The Byzantine-early Islamic transition on the Palestinian coastal plain: a re-evaluation of the archaeological evidence

Abstract

The Muslim conquest of Palestine, which put a final end to the Byzantine hegemony on that part of the eastern Mediterranean, is considered in recent studies to have been a generally non-violent event, in which the negative impact on the continuity of local settlement was for the most part peripheral. While the first assumption may be true, the latter seems too optimistic, especially with regard to the Palestinian Mediterranean coastal plain. A re-evaluation of the archaeological and some historical evidence for the period between ca. 640 and 700, regarding a selection of urban and rural excavated coastal sites and survey maps, shows that the Muslim conquest had various short- and long-term impacts on every settlement, including economic, social and/or functional changes. Generally speaking, the archaeological evidence from the Palestinian coast (and especially the seashore belt) at the beginning of early Islamic times presents a pattern of decline, or abatement. This of course occurred gradually, and the exact process varied from place to place.