The Chronology of the Second Muslim Civil War between Shared and Competing Historical Memories

Abstract

The events of the second Muslim civil war have been reported in Muslim sources and Christian chronicles. John bar Penkāyē is by far the most important non-Muslim source because he lived throughout the events that he documented in the Book of Main Points (Ktâbâ d-rêšê mellê) which he wrote in 67/687. Although some of the events reported by John are corroborated by Muslim sources and Christian chronicles as shared historical memories, he is also the main source of competing historical memories. As the sequence of events that John describes in his narrative does not often match with what has been reported in the Muslim sources, this article applies the methodology of Specific Date Verification, primarily derived from Muslim sources, to attempt to shed light on the competing historical memories. It concludes that John’s narrative was not influenced by a later editor and that his work, along with that of other Christian chroniclers, raises important questions about the events of the second civil war.