Arab-Byzantine Relations Under the Umayyad Caliphate

Abstract

The pre-Islamic relations of the Arabs with the Byzantine Empire are sufficiently well known. The southern divisions were composed mainly of southern and western Arabian tribes, some of whom were established there well before the Islamic conquest and in relations with the Byzantine governors, and some of whom had come in with the Islamic armies. The whole policy of the Umayyad caliphs swings decisively away from the Byzantine tradition and becomes oriented in the true sense, that is, towards the East. The earliest gold coinage of the Caliph Abd al-Malik was Byzantine in design, even to the extent of bearing an effigy of the caliph, until it was withdrawn and replaced by a more orthodox Muslim design in deference to the religious feeling of his subjects. The major problem —to find the data which may serve as clues to Byzantine-Arab relations, other than warfare, during one century of Islamic history, the century of the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, 661-750.

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