THE DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION of images of living beings was one important aspect of Christian life in Palestine in the Early Islamic period. Many mosaic pavements, standard features in most Byzantine churches in Palestine, bore depictions of people and animals as elements of the design. Later these human and animal images were often deliberately destroyed, not because the images depicted Christ, the Virgin, or venerated saints, as occurred in the iconoclastic movement in the Byzantine Empire, but rather from objection to all artistic depictions of living beings. Who destroyed the images, when, and why are difficult problems requiring careful analysis not only of the literary sources, but also of the evidence from archaeology, especially the recent discoveries at Umm er-Rasas. The discussion here will focus in particular on the damage to Christian mosaics, with some lesser consideration of the use of images and their destruction in Jewish and Muslim art . The term “iconoclasm” is used in reference to the destruction of any image of an animal or human being, and not just of religious icons subject to veneration. Previous studies of iconoclasm have largely focused on the literary evidence, but relatively little attention has been paid to the actual pictorial evidence and how it reflects the realities of iconoclastic activity.

The Archaeological Evidence

It is important to begin without preconceptions, for the people who destroyed the images could theoretically have been from any of the religious groups living in the area: Muslims, Christians belonging to a variety of rites, in particular Chalcedonians and Monophysites, Jews, Samaritans, or any combination of these. The damage could have occurred any time after the mosaics were laid, and for a variety of reasons: out of religious zeal to enforce the Second Commandment, to implement the edict of Yazīd II or other Muslim government policy, by reason of adherence to or inspiration from iconoclasm in Byzantium, out of vandalism, or for other reasons at which we can as yet only guess. Nor must there be a single explanation for the damage; a number of different factors could have been at work.

Reliable dating of the damage to the mosaic floors is a major problem, often due to poor non-stratigraphic excavation techniques and lack of publication. But even given the fragmentary state of our knowledge, the mosaic pavements do reveal several iconoclastic trends that must be distinguished from one another: no single event or policy accounts for all the various cases.

A first step must be to differentiate the various forms of damage to mosaics. Many had exclusively aniconic designs with nothing to damage, while for those mosaics bearing figural representations the thoroughness and carefulness of the damage, as well as of the repairs, must be investigated.