Economic Developments and the Nature of Settlement in the Towns and Countryside of the Levant, ca. 565-800 CE

Little consensus has been reached by historians and archaeologists on economic conditions that prevailed in the Levant during the decades leading up to the Islamic conquest, let alone in the period immediately following. Earlier views identified the arrival of Islam and, shortly after, the establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus as the starting point of a period of decline. The later seventh century and first half of the eighth century were typified, it was argued, by the progressive impoverishment and eventual abandonment of many settlements which had, until then, been flourishing centres; places such as Gerasa/Jarash or the villages of the Belus Massif (the ‘dead cities'). Economic dislocations, political apathy, religious antagonism and population decrease were commonly cited as causal factors. At least this thesis refuted the misguided concept of a destructive Islamic conquest, inflicted by rampaging Bedouin tribesmen, which infused much of the literature beforehand (and occasionally still does, especially in the popular market). More recently, it has been argued that Levantine towns offered little resistance to an expanding Islamic hegemony because of the weakened condition of the region - politically, militarily and financially - at the start of the seventh century. Structurally and economically, the reasoning goes, the Levant was already ‘medieval' before Islam (the ‘polis to madînah' question). In all instances, archaeological evidence has often been pressed into arguing the case, be it sudden destruction, gradual and ultimately permanent decline, or the pre-Islamic ‘orientalization' of the Levant.