ABSTRACT
The first decades after the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia were tumultuous for the Church of the East. Reflecting on this period in the 680s, John of Phenek recounted the transition from Sasanian to Islamic rule in dramatic terms:1 “All our affairs were conducted in orderly fashion as long as pagan kings were in control, and up to the time of the arrival of the children of Hagar the church in Persia had been under the rule of the Magians and had nothing else to pit itself against.”2 The Muslim authorities were not the cause of the church’s difficulties; they were content merely to exact tribute and to leave their subjects to practice their respective faiths unhindered.3 According to John it was rather heretics, church leaders, and lay notables who had afflicted the people of God during this period. The heretics had seized the opportunity to win converts among fellow Christians rather than among pagans.4 Bishops, as John put it, “clamor in the manner of
* I would like to thank Peter Brown, Bill Bulman, Patricia Crone, John Haldon, William C. Jordan, and Uriel Simonsohn for their comments on this paper, without implicating them in its weaknesses.
