Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History

This book is about Islamic social history. It flies the colors of an essay because it represents an initial, tentative effort—not at describing Islamic social history, which has certainly been attempted before, but at formulating an integrated conceptual approach to the subject. It attempts to tie together the histories of parts of the medieval Islamic world that are more commonly treated as discrete entities by means of a number of sometimes quite speculative hypotheses based upon and inspired by a close examination of certain quantifiable aspects of medieval Arabic sources. Many of the conclusions reached through these hypotheses, such as the suggestion of a causal relationship between the conversion of a majority of a region's population and the dissolution of central Islamic government in that region or the explanation of endemic factional strife in certain areas as a virtually inevitable conflict between the descendants of early converts and the descendants of later converts, will require further corroboration. Nevertheless, the heart of the essay lies in the overall conceptual approach, and the primary effort has been placed there rather than upon the elaboration of its various ramifications. The approach is predicated upon the notion that there is a direct and fundamental relationship between conversion to Islam and the development of what may be called an Islamic society. When in the second half of the seventh century A.D. the Arabs conquered the Persian empire and half of the Byzantine empire, they did not bring with them the religion that is described in general books on Islam. They brought with them something far more primitive and undeveloped, a mere germ of later developments