with a serious interest in the Middle East should ignore this book. Indeed, it ought to be required reading in every university course on the topic of Islam, the crusades, and the Middle East. The fact that its conclusions are not politically correct is all the more reason to read and discuss this book seriously — albeit critically.
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