Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire

The Muslim conquest of the East in the seventh century entailed the subjugation of Christians Jews Zoroastrians and others. Although much has been written about the status of non-Muslims in the Islamic empire no previous works have examined how the rules applying to minorities were formulated. Milka Levy-Rubin''s remarkable book traces the emergence of these regulations from the first surrender agreements in the immediate aftermath of conquest to the formation of the canonic document called the Pact of ''Umar which was formalized under the early ''Abbasids in the first half of the ninth century. What the study reveals is that the conquered peoples themselves played a major role in the creation of these policies and that these were based on long-standing traditions customs and institutions from earlier pre-Islamic cultures that originated in the worlds of both the conquerors and the conquered. In its connections to Roman Byzantine and Sasanian traditions the book will appeal to historians of Europe as well as Arabia and Persia.