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By Root 1205 0

Islamic conquest, the Orthodox hierarchy, the spiritual arm of Byzantine political power, saw the Muslims as a unique menace. They had not responded so fiercely to the Persian occupation of Palestine and their capture of Jerusalem in 614, even though the occupiers had carried away with them Jerusalem’s supreme Christian relic, the true cross.15 On the day in the spring of 638 that the leader of the Muslims, Caliph Omar, clad in his old and tattered robe, arrived to take the city under his protection, the Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, watched him walk slowly through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The patriarch remarked quietly in Greek to an acolyte, “Surely this is the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet standing in the holy place.”16 All those who heard him would have understood not just an allusion to the prophet Daniel, but also to the words of Jesus Christ on the Mount of Olives, when his disciples asked him to prophesy the future.

When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel, stand in the holy place, let him understand … For there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be … Then if any man shall say unto you, “Lo here is Christ, or there,” believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch, that if it were possible, they should deceive the very elect.17

The patriarch, who had lived through the Persian occupation, saw in this grizzled old man a quality much more dangerous than in all the grand Persian satraps who had preceded him.

From this point of first contact, there was a profound fear and antipathy among the Orthodox toward Islam. These attitudes proliferated in the written polemic of Byzantine scholars. From these early days themes and tropes began to emerge, which appeared and reappeared in later diatribes.18 Desert Arabs had been seen as barbarian long before the coming of Islam. According to one contemporary, Maximus Confessor, “They behave like beasts of prey though they look like human beings.”19 In later accounts, the Muslim subjects of an Armenian king had been transmogrified into dog-headed men, cynocephali.20 Within two generations of Omar entering Jerusalem, Christian scholars developed a comprehensive attack against Islam. One powerful polemicist was John of Damascus, who served as an official at the caliph’s court before he abandoned public life in 716 and became a monk.21 He put the case against Islam in one sentence: “He who does not believe according to the tradition of the universal church is an infidel.”22 He condemned the Prophet Mohammed as the Antichrist. Yet John, who read Arabic and knew the Qur’an, was thought excessively moderate by his fellow clerics. A synod in 754 condemned him as being “Saracen minded,” and too sympathetic to Islam.23 Nicetas Byzantios was more antagonistic to it. “Above all [he considered that] Islam was a step backwards, a retrogression, ‘a destruction and a ruin.’ It was a ‘bad and noxious’ religion. The Prophet Mohammed himself was ‘the son of the father of lies’ and he [Nicetas] triumphantly concluded, ‘Thus I do not hesitate to pronounce [my judgment] on Mohammed: he is the very Antichrist.’ ”24

IN THE BYZANTINE SYSTEM, THE ORTHODOX CHURCH SERVED GOD through serving the state. Over the centuries since Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312, his new city of Constantinople had become an arsenal of the faith. More and more holy relics had been accumulated in the city’s churches. At the dedication of Constantinople on May 1, 330, a great statue of the emperor had been placed atop a huge column of porphyry, which was more than 100 feet tall, and glowed a pale red in the setting sun. Holy relics were carried in procession to the foot of the shaft and then placed in a hidden chamber. There were crumbs from the bread with which Christ had fed the five thousand in the wilderness; the crosses on which the two thieves had been crucified on either side of Jesus