13.1 Context and Critique

The trajectory of Palestinian Christian communities following the Arab conquest remains a predominant theme in debates about early Islamic Palestine. This focus is partially indebted to the continuing appeal of Christian cult buildings to archaeologists and architectural historians since the first preliminary surveys in the region in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, consistent emphasis on the excavation of church basilicas and, occasionally (though less systematically), their auxiliary struc-tures, has facilitated the accumulation of a substantial material corpus, which yields evidence for Christian life in the region over the course of the first millennium. A series of well published mosaic schemes commissioned after the Arab conquest at Umm al-Rasas, Madaba, Ramot and Dayr cAyn “Abata, has further stimulated this interest and proved intrinsic to the more recent recognition of Christian continuities throughout the duration of Umayyad rule.

Monasticism has received less attention as a component of this broader post-Byzantine environment, despite a parallel interest in the excavation and survey of sites as an established academic field in Byzantine studies which has produced several widely circulated monographs. Moreover, our present understanding of the physical characteristics of the monastic landscape is inadequately defined in terms of the number and relative wealth of sites extant by 638. The spectral presence of the Sasanian occupation (ca. 614-28), in particular, looms large over interpretations of the monasticism in this period. It is used to assert a narrative of drastic social and economic dislocation, despite more revisionist approaches to the period in connection with urban and economic infrastructures.

Equally challenging are more central questions of established monastic social roles by the seventh century: the origins and identities of primary monastic patrons, and the association of monasteries with institutional structures and the local social networks in which they functioned. Cursory observations of the core studies which underpin assessments of regional monastic developments in the Byzantine period (ca. 330-638) reveal heavy reliance on a repertoire of hagiographical materials which have proved formative to subsequent assessments of monastic life in the pre- Islamic period. The diversity and extent of the archaeological material has yet to prompt more energetic questioning of the use and value of the literary corpus as an adequate reflection of monastic social convention in Palestine, or its association with broader socio-economic frameworks, at the close of the Byzantine period (ca. 638).