A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER of churches and monasteries in Palestine are known to have continued in use throughout the Umayyad and the early ‘Abbāsid periods. This would of course comprise evidence for the continued presence of Christian communities in these places. At the same time, an equally substantial number of churches went out of use, for a variety of reasons; and this would point to the decline of the Christian communities in the localities concerned . Any consideration of how the Christian communities fared after the Islamic conquest should thus also include an analysis of what happened to churches and monasteries, as a reflection of what happened to the communities who used them.

Patterns in Church Use

Often there are a number of literary attestations for a given church or site after the Islamic conquest, which demonstrates that Christians were there continuously; but for less well documented sites, it is frequently difficult to determine whether Christians were still there, due to the problem of selective and incomplete source material. A large amount of archaeological evidence is available, but this can be just as ambiguous.

Table One (see Map 6) lists those places where, on the basis of the available archaeological and literary evidence, it can be taken as certain that Christian communities continued throughout the early Islamic period, up to at least the early ninth century.

Table Two (see Map 7) lists those sites for which a Christian presence is not documented as definitively as it is for the sites in Table One. Thus it is less certain that these sites were in use throughout the early Islamic period, although the continual presence of Christian communities is still likely, or at least possible. Many of the sites in this table, especially those in Jerusalem, are known only from the 808 Commemoratorium de casis Dei or the Georgian Calendar.

Table Three lists those sites where Christian presence is known in the early Islamic period, but not definitely as late as the early ‘Abbāsid period. It is conceivable, but by no means necessarily the case, that Christians continued to be present throughout the period. This table does not include churches with iconoclastic damage, which will be discussed in Chapter IX.