ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author aims to compare the picture arrived at from apocalyptic material with the sporadic information provided by a few historiographical sources on the military situation of the coastal towns of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria in early Islam and throughout the Umayyad period. On the level of content, a few aspects of early Byzantine–Muslim relations have been dealt with as they were reflected in this material. Apocalyptic reference to some future truce between the Muslims and the Byzantines is made in a complex of traditional sayings which were attributed to the Prophet through several companions and which come in divergent textual formulations. The idea reiterated in some apocalypses of Byzantine–Arab military cooperation during the truce interval against a common enemy, is theoretically possible. The apocalyptic material reviewed above constitutes not only a new source but also one which may provide an altogether revisionist picture.
