Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam. By Lev E. Weitz

Abstract

The aim of Between Christ and Caliph is to examine the diverse social order of the early medieval Middle East by asking two pivotal questions: how does the history of the Middle East appear if historians accept that non-Muslims were as much a part of the complex tapestry of the Umayyad and Abbasid empires as Muslims? What was the role of the household and construction of a distinct form of family life in (re)creating the identities of Christian religious communities? Lev Weitz focuses primarily on the conscious construction of family law by the Church of the East in the seventh through tenth centuries. He explains the creation of eastern Christian family law through the community’s inherited resourcefulness from being a minority faith under the Zoroastrian Sassanian Empire, as well as from demand, to some extent, by Muslim rulers who expected each religious community to govern itself. Weitz also posits that the creation of laws to govern family were inspired by an effort to keep Christians from using Muslim courts. The author attributes the attention paid to marriage, inheritance, and a uniquely Christian family ideal in post-conquest canon law to an effort by bishops and other Christian elites to cement a sense of communal integrity through the social institution of a specifically Christian household. Though the main focus remains on the Church of the East, the monograph covers other Christian communities as well, skillfully comparing the post-conquest legal literature of the East Syrian, West Syrian, and Melkite Christians.