Damascus after the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam. By Nancy Khalek (New York, Oxford University Press, 2011) 224 pp. $74.00

Abstract

Today, the Umayyads make a more appealing subject to Western historians than to historians from the Islamic world because this first Islamic dynasty, though proudly Arab and vigorously involved in the spreading of Islam, has been increasingly acknowledged for its continuation of the practices and structures of Late Antiquity. Having chosen Bilad al-Sham (the Roman Oriens or the Holy Land), a thoroughly Christianized country, as their seat, the Umayyads both appropriated and were influenced by the composite religious, cultural, and material and artistic features in this former Byzantine land. Many scholars have argued this point so compellingly that the currently accepted end date for Late Antiquity is the early Abbasid period.